astralavista

Call it the revenge of kooks. Many ufologists have long argued for the existence of a tenth planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. Calling it Nibiru, they said the planet harbored an advanced civilization whose cosmonauts visited the Sumerians on Earth some 4,500 years ago. The defended their claim, saying that we haven't yet spotted Nibiru becasue it had an eliptical, comet-like orbit banked steeply to the plane of the solar sytem.

Find a good hole to hide.

Today's New York Times reports on a newly discovered piece of rock in the far-out solar system that's possibly larger than Pluto. The new body orbits at a puzzling 44-degree angle to the rest of the solar system. Already, astronomers are wondering about the forces that have have kicked it so high up. Is the new body the solar system's tenth planet? Some scientists already started calling Xena. Or will the discovery make Pluto lose its rank as a planet and become a mere cosmic rock? We'll need to wait for answers.

From the Times:

"Astronomers announced yesterday that they had found a lump of rock and ice that was larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system. The discovery will probably rekindle debate over the definition of "planet" and whether Pluto still merits the designation.
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The new object - as yet unnamed, but temporarily known as 2003 UB313 - is now 9 billion miles away from the Sun, or 97 times as far away as Earth and about three times Pluto's current distance from the Sun. Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's orbit ranges from 2.7 billion miles to 4.6 billion.

The astronomers do not have an exact size for the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is larger than Pluto, the smallest of the nine known planets.

"It is guaranteed bigger than Pluto," said Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and a member of the team that made the discovery. "Even if it were 100 percent reflective, it would be larger than Pluto. It can't be more than 100 percent reflective.""

Image: Orbit of the mythical Nibiru comes via greatdreams.com