Gods' Masterpiece

Astronomers say

they’ve found the

10th planet

2003 UB313 is bigger, more distant than Pluto, but sparks a debate

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By Robert Roy Britt
Senior science writer

Updated: 2:25 a.m. ET July 30, 2005
Astronomers have discovered an object in our solar system that is larger than Pluto. They are calling it the 10th planet, but already that claim is contested.

The new world's size is not at issue. But the very definition of planethood is.

It is the first time an object so big has been found in our solar system since the discovery of Pluto 75 years ago.

The announcement, made Friday by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, came just hours after another celestial object slightly smaller than Pluto was revealed, on a very confusing day for astronomers and the media.

The new object, temporarily named 2003 UB313, is about three times as far from the sun as is Pluto.

"It's definitely bigger than Pluto," said Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech. The object is round and could be up to twice as large as Pluto, Brown told reporters during a hastily called NASA-run teleconference Friday evening.

His best estimate is that it is 2,100 miles (3,360 kilometers) wide, about one and a half times the diameter of Pluto.

One of many?
The object is inclined by a whopping 45 degrees to the main plane of the solar system, where most of the other planets orbit. That's why it eluded discovery: Nobody was looking there until now, Brown said.

Some astronomers view it as a Kuiper Belt object and not a planet. The Kuiper Belt is a region of frozen objects beyond Neptune.

Pluto itself is called a Kuiper Belt object by many astronomers. Brown himself has argued in the past for Pluto's demotion from planet status, because of its diminutive size and eccentric and inclined orbit.

But on Friday he struck a different note.

"Pluto has been a planet for so long that the world is comfortable with that," Brown said during the teleconference. "It seems to me a logical extension that anything bigger than Pluto and farther out is a planet."

Offering additional justification, Brown said 2003 UB313 appears to be surfaced with methane ice, as is Pluto. That's not the case with other large Kuiper Belt objects.

"This object is in a class very much like Pluto," he said.

NASA effectively endorsed the idea in an official statement that referred to 2003 UB313 as the 10th planet.

Yet in recent years, a bevy of objects roughly half to three-fourths the size of Pluto have been found.

Brian Marsden, who runs the Minor Planet Center where data on objects like this are collected, said that if Pluto is a planet, then other round objects nearly as large as Pluto ought to be called planets. By that logic, 2003 UB313 would perhaps be a planet, but it would have to get in line behind a handful of others that were discovered previously.

"I would not call it the 10th planet," Marsden told Space.com.

Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, called the discovery "a major step." But Boss would not call it a planet at all. Instead, he said Pluto and other small objects beyond Neptune should be called, at best, "Kuiper Belt planets."

"To just call them planets does an injustice to the big guys in the solar system," Boss said in a telephone interview.

The very definition of what constitutes a planet is currently being debated by Boss and others in a working group of the International Astronomical Union. Boss said the group has not reached consensus after six months of discussion.

The debate actually stretches back more than five years and is rooted in the fact that astronomers have never had a definition for the word "planet," because the nine we knew seemed obvious.

"This discovery will likely re-ignite a healthy debate about what is and what is not a planet," Boss said.

Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, the top scientist for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, predicted in the early 1990s that there would be 1,000 Plutos out there. He has also contended, based on computer modeling, that there should be Mars-sized objects hidden in the far corners of our solar system and even possibly other worlds as large as Earth.

In a telephone interview after Friday's announcement, Stern, who was not involved in the discovery, said he stands by those predictions and expects Mars-sized objects to be found within decades.

"I find this to be very satisfying," Stern said of 2003 UB313. "It's something we've been looking for for a long time."

Stern stopped short of calling it one of the greatest discoveries in astronomy, however, because he sees it as just one more of many findings of objects in this size range. Last year, for example, Brown's team found Sedna, which is about three-fourths as large as Pluto. Others include 2004 DW and Quaoar.

Stern sees the outer solar system as an attic full of undiscovered objects.

"Now we have the technology to see them," he said. "We're just barely scratching the surface."

CONTINUED: It's way out, but you might be able to see it


---Wow, ..Way Cool. The universe is ALIVE, ALIVE, I tell you!.---