The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #83392 Message #1536201
Posted By: Amos
06-Aug-05 - 01:23 AM
Thread Name: BS: New Planet?
Subject: RE: BS: New Planet?
From Physics News Update, an e-zibne:
POSSIBLE NEW PLANETS in our solar system have been spotted recently. Reservations about claiming new planets arises not from anything to do with the observations, but with semantics; there is no universally accepted definition for planet. Even Pluto is not a planet according to some scientists. The two newest planet candidates are the latest residents to be discerned in the Kuiper Belt, the zone of debris material beyond the orbit of Neptune. Two earlier specimens go by the name of Sedna (www.aip.org/pnu/2004/split/677-1.html) and Quaoar (www.aip.org/pnu/2002/split/608-3.html). One of the new objects, discovered by astronomers at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain, is called EL61, with an orbital radius of about 51 AU (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is equal to the Earth-sun distance) and a size about 2/3 that of Pluto (which itself orbits at a distance of about 32 AU). The other object is called UB313 and was spotted by astronomers at the Palomar observatory in California and the Gemini telescope in Hawaii. It orbits at a distance of 97 AU and has an estimated size larger than Pluto).