A couple interesting scientific discoveries lately.
One was the discovery of another “minor planet” that resides in the Kuiper Belt of asteroids beyond Neptune. There have actually been two of these large space rocks found recently. The BBC reports extensively on “2003 UB313”. It seems to be the largest of the objects, larger than pluto and could be considered a “10th planet”.
However, I found the other object (with a similarly unoriginal name, 2003 EL61) to be a little more interesting. It’s a tad smaller than Pluto, but it has a moon… which of course makes it that much more fun for astronomers to look at.
New Scientist has an excellent rundown on how the discovery was made… and how surprising it is that we had not seen 2003 EL61 before.
In other news closer to home… scientists in the US have determined that, just like the movies have always told us… the boundary between the Earths hard outer crust and gooey mantle is quite sharp. So we really are all just floating on a big ball of boiling rock… spinning like a top… and twirling round a ball of fire.
I’m dizy…
It really is mindboggling, isn’t it? This core of boiling magma under our feet and yet here a few miles above it all, we breathe in air and have winter weather regularly. The wonder of it all.