Astronomers Find a New "Minor Planet" near Neptune
Written by Nancy Atkinson
Astronomers announced today that a new "minor planet" with an unusual orbit has been found just two billion miles from Earth, closer than Neptune. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, astronomers detected a small, comet-like object called 2006 SQ372, which is likely made of rock and ice. However, its orbit never brings it close enough to the sun for it to develop a tail. Its unusual orbit is an ellipse that is four times longer than it is wide, said University of Washington astronomer Andrew Becker, who led the discovery team. The only known object with a comparable orbit is Sedna — the distant, Pluto-like dwarf planet discovered in 2003. But 2006 SQ372's orbit takes it more than one-and-a-half times further from the Sun, and its orbital period is nearly twice as long.
2006 SQ372 is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Scientists believe the object is only 50-100 kilometers (30-60 miles) across.
Click here for an animation showing the detection of SQ372 by SDSS.
Becker's team was actually using the SDSS to look for supernova explosions billions of light-years away to measure the expansion of the universe. "If you can find things that explode, you can also find things that move, but you need different tools to look for them," said team member Lynne Jones, also of the University of Washington. The only objects close enough to change position noticeably from one night to the next are in our own solar system, Jones explained.
The SDSS-II supernova survey scanned the same long stripe of sky, an area 1,000 times larger than the full moon, every clear night in the fall of 2005, 2006, and 2007.
SQ372 was first discovered in a series of images taken in 2006 by the SDSS, and were verified from images taken in 2005 and 2007.
The researcher team is trying to understand how the object acquired its unusual orbit. "It could have formed, like Pluto, in the belt of icy debris beyond Neptune, then been kicked to large distance by a gravitational encounter with Neptune or Uranus," said UW graduate student Nathan Kaib. "However, we think it is more probable that SQ372 comes from the inner edge of the Oort Cloud."
Even at its most distant turning point, 2006 SQ372 will be ten times closer to the Sun than the supposed main body of the Oort Cloud, said Kaib. "The existence of an 'inner' Oort cloud has been theoretically predicted for many years, but SQ372 and perhaps Sedna are the first objects we have found that seem to originate there. It's exciting that we are beginning to verify these predictions."
Becker noted that 2006 SQ372 was bright enough to find with the SDSS only because it is near its closest approach to the Sun, and that the SDSS-II supernova survey observed less than one percent of the sky.
"There are bound to be many more objects like this waiting to be discovered by the next generation of surveys, which will search to fainter levels and cover more area," said Becker. "In a decade, we should know a lot more about this population than we do now."
"One of our goals," said Kaib, "is to understand the origin of comets, which are among the most spectacular celestial events. But the deeper goal is to look back into the early history of our solar system and piece together what was happening when the planets formed."
The discovery of 2006 SQ372 was announced today in Chicago, at an international symposium about the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A paper describing the discovery technique and the properties of 2006 SQ372 is being prepared for submission to The Astrophysical Journal.
News Source: SDSS press release
Filed under: Astronomy
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 am
As I've posted previously, can we have a special page for cranks like Pavel that by-passes the main page? An immediate indicator of cranks, conspiracy theorists etc is the use or over use of exclamations marks. I'm afraid I now close an article when I come across posting such as Pavel's and his like. A responsible, adult site such as this deserves better. Tragic really.
Paul.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:40 am
In 2012 there is one interesting alignment (sun with center of galaxy) that most likely signifies nothing. (Most of the travel to this alignment from the 'above/below the plane' position has already happened and No Bad Thing came of it…) It's a nice place to start a calendar cycle though. (The only mystery here is how the Maya knew about it…)
Also in 2012 there ought to be the peak of solar cycle 24 (if it ever starts…) If this is, as presently looks to be the case, a very weak cycle, then the fall from the 2012 "peak" ought to happen along with a plunge of global temperatures down into something like a Dalton Minimum (i.e. Very cold winters and summers with poor crops and cool conditions).
Unfortunately for the 'end of life as we know it' 2012 doom and gloomers, there is about a 2 year lag between solar drop and temperature drop due to thermal lag in the oceans et.al. So even if this were a calamity it would not hit hard until 2014. So much for Mayan doom in 2012.
Pavel: American scientists, as with most others, are required to study a lot of non-science to graduate. Social sciences including history. Many of them read history just for fun too. (I'm fond of my Marcus Aurelius and have a wonderful old copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. The style of the old writers is something to revel in.) That does not mean they are enamored of your pet theories. Do not assert ignorance when all that is evidenced is disagreement.
In particular, the guys who invented crop circles have admitted it. They even made a film showing how to do it in the dead of night and had crop circle "experts" come out who then were completely convinced these were of e.t. origin. Anyone who still thinks crop circles are anything other than a good hoax is deluded and does not know their history. The list goes on.
Now there may well be some decent information hidden in old myths and legends, but they are a very unreliable source. Do you believe in leprechauns? How do you separate their myth from the ones you do believe in? It isn't via science.
I personally believe that the old Sumerian writings have a (possibly distorted) record of the creation of man via a genetic manipulation by a space visitor. I can't say if there is truth in that story or if it is just really exceptional 'science fiction' that would be astounding for it's age. Nor can anyone else. There is not sufficient data to decide. You can have an opinion, but not a decided answer.
The point? You need to learn to enjoy the old stories as stories and maybe even accept that they might have a grain of truth in them somewhere but NOT swallow them whole as gospel.
In science each information source is weighted as to it's veracity and probability. Please realize that de-weighting very old (near mythological) sources is a normal and expected result of their age and lack of supportive evidence. No mater where the scientist was born, raised, or educated.
An example? For years the notion of an 'evil star' (literally a disaster) was held to be mythical, and in school the fear of comets was held up to ridicule. But it still was a good 'story' that eventually led to folks realizing that comets could hit the earth, and did hit the earth. The science caught up with the legend. BUT it would still have been wrong to have just asserted the legend was true until there was outside evidence to confirm it.
Enjoy the legends. Use them as source material for finding ideas to research or test. Don't assert they prove anything until you have verifiable confirmatory evidence. So planet X? Interesting theory and the stuff of legends. NOT a reality until someone spots it in a telescope. Maybe it really is there, headed for earth; but you can't KNOW that until there is physical evidence to show it exists. Legends are the hypothesis, not the experiment nor the result and certainly not the conclusion.
I expect we will be finding a whole zoo of things toward the Oort cloud now that we are looking. Don't leap to conclusions as to what they are or you will be blind as to their real nature.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I wonder if you have yet stepped into you oblivion of ablsolute ignorancy! wow cynderlism is not even equal to your
MOM haha stupid if you read this!