10th planet found

[kmusser]

Chad Trujillo is a friend of mine from High School who is now an astronomer who seaches the Kuiper belt for new objects. His team's latest find should hit the mainstream press today or tomorrow.

Astronomer's Discover 10th planet.

Comments

[kestrel127.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid, my parents had a set of kid encyclopedias. They didn't do A, B, C, they were on different subjects. One of them was an encyclopedia about mysteries, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, etc... I must have read that thing about 10 times.

Anyway, one of the mysteries was the theory of the 10th planet, Planet X, that was a big sucker and affected Neptune and Pluto's gravitational fields.

Interesting to know that they were actually right.

[kmusser]

The folks looking for them think there are probably several Kuiper belt objects at least as large as Pluto out there - agree that it's very cool that they found one :-)

[kansasman.livejournal.com]

ok Now that scientists have announced the discovery of a 10th Planet discovered in our solar system, what do you think the name of the planet should be?
http://www.livejournal.com/community/kevinsview/41613.html

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

That makes this the third "tenth planet". Last year they found Quaoar(?), and I forget the name of the one before that.

[kmusser]

Quaoar was the first large Kuiper belt object found since Pluto, no one ever claimed planet status for it. There have been two more objects found roughly the same size as Quaoar. The new object may well be called a planet since it's the first Kuiper belt object that's been found that is larger than Pluto.

For what it's worth the discovers don't think it should be considered a planet and for that matter neither should Pluto - there are probably several more similarly sized objects out there.

[sunnidae]

<singing> ... like my favorite one, that'd be Pluto! So alone & far away, wanna put it in your pocket for a rainy day, take it out every once in a while and say, "that's a mighty nice planet that I got, oh yes it is."</singing>

:)

[cellymcfae.livejournal.com]

COOL! :^D