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[ A 2nd Red Planet in Solar System? ... ]

Posted on: Tuesday, 24 August 2004, 06:00 CDT

A 2nd red planet in solar system?

... It's worth thinking about the fact that there is no formal astronomical definition of "planet." Until recently, there has simply been no need to define the term officially. Here in the inner reaches of the solar system it's been quite enough to know a planet when you see one.

But in the murky outskirts of the solar system, nothing is so self-evident. ... Dr. Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology presented the discovery of a mysterious new object beyond Pluto that he hopes will be called "Sedna." When asked whether Sedna is a planet, Dr. Brown explained that if Pluto is a planet, then Sedna is a planet. But, he added, Pluto is not a planet.

What is known about Sedna can be summed up quickly. One Sedna year is roughly 10,500 Earth years. ... After Mars, Sedna is one of the reddest objects in the solar system, and it is also, as Dr. Brown put it, "quite shiny." It is almost the size of Pluto and ... it may be the first body to be discovered in the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical region of icy objects that become comets.

... "Sedna" ... is the name of an Inuit woman who was thrown from a kayak by her fearful father. Her fingers became seals, and she became the spirit of the sea and all its creatures -- the most powerful being in Inuit mythology. ...

-- The New York Times

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