What did Pluto ever do to us?

You're right, I mixed up my millions and billions. Happens all the time.

Hey man! It's science!

BTW - Comets come from the Oort cloud which is the edge of the suns gravitational effects.

There are apparently a number of rogue planets wandering around in intersteller space but certainly no cases of one every getting near our system. Certainly VERY unlikely.

Keith Tanner wrote: You're right, I mixed up my millions and billions. Happens all the time.

I understand, you were counting in dog miles.

aircooled wrote: Hey man! It's science! BTW - Comets come from the Oort cloud which is the edge of the suns gravitational effects. There are apparently a number of rogue planets wandering around in intersteller space but certainly no cases of one every getting near our system. Certainly VERY unlikely.

Fun fact…the Oort cloud extends 25% of the way to Alpha Centauri (our nearest star). So, assuming Alpha Centauri has its own Oort cloud (probable), there’s really only 50% open space between us and it.

Added later…

The current estimate is that there’s probably about as many rouge planets as there are stars so we’ve likely got around 200 billion of the suckers wandering around our galaxy alone! Rouge planets don’t form on their own but rather get spun off due to gravitation interference with other plants or get blown out into space when a star explodes.

Since we’re out in the boonies, the odds are low that one would wonder by and even if it did, Jupiter would probably eat it. However, it could be bigger than Jupiter in which case we’d be totally, royally Burkley’d.

I've often wondered how much noticed we'd have if one of those puppies, or even a large asteroid just went cruising through our system. Would we know years? months? days? in advance?

wbjones wrote: and what have we learned … is it a planet ? or is it just a reasonable good sized rock with a smaller rock orbiting around it 3 2/3 billion miles from the sun ?

Has it lost its mind? Can it see or is it blind? Can it walk at all, or if it moves will it fall?

Duke wrote: If it's large enough that its own gravity makes it spherical, and its primary orbit is around a sun rather than another planet, **it's a planet.** I don't care what they say.

Your cisplantetary mindset is showing.

PHeller wrote: I've often wondered how much noticed we'd have if one of those puppies, or even a large asteroid just went cruising through our system. Would we know years? months? days? in advance?

I don’t know if this is still the case but in the not so distant past, we were spending less on identifying NEO’s (near earth objects) than the average payroll expenditure of a McDonalds…let that sink in.

I know that if they're coming at us from the sun’s direction, they’re a lot harder to identify early and I know we’ve been caught off guard in the past like “Woosh…Jesus what was that”.

RX Reven' wrote: …I’ve taken a rotary engine almost that far without requiring a rebuild.

Why were you carrying it in your trunk so long?

Keith Tanner wrote: You guys are pushing the boundaries of pedantry due to a joke.

Long may it continue, I'm loving it

There's a FHRITP version as well.

yamaha wrote: In reply to pinchvalve: Pluto raped your mother and killed your dog

I'm still pissed about that dog...

You know what's so cool about this right now? Because the data is triiiickling in - and will continue to do so for months - we're getting to see astronomical discoveries as they happen. The whole world is peering over the shoulders of the scientists as each image comes in. And then we'll get the HD versions in a few months after the initial "better ship this out now fast in case we hit a space rock" download.

Geeky deep space network real-time info screen. Want to know how to listen in on Voyager 1 (assuming you have a giant dish in the backyards)? All the info is there along with what dishes are active right now and what they're listening to.
http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

I didn't know that Pluto got it's planet status revoked until this thread. But rad images that y'all are hotlinking.

Thanks for the new wrinkles in my brain.

Keith Tanner wrote: How awesome is this? Just think about it. Taken at a distance of 7750 miles by a spacecraft moving at 31,000 miles per hour, then broadcast a third of a billion miles back to us using a power source that generates 202 watts of power. It's so far away that it takes 4.5 hours for the radio waves to reach us. That's one high quality picture and some high quality driving.

I thought texting and driving was illegal, but of course when the government does it...

We'll have to wait for the HD images, but I heard this morning that they're focusing on a cube shaped object on the surface with a sign that looks like the 7-11 logo. It must be true. I heard it on the Today show.

(trombone noise)

For those who don't know - the spacecraft can take pictures or send data, but not both at the same time. So it's concentrating more on taking pictures right now, and once it's headed further out it'll change its stabilization technique, double the bandwidth and start squirting out the HD images. The ones we're seeing right now are a "just in case" dump of lower quality images that were sent in case something went wrong.

We were lost, none of us knew where we were. Then Harry starts 'feeling around on all the trees' and he says... "I got it we on Pluto", I say, "Harry how can ya tell?", and he says, "from the bark, you dummies. Ha-ha! From the bark!"