ESO will make a press conference to Announce Discovery in Outer Solar System!

It leaked early!! link

They found an asteroid with rings!!

reply to post by martianmallow


Its clearly a spaceship.

First.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Question 1.) How long do comets last?

Question 2.) How far away is the "ORT" cloud?

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Question 1.) How long do comets last?

Question 2.) How far away is the ORT cloud?

reply to post by martianmallow


The article says it might have a moon, doesn't that classify it as a planetoid?

An asteroid with rings? thats new.

I know what they found!!!!,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,MORE SPACE!!

so how big is it? if it has rings and a possible moon how can it not be classified as a planet??

More likely they just identified a BigMac floating through space, several thousand years old, and it still looks the same as it does when it was made.

That, or they just noticed the heavenly plughole.

rayuki
so how big is it? if it has rings and a possible moon how can it not be classified as a planet??

This asteroid is approx 258 km in diameter.

It can't be classified as a planet because it hasn't cleared its orbital neighbourhood of other similarly-sized objects. It's orbit also grazes the orbit of Uranus, which a planet cannot do.

reply to post by martianmallow


How convenient a leak. The world needs more plumbers.
According to the article this information is under strict embargo until the appointed time so not sure of this "leak".

reply to post by Quadrivium


The Oork cloud? Is that where Robin Williams came from ? Will Orson be making the announcement or will Mork? LOL. Typo I know just adding a little levity.
2:00 EST still a little more than four hours.

Well this is bizarre, a press conference to make an announcement for a new discovery?

I thought the new way of releasing new discoveries to the public was via a documentary?

Strange the Baltic Sea UFO is waiting to release the documentary first to announce what they found instead of the other way around? Uhm

interupt42
Well this is bizarre, a press conference to make an announcement for a new discovery?

I thought the new way of releasing new discoveries to the public was via a documentary?

Strange the Baltic Sea UFO is waiting to release the documentary first to announce what they found instead of the other way around? Uhm

Media companies make documentaries, but the news first needs to be told to Media by scientists.

wildespace

interupt42
Well this is bizarre, a press conference to make an announcement for a new discovery?

I thought the new way of releasing new discoveries to the public was via a documentary?

Strange the Baltic Sea UFO is waiting to release the documentary first to announce what they found instead of the other way around? Uhm

Media companies make documentaries, but the news first needs to be told to Media by scientists.

Yeah, that was my point. I should have inserted a /sarcasm tag.

AutumnWitch657
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

 

They said at the edge of our solar system . Voyager only took seven years to reach it why would a comet take a million years ?

Not to nitpick...but I thought that Voyager 1 didn't "officially" leave the Solar System until August 2012 - and since it launched in September 1977 that would mean it took 35 years to get to the edge of the solar system...

reply to post by Brucee


A few years ago it was announces they had found a diamond the size of a planet. Strange things can be found in space and because gold is formed by an exploding star it may well be that somewhere a goldnugget the size of a planet is next to be spotted.

It will always amaze me what space has to offer and will be looking forward what they will have to reveal this time....But as in many cases probably nothing interesting for the non-astroscientists.

reply to post by interupt42


They don't know what it is yet. The documentary just has dive and rov footage. They are still trying to secure funding for more dives. Plus, the documentary is already released. I've seen it.

OK, the official anouncement is up: www.eso.org...

he team found that the ring system consists of two sharply confined rings only seven and three kilometres wide, separated by a clear gap of nine kilometres — around a small 250-kilometre diameter object orbiting beyond Saturn.

"For me, it was quite amazing to realise that we were able not only to detect a ring system, but also pinpoint that it consists of two clearly distinct rings," adds Uffe Gråe Jørgensen (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), one of the team. "I try to imagine how it would be to stand on the surface of this icy object — small enough that a fast sports car could reach escape velocity and drive off into space — and stare up at a 20-kilometre wide ring system 1000 times closer than the Moon."

Although many questions remain unanswered, astronomers think that this sort of ring is likely to be formed from debris left over after a collision. It must be confined into the two narrow rings by the presence of small putative satellites.

ngchunter

InverseLookingGlass
reply to post by ngchunter

 

An open parabola means the orbital period is infinite. I guess you could say that is long.

You mean parabolic orbit? Those aren't uncommon either, it doesn't take much to perturb a cometary body at Oort cloud distances into a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit.

Open parabola is equivalent to hyperbola. I made no assertion about statistical frequency.

Some external kick had to be involved. I believe that has strong consensus.

Passing stars, dwarf planets, gravitational tidal forces, any number of things. Like I said, it doesn't take much at all, just a few meters per second.

So, according to you, any number of things can cause a virgin comet, in orbit around our sun to re route to the inner solar system for us to see. Can you name one single event that has been directly observed? Name one single "passing star" or name a dwarf planet that has been observed directly altering an orbit of an Oort cloud object. keep it to the ones discovered before your wrote the post. not this one announced today.

I might remind those reading this, that the Oort cloud is prevailing theory, not proven fact. In addition, the source of the gravitational "kick" for "long period comets" could be a large mass object far away or unknown planetesimals orbiting the Sun outside the orbit of the Kuiper belt. In terms of the prevailing model, and observations of comets during recorded history, the large body orbiting the Sun kicking comets in, is more probable. The dynamics and time scale of passing stars just doesn't fit the time distribution of long period comets.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. The source of perturbation could not be "a" large mass object far away, let alone is that "more probable." Try doing your research before promoting ignorance. As I already said, long period comets, including parabolic and hyperbolic comets, come from all directions. So do explain how "a large body orbiting the sun kicking comets in" is more plausible than random perturbations from a variety of sources? It does not fit the facts, it's not even possible. You are trying to force fit a singular cause that you want to believe in, but it does not fit.

The Oort cloud may include countless planetesimals and objects at different sizes at all orientations orbiting the sun. I guess when the Oort cloud can actually be observed we'll find out if you are right. It is possible and does fit the observations

You just ranted about any number of things perturbing the Oort cloud which , by the way, has never been directly observed. I realize everything is linked to everything else so don't bother with Philosophy. Just concentrate your formidable logic on objects that are relevant to this topic. You've got a lot of balls claiming I'm promoting ignorance so answer my questions quickly please or go away. A 0.1 Earth mass object pulling on a 0.001 Earth mass object at a distance of 1AU applies orders of magnitude more force than Proxima Centauri does on a 0.001 Earth mass object in the Oort cloud. Quit stroking your ego for a moment and put the numbers in yourself. gravitaional force calculator