news.discovery.com
During a rare occultation event, Eris was measured by telescopes in Chile and it turns out the dwarf planet behind Pluto's demotion may not be that big after
Yes, Sam, super interesting. The Pluto debate over the past five years has been worth following. There have been numerous Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) discovered in the past ten years and a few of them are approaching the size of or are larger than Pluto. So, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) determined after significant debate that Pluto was nothing more than one of many KBOs, and downgraded it to a dwarf planet. The article you forwarded makes the distinction between size and mass, suggesting those properties could have a say in whether an astronomical body qualifies as a planet. If a planetoid was a rubble pile of mostly ice, it could be many times less massive than a planetoid made of rock that is exactly the same volume.
The big question that the article raises is how a dense object made it out to Eris' orbit. Those KBOs should mostly be little fluffy balls of rock and ice. Does it mean that a rocky asteroid migrated out to a far orbit early in the solar system's history? Or is there a process that could cause rocky worlds to form in the icy KBO region of the system? Magic?
Here is an article that does a nice job on the Pluto connundrum.
If you have an article suggestion, just go ahead and post it yourself with a review on the Fantastic League of Extraordinatry Amateur Scientists! Don't bug me, I've got my own stuff to look at...just kidding, I didn't have anything for tonight anyway. Thanks Sam!
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