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tkdguy

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Last week the BBC aired a short interview with a NASA representative about the Juno spacecraft's discoveries at Jupiter. Interesting but frustrating, as the NASA rep didn't have a lot of time and wasn't very good at explaining, and the BBC presenter didn't know enough to ask clarifying questions.

 

If I understood correctly, though, one unexpected discovery is that Jupiter's magnetic field is asymmetrical in ways that cannot yet be explained. But it may have something to do with evidence that there's something very strange about Jupiter's core. If the planet even has a core (which they aren't sure about), it might be, in the NASA rep's words, lumpy.

 

I'd like to look for an article with better information, but my internet connection is very slow and generally sucks. I hope someone else can post a link to something good.

 

Dean Shomshak

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3 hours ago, Christopher said:

Are we happy now we kicked out Pluto before we realized how many friends & familiy exactly he was going to invite to our party?

 

Yeah, it wasn't a choice between "8 planets or 9 planets" it was a choice between "8 planets or 900 planets."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

As many dwarf planets as I have palindromedary taglines

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4 hours ago, Lucius said:

 

Yeah, it wasn't a choice between "8 planets or 9 planets" it was a choice between "8 planets or 900 planets."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

As many dwarf planets as I have palindromedary taglines

does the mass of those 900 dwarf planets even equal the mass of Mercury or Mars
I hear Mars bullies them for their lunch money

 

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At this point I don't trust mass estimates for the trans-neptunian stuff (by that I mean: total mass in that population).  I think our knowledge is way too incomplete at this point.

 

The main asteroid belt we know a lot better, and it has one dwarf planet (Ceres).  The main belt total mass is about 4% of the Moon, and the Moon's mass is about 1/80 that of the Earth; the biggest four objects account for about half the mass.

 

Mars is about 1/10 of Earth's mass, so a few hundred trans-neptunian dwarf planets combined probably gets up to about a Mars mass.  I should probably go back and check that estimate with the handful of TNO masses we have.

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14 hours ago, Christopher said:

Are we happy now we kicked out Pluto before we realized how many friends & familiy exactly he was going to invite to our party?

 

I personally would have grandfathered Pluto in the planet category, but in the long run, nothing has really changed apart from the new classification.

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Thanks be to my local library. This looks like a good one-stop shop for Juno news:

NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno probe will study the gas giant's atmosphere, magnetosphere and gravitational field. Juno will orbit Jupiter for about a year.
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Ultima Thule - an object New Horizon will pass by around New Year - is giving us it's first mystery.

 

We have already determined that it is not a sphere.

So we have been looking at it to figure out what light-curve it emits, to have more ideas in wich way it was not a sphere.

But there is no light curve. The light reflection is constants, as if it was a sphere.

 

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20181220

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On ‎12‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 1:58 AM, tkdguy said:

 

I personally would have grandfathered Pluto in the planet category, but in the long run, nothing has really changed apart from the new classification.

 

Pluto is a planet!!!  PLANET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

*badger begins his usual foaming at the mouth, when Pluto is called a dwarf planet*

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