Today's 60 Second Science Podcast is brought to you by Houghton Mifflin, who are going to be very busy if they have to rewrite their astronomy textbooks:
Comet Dust Seems More Asteroidy
Full transcript after the jump...
Continue reading 'Comet Dust Seems More Asteroidy [podcast]' >
It seems that since we've been observing the solar system, someone is always trying to find Planet X. Sometimes the search leads to something significant, like Pluto, but usually nothing turns up. But now that Pluto's been demoted, the hunt is on to find another object to replace it.
NewScientist chronicles Patryk Lykawka's attempts to "replace" Pluto with a freezing super-Pluto that has somehow escaped detection thus far. The Kobe University researcher remains utterly convinced that we'll find this distant planet within the next few years.
In a distant region of the Kuiper Belt known as the Kuiper cliff, the number of objects drops off sharply. Also, the rocks within the Kuiper Belt follow three distinct orbits. Lykawka thinks Planet X might have sculpted the Kuiper Belt in this manner.
Continue reading 'Planet X: The planet that just won't die' >
It's time to grab some Schlitz, St. Ides or Olde English and pour a forty: Voyager 2 has left our solar system for good. Voyager 2 first hit space in '77 and crossed the 'termination shock' -- the transition region between the bubble dominated by the sun's solar wind and interstellar space -- on August 30 of this year. To put it in perspective, Voyager 2 left Earth when swinging was cool and Star Wars movies ruled, whereas by the time Voyager 2 left the solar system, swinging got relegated to old folks in the 'burbs and Star Wars movies sucked.
But Voyager 2 ain't going out without giving us some sweet information. Voyager 1 crossed this same boundary in 2004, but Voyager 2 did it almost 1 billion miles closer to the sun, suggesting that something is compressing the bubble that contains the outermost reaches of solar wind -- which is generally considered the edge of the solar system.
Continue reading 'Voyager 2 leaves solar system, looking forward to 'new projects with Diddy'' >
If you see the sun burning a brighter twinge of red later today, it's because he's no longer the king of the hill, the cock of the rock. For now, good 'ol Sol Invictus has to settle for second place: Comet Holmes is the biggest thing in our solar system.
Continue reading 'What's the largest object in the solar system? Comet Holmes, holmes!' >
I love that time of the bi-month when I get my copy of Cosmos magazine. The first thing I do is read it cover to cover -- well, it's the first thing I do after I've finished "reading" Juggs, American Bear, Gimp Lady Monthly and US Weekly.
It's good I get around to it eventually, because this month's Cosmos reports on new findings that the destruction of a fifth, rocky planet in our solar system may have created massive craters on the earth and moon during the Late Heavy Bombardment Period.
John Chambers, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, now says the size distribution of craters on the Moon better match asteroids from the Asteroid Belt, located beyond the orbit of Mars. And he thinks the misbehaviour of a long-lost, fifth rocky planet called 'Planet V' was the trigger that upset the gravitational balance of the belt and ejected some of its inhabitants.
