At a press conference on July 29th, 2005, Caltech astronomer Michael A. Brown disclosed the finding of a 10th planet in our solar system. This is a discovery that is sure to make a big splash in our culture. In the recent years, the textbooks on Solar Parameters have been rewritten with new discoveries and missions. Human are slowly getting closer to the truth.
According to Astronomers, this new planet is about 97 times as far from the sun as Earth is. The newly found planet is at-least double the size of Pluto, and boarders the Kuiper Belt, which is an asteroid ring which circles the Sun beyond Pluto.
It is estimated that this new planet (currently referred to as 2003 UB313) will be as close as Neptune when it reaches it’s half way point of it’s 280 year long orbit around the sun. Neptune is roughly 36 times the distance from the sun as Earth is. And it has it’s very own Moon!
Preliminary data shows the new planet is made up of 70% rock, and 30% frozen water ice. The temperature should be somewhere around 400 degrees below zero.
The 9 planets that have been known for some time follow the ecliptic plane, which discates their orbit around our sun. This new planet, 2003 UB313, lies at a 45 degree angle from the ecliptic plane, which may be why the planet hasn’t been discovered until now.
2003 UB313 was initially spotted in 2003, but there was not enough supporting data to correlate the discovery with a planetary body.
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