It's another world ... but is it our 10th planet?

[Mr. Crowley]

It's another world ... but is it our 10th planet?

By Louise Milligan and agencies

15mar04

SCIENTISTS have found a new world orbiting the solar system – more than 3 billion kilometres further away from the Sun than Pluto and 40 years away from Earth in a space shuttle.

NASA is expected to announce today the discovery of the space object, which some experts believe could be a new planet.

It is provisionally known as Sedna, after the Inuit goddess of the sea.

The discovery of Sedna – 10 billion kilometres from Earth – is a testament to the new generation of high-powered telescopes.

Measurements suggest Sedna's diameter is almost 2000km – the biggest find in the solar system since Pluto was discovered 74 years ago. It is believed to be made of ice and rock, and is slightly smaller than Pluto.

The find will reignite the debate over what constitutes a planet. Some scientists claim even Pluto is too small to count as one.

According to astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, who discovered Sedna, there could be many other new worlds orbiting the Sun and waiting to be discovered.

"Sedna is very big, and much further out than previous discoveries," he said. "I'm pretty sure there are other large bodies up there too."

But physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, of Sydney's Macquarie University, said it was folly to describe Sedna as a planet. "It's fun, it's exciting, but let's keep it in proportion," Professor Davies said yesterday.

He said scientists had known for "a decade or so the solar system does not come to an abrupt halt" and there were a number of "planetessimals" or little planets, like Sedna.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/print...8968352,00.html

[Shawn]

Kinda neat.

[DudeAsInCool]

Astrologers have been predicting for years that there is a tenth planet... who knows...

[jipper]

wouldnt it be uber cold on that planet..

[Lord_of_the_Dense]

I say go with it as #10. 9 is old, odd and simply boring.

:psychofun:

[Kooperman]

New Distant 'Planetoid' Seen in Our Solar System

1 hour, 19 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A newly discovered dark and frigid world, a bit smaller than Pluto and three times farther away, has emerged as the most distant object in the solar system, astronomers said on Monday.

The new "planetoid," named Sedna after an Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic, is by far the coldest and most distant object known to orbit the sun, a team of researchers announced.

At more than 8 billion miles from the sun, the temperature on Sedna never gets above minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

"The sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely block it out with the head of a pin," said Mike Brown, an astronomer at California Institute of Technology, who led the research team.

First detected on Nov. 14 with the Samuel Oschin Telescope near San Diego, California, Sedna was observed within days on telescopes from Chile to Spain, Arizona and Hawaii.

NASA (news - web sites)'s new orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, which looks at the universe with infrared detectors that peer through cosmic dust, was also trained on the distant object.

The Spitzer scope found that Sedna probably has about three-fourths the diameter of Pluto, which would make it the biggest object found in the solar system since Pluto's discovery in 1930.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._planetoid_dc_4

[Shawn]

A little visual aid. We look pretty damn close to the sun by comparison.