New Planet Discovered!

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New Planet Discovered!

Named Sedna

limbo

1:22 pm on Mar 15, 2004 (gmt 0)

...after the Inuit goddess of the ocean.

BBC article: [news.bbc.co.uk...]

lgn1

1:59 am on Mar 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

Its not a planet, its a Kuiper Belt object. The
solar system only has 8 planets with Pluto being a Kuiper Belt object. I don't know why it takes so long for the scientific community to correct a long standing myth.

Woz

2:20 am on Mar 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

What's the difference lgn1?

Onya
Woz

lgn1

3:12 am on Mar 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

A planet is "a non-moon, sun-orbiting body large enough to have gravitationally 'swept out' almost everything else near its orbit."

Pluto fails this test, based on the 'swept out' test.

DrDoc

4:03 pm on Mar 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus are not planets either...
Way too much junk floating around nearby in the rings...

lawman

5:42 pm on Mar 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

Too much junk floating around in rings around Uranus?

Macguru

6:03 pm on Mar 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

I suggest a meteor shower then. Some Comet could help too.

TheDoctor

6:38 pm on Mar 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

From this week's New Scientist:

If Pluto is defined as a planet, "get ready for a 20-planet solar system," sats Dave Jewitt of the University of Hawaii.

AFAIK Pluto only got classified as a planet in 1930, when it was discovered, because it was thought that it was the same size as the Earth. If they'd known how small it was, we'd possibly never have had a 9-planet solar system.