Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: karajorma on March 15, 2004, 11:49:11 am
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In further proof that Pluto is nothing special astronomers have discovered yet another kuiper belt object of similar size.
Aparently they're calling it Sedna after an Inuit Goddess.
Read more here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/73/36244.html)
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I stopped regarding Pluto as a card-carrying planet some years back. I'd still be interested to get a probe out there to poke it a goodly bit, mind
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Great, someone found a rock. Charon would be quite interesting to look at, if only to confirm it used to be half of Pluto, I suppose that's the only interesting thing about Pluto, it's the only Binary Planet we know, though Earth isn't all that far off.
It's useful to science I suppose, but it still doesn't account for those discrepencies in the Outer Planet Orbits.
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more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedna_(astronomical_object) as well.
and really, planetoid sounds a lot more correct then planet.
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I feel soo sorry for those astromoners. They spend all their lives finding "planet X" and end up finding some pathetic little ball of dust!
Blaise Russel's gonna need a new faction for Sol: A history :lol:
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QUAOAR
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Originally posted by Flipside
Great, someone found a rock.
It's not just a roock. It's the rock furthest out from the sun! :D
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They think it has a moon! :lol:
It's funny that they can make such a proclamation like that given it's size and distance. More likely the 'moon' is an obect with a similar orbit.
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they might just have looked at it's orbit, and saw it slightly wobbled, or something. just as they spot planets in extra solar systems.
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yeah, you seem to think they just proclaim things like that becase it's fun.
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Make that 2 rocks ;)
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Why shouldn't it have a moon? Pluto has one and is just the same thing only a little bigger.
EDIT : Here's a longer article about it from space.com (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/new_object_040315.html)
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They've know about it for 2 days max. So unless they're using some kind of fancy secret gravitic sensor to study the relationship between the two objects, I'll hold off calling it a moon until they have definitive proof.
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Originally posted by Liberator
They've know about it for 2 days max. So unless they're using some kind of fancy secret gravitic sensor to study the relationship between the two objects, I'll hold off calling it a moon until they have definitive proof.
Sedna was first sighted in November 2003. Mike Brown (CalTech) and Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University, spotted the worldlette through the 48-inch telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory.
thats 2 awfully long days I would say..
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Ummm... and if they can tell from the influence of gravity on other stars that planets are orbitting them, then doing it from much closer should be easier, I would have thought.
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It would be, especially as a moon, even if it resembled the moons of Mars, would be a far higher percentage of the mass of the planetoid than practically any planet would be of a star.
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I wonder when they're gonna find Rupert.
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Originally posted by Zuljin
thats 2 awfully long days I would say..
They're biblical days... :D
Seriously though, I don't doubt that with the observations that you could determine the presence of a moon or not. Even if its moon is just a captured comet.
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Seeing it has a similar environment to Mars, it could have possibly had some life in the very distant past... why its on such an orbit is unusual.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Inuit Goddess.
As much as that is true I think Ocean Goddess would describe her better. :D
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Originally posted by Xelion
Seeing it has a similar environment to Mars, it could have possibly had some life in the very distant past... why its on such an orbit is unusual.
Errmm... what part of tiny, round, dirty iceball at the edge of the solar system resembles Mars? Other than the round part...
Also, its orbit is pretty usual for a KBO.
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color, surface features I guess just basically what I said before, ENVIRONMENT.
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Originally posted by Xelion
color, surface features I guess just basically what I said before, ENVIRONMENT.
First off, we don't know what the surface features are. Plus environment would take into conditions such as surface temperature and composition, which is definately not going to be like Mars despite similar coloration.
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I thought they said it was red?
And Inuit? That seems a little out of place, what with the current naming scheme of the solar system...
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Mars is almost liveable, this thing probly has oceans of liquid nitrogen,
it's a planet made entierly out of ice.
it's realy. fuc'n. cold.
mars on the other hand gets up to (I beleve) about 60(f) around the equator
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
I thought they said it was red?
And Inuit? That seems a little out of place, what with the current naming scheme of the solar system...
Iniut??? Change that name, it's not FS2 canon!!!!
ah, oups, wrong place.
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News is as misleading as it can be.. so I'm not saying anything more until I know something solid :p
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Originally posted by Bobboau
Mars is almost liveable, this thing probly has oceans of liquid nitrogen,
it's a planet made entierly out of ice.
it's realy. fuc'n. cold.
mars on the other hand gets up to (I beleve) about 60(f) around the equator
:nod:
'tis so far away, that you can block out the sun with the end of a pin. Bit like Aberdeen, then. :D
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LOL Better than Glasgow, you have to FIND the sun first ;)
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...new planet. :ha:
There's still something out there though....I think.
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oid ;)
Theres loads out there ;) But if you mean theres still something in the Solar System we haven't found yet, as far as I'm aware the answer is yes.
I'm not sure if it was ever solved, but I do know that there are variations in Pluto's orbit that it was thought could only have been caused by a large gravitational force outside the orbit of Pluto, larger than Mr and Mrs Rock anyway ;)
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I'm still amused by the Nemesis concept....
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hehehehe That's the Discworld of the 80's that is ;)
Theres still some evidence to support Vulcan oddly enough ;)
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Mars goes up to ~ 22° C on warmer spots :)
Near volcanoes probably even warmer.
The little Sedna, on the other hand doesn't get any warmer than -230 °C, nor does it have an atmosphere like Mars does.
Also, being red doesn't even mean its made from the same substances.
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Why don't they just take the Hubble and have it take pictures? I thought that thing could take pictures of things outside our solar system.
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They'd have to get on the list to point the Hubble in the right direction. It's several years long IIRC. Of course, I can't remember ever seeing any pictures of planets or asteroids actually taken with the hubble either, so it may be too powerful to see anything at that close a range.
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That's assuming it last's that long.:sigh: Stupid Beaurecrats.:mad: Fire the Director or NASA NOW! :hopping:
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Hubble has taken shots of several planets in the solar system. It cannot take shots of Mercury due to the risk of the sun damaging the instruments on Hubble since it was not designed for the type of light exposure it would receive.
The list has nothing to do with beaurocrats in NASA, it does deal with the fact that the Hubble is a limited asset due to the lack of space telescopes. If you want to blame someone, blame the people who are cutting the NASA budget and forcing the "smaller, cheaper, faster" probes as opposed to projects such as Hubble or the inferometers. But if you have to fire someone, since the Vice President is the one in charge of NASA, fire Dick Cheney :)
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Originally posted by Ace
fire Dick Cheney :)
best thing i heard all day.
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
Mars goes up to ~ 22° C on warmer spots :)
Near volcanoes probably even warmer.
I don't think so. Since Mars is a dead planet w/o tectonic activities or anything, I'd assume the volcanoes are dead too, no?
I don't know, heh, I'm just asking.
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Originally posted by Nico
I don't think so. Since Mars is a dead planet w/o tectonic activities or anything, I'd assume the volcanoes are dead too, no?
I don't know, heh, I'm just asking.
if the planet was "dead", and had no core activity what-so-ever.
Then I believe the whole planet would be one giant chunk of ice
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(http://home.iprimus.com.au/nexus387/forums/sedna.jpg)
Enough Said :D..
Copyright Source: The West Australian :nervous: "Educational Purposes Only"
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Originally posted by Zuljin
if the planet was "dead", and had no core activity what-so-ever.
Then I believe the whole planet would be one giant chunk of ice
Well no, it has atmosphere. Atmosphere traps sunrays and stuff.
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There are a lot of objects in the solar system that are geologically dead yet still are rocky. Take any asteroid found within Jupiter's orbit, for example. Or Mercury. Or the larger moons of Jupiter or Saturn. To be a chunk of ice the body must not only be geologically dead but also pretty distant from the sun.
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No, NASA'a budget has been relatively stable at 15 billon for over a decade. That leaves two options:
1. The Director is a Beaurecrat who doesn't know or doesn't care that Hubble is the only tool that can do certain jobs.
or(this one is kind of out there)
2. The Government is concealing the fact that we are in contact with aliens and there are so many up there that it is becoming undeniable.
I'm with #1 in this case although #2 has had some convincing arguments put forward in recent months.
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Originally posted by Nico
I don't think so. Since Mars is a dead planet w/o tectonic activities or anything, I'd assume the volcanoes are dead too, no?
I don't know, heh, I'm just asking.
The vulcanoes on mars are a) partially still active and b) the biggest to be found in our solar system.
The planet's definately not dead. But you could say its climate is too chaotic to maintain/develop any form of life. The Mars' moons are not enough to stabilize the planet, so the rotational axis wobbles around, leading to desertification (go figure) as well as drastic climate shifts in short time periods. :)
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There's a volcano on Mars about the sive of Everest, IIRC.
Incidentally, the mars express probe has found evidence of frozen water on the (south?) pole of Mars - frozen water, frozen with dirt and frozen with CO2.
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DG's big list o' Mars facts™:
Mars is ~ 1/2 the size of Earth
Mars has a the largest mountains (ie. volcanoes) in the solar system
Olympus Mons is 21 miles high (IIRC), which fairly pisses over Everest
Mars has no current geological activty to speak of, save wind errosion (which no-one really gives a **** about cos it's boring)
Mars has no magnetic field to speak of
The previous three facts indicate that Mars has a massively thick crust with virtually no dynamic activity inside the planet
Here endeth the lesson. You have been educated
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the fact that there's frozen H2O on the poles has been known quite a while. :)
One of the biggest volcano on mars has a width of 500 kilometres, with a height of 25 kilometres.
Temperature can get to 25°C, with a temperature minimum of -133°C, one of Mars' years takes 687 earth days. What's really amazing is that the time a day takes is nearly exactly the same as on Earth.
While an earth day takes 24 hours, a Mars day has 24,6 hours.
Atmosphere composition:
95% CO2
2.7% Nitrogen
1.6% Argon
0.13% Oxygen
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
DG's big list o' Mars facts™:
Mars is ~ 1/2 the size of Earth
Mars has a the largest mountains (ie. volcanoes) in the solar system
Olympus Mons is 21 miles high (IIRC), which fairly pisses over Everest
Mars has no current geological activty to speak of, save wind errosion (which no-one really gives a **** about cos it's boring)
Mars has no magnetic field to speak of
The previous three facts indicate that Mars has a massively thick crust with virtually no dynamic activity inside the planet
Here endeth the lesson. You have been educated
All of which can be explained by the fact that it has no large moons to affect it gravitationally.
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:wtf:
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You can have volcanic activity without a moon. Io, for example, is a moon itself with massive volcanic activity. A magnetic field for the moon, however, is under debate.
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Io has volcanic activity due to the heavy gravity of the surrounding celestial bodies.
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Damn straight, Lighty. I spies poeple posting without knowing what they're talking about. Lunar gravity isn't the only cause of volcanism and tectonic activity :nod:
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Last I heard Mars had 2 moons!! If their joint mass can't create enough gravity force, nothing will.
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maybe the 2 cancel each other out, plus they're much smaller than our moon
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Deimos and Phobos are tiny. Phobos is 27km across. Deimos is 16km in diameter. The moon is 3,476km in diameter. Quite a difference wouldn't you say? :D
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Originally posted by Ghostavo
Last I heard Mars had 2 moons!! If their joint mass can't create enough gravity force, nothing will.
They're called Phobos and Deimos, two ridiculously little pieces of rock.
They're *nowhere* near as big enough to stablize the rotational axis, let alone create any magnetic fields or volcanism
*edit: kara beat me to it.
Still, some of the larger volcanoes on mars are still active. :)
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soooooo... Now we need to discover a new star and name it Vasuda.
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
Io has volcanic activity due to the heavy gravity of the surrounding celestial bodies.
That's what I get for a quick web search. You're right, Lightspeed, it is tidal stresses from Jupiter that cause Io's volcanic activity.
However, IIRC, heat from decaying radioactive isotopes play a role in heating the cores of planet....
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
That's what I get for a quick web search. You're right, Lightspeed, it is tidal stresses from Jupiter that cause Io's volcanic activity.
However, IIRC, heat from decaying radioactive isotopes play a role in heating the cores of planet....
Yep. They play a major role. Io is in fact something of an oddity because it's vulcanism has nothing to do with radioactivity.
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The cores usually are not *that* radioactive. The heat primarily comes from the time they were formed, and they contiunously lose warmth to the surrounding space.
Now, volcanic activity can happen due to a lot of causes. It can start through tectonic activity, gravitational influence, meteor impact, planet climate conditions, etc.
Now for mars it (probably) has the following reasons:
* Less own gravity than earth - lava can more easily be transported to the planet's surface
* Mars volcanoes are fix spots since the surface doesn't move (no tectonic activity)
* The volcanic activity comes from Mars' rotational axis wobbling around
* The crust in the southern hemisphere is thicker - more rock melts on the north side and the landscape sinks till an isostatic balance is reached. This causes gravitational anomalies and thus - volcanism.