ub313 – 10th planet found

i was always fascinated by astronomy, also caused by our highly gifted and enthusiastic teacher of physics at school, and it was always a hobby of mine; i loved stephen hawking’s books. unfortunately i don’t find the time to stay up-to-date in this issue right now, but i read about “ub313” today – the 10th planet in our solar system:

“astronomers have confirmed that the newly discovered 10th planet is larger than pluto. nicknamed ub313 for now, the new planet has a diameter of 3,000 km (1,850 miles) which is 700 km (435 miles) larger than pluto. these new observations were made using a sensitive sensor on the iram 30-m telescope that measured the heat emitted by the new object, and found it had a similar reflectivity to pluto. this allowed them to calculate its size.”

this caused the discussion about the definition of planets and stars again.

so, school textbooks on astronomy may have to be rewritten … and there is so much more to come!

>> find a more scientific explanation here.

(via google news and the independant)

and aren’t you fascinated by the beauty of pictures like this as well?

[tags: ub313, planet, pluto, iram, solar system, orion nebula]