The awkwardly-named 2012 VP113 is much farther from the sun, at 83 astronomical units. That puts it at 83 times the distance between our own planet and the sun.
But in terms of average distance from the sun, there is a dwarf planet even farther out: Eris, which Trujillo helped discover. Eris is bigger than Pluto, and has a satellite called Dysnomia. The presence of Eris helped scientists determine that Pluto should not be counted among the major planets.
Sedna, a dwarf planet that Trujillo co-discovered as well in 2004, is located in the same distant area, and takes about 10,500 years to orbit the sun.
Trujillo's study also suggests that there could be a large planet that no one has seen, way out at 250 astronomical units, affecting the orbits of Sedna and the new dwarf planet. But this is only a theory; the planet has not been detected.
Trujllio and colleagues estimate that the new dwarf planet is relatively small -- about 450 kilometers (280 miles) in diameter, which less than the driving distance from Philadelphia to Boston. It's probably ball-shaped, he said.
NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) today released the first images from a new satellite that can image precipitation on Earth in 3D.
Scientists gave the satellite a sort of shake-down cruise in early March by capturing precipitation inside a cyclone over the northwest Pacific Ocean (above).
In a study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and the Allen Institute for Brain Science present findings which suggest that defects in the formation of particular areas of the brain in autistic individuals begins long before birth.
Well doesn't that screw up the theories of those anti-vax'ers...
Children with autism are six to eight times more likely to suffer gastrointestinal problems than typically developing children, according to new research from the University of California-Davis’ MIND Institute.
indeed, the rules should have been grandfathered in just like visors in the NHL. But i guess that's what you get when a bunch of people get together who want to try to prove that they're smarter then everyone else.
There’s a surplus of gamma rays spewing forth from the center of our galaxy, and astrophysicists say they don’t know where it’s coming from. One thing is clear, though: it could not have been caused by anything we consider ordinary in our galaxy.
What it could be, according to Tracy Slatyer of MIT and her colleagues at Fermilab, Harvard, and MIT, is excess light from colliding dark matter particles. If true, this observation would be the first-ever indirect detection of dark matter in our universe.
Scientists reported today the first human recipients of laboratory-grown vaginal organs. A research team led by Anthony Atala, M.D., director of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine, describes in the Lancet long-term success in four teenage girls who received vaginal organs that were engineered with their own cells...
Anyone else try to catch this overnight? It was fully visible until the moon was around 80% covered and minutes before turning red, then fast forming clouds suddenly overtook it (if you're in Calgary). Worst timing, especially because most of the sky was still clear at the time, it was just where the moon was that had cloud cover.
Hearing about how amazing it was on the Twitter was such a tease, especially with Mars right next to it and at its brightest point in 6 years. Would've been cool to see all that live..
Military scientists have converted sea water into jet fuel. It apparently takes a lot of energy to make it happen, but should be easier to do over the next decade.