tenth planet

A place to socialise and share opinions with other members of the BGAFD Community.
DavidS
Posts: 1125
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am

Re: tenth planet

Post by DavidS »

I know there is a lot going on news wise at the moment, but the BBC news, as usual, have hardly given this the prominence it deserves.
jj
Posts: 28225
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am

Re: tenth planet

Post by jj »

Why 'prominence'?
It won't contribute anything of significance to our knowledge of the origin of the Solar System, there are far more important discoveries being made every day in Astrophysics, and it's really just a smallish lump of rock, i.e. a biggish asteroid (many of which have closer orbits).
Pluto was a similar hype-job, although it did demonstrate that smaller objects could be located by predictions based upon perturbation- a technique which is now usefully contributing to the search for extra-Solar planets...........
"a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the
signification...."
Locked