Hotly-Debated Solar System Object Gets a Name. Hotly-Debated Solar System Object Gets a Name A new name has been bestowed on the "dwarf planet" whose discovery in 2005 rocked the solar system, sparked debate over "What is a planet? " and ultimately led to Pluto's removal from the planetary family. The dwarf planet, formerly known as 2003 UB313, is now called Eris, after the Greek goddess of discord and strife.
Image right: Artist's concept of Eris. Those two words accurately sum up the controversy in the astronomical community over the past year about whether the newly found object should be called a planet, since it's larger than Pluto. The International Astronomical Union resolved that issue last month at its meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, by shrinking the solar system from nine to eight planets, and putting Pluto, Eris and the largest known asteroid, Ceres, into a new category called dwarf planets. The Astronomical Union, founded in 1919, assigns names to celestial bodies. Astronomers Measure Mass of Largest Dwarf Planet. Click image to enlarge. Aptly named after the Greek goddess of conflict, the icy dwarf planet, Eris, has rattled the general model of our solar system.
The object was discovered by astronomer Mike Brown of Caltech in the outer reaches of the Kuiper belt in 2005. Its detection provoked debate about Pluto’s classification as a planet. Eris is slightly larger than Pluto. So if Pluto qualified as a full-fledged planet, then Eris certainly should too. Astronomers attending the International Astronomical Union meeting in 2006 worked to settle this dilemma. In the end, we lost a planet rather than gaining one. Image above: This is an artist's concept of Kuiper Belt object Eris and its tiny satellite Dysnomia. Adding insult to injury for the former ninth planet, Brown has now determined that Eris is also more massive than Pluto. Currently, Eris is more than three times farther from the Sun than Pluto.
Kari Reitan Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore. YouTube - Planet X Debate 2008 - part 1. Sun's Shifts May Cause Global Warming | Global Warming. Do you ever worry that people will take your findings and use them to support unwarranted or even harmful conclusions? I would be happy to kill the project if I could find out that there was something that didn’t fit or that I no longer believed in it. When we started, it was just a simple hypothesis based on a correlation, and correlations are, of course, something that could be quite dubious, and they could go away if you get better data.
But this work has only strengthened itself over the years. What first made you suspect that changes in the sun are having a significant impact on global warming? I began my investigations by studying work done in 1991 by Eigil Fiin-Christensen and Knud Lassen Fiin-Christensen. That was the initial idea. How exactly does the mechanism work, linking changes in the sun with climate change on Earth? The basic idea is that solar activity can turn the cloudiness up and down, which has an effect on the warming or cooling of Earth’s surface temperature. Pole shift hypothesis. For magnetic poles, see Geomagnetic reversal.
The cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis suggests that there have been geologically rapid shifts in the relative positions of the modern-day geographic locations of the poles and the axis of rotation of the Earth, creating calamities such as floods and tectonic events.[1] There is evidence of precession and changes in axial tilt, but this change is on much longer time-scales and does not involve relative motion of the spin axis with respect to the planet. However, in what is known as true polar wander, the solid Earth can rotate with respect to a fixed spin axis. Definition and clarification[edit] From 1982 to 2005, the pole drifted southeast toward northern Labrador, Canada, at a rate of about 2 milliarcseconds —or roughly 6 centimetres — per year. Pole shift hypotheses are not the same as geomagnetic reversal, the periodic reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (effectively switching the north and south magnetic poles).
Speculative history[edit] EARTH CHANGES: Magnetic Field Reversal. Possible energy ramifications of diminishing magnetic field. How long will it linger at zero before reversing? [Feedback: legal ramifications for official land/title survey] by Mary-Sue HaliburtonPure Energy Systems News Seeing the powerful earthquakes such as the December 26th, 2004 event that triggered the tsunami disaster, people are looking for possible causes for the apparent instability of earth's crust.
"End-times" alarmists and backyard researchers believe that the predicted imminent reversal of the earth's magnetic field may be a significant clue to these eschatological-scale events. Scientists have been observing changes in the direction of earth's magnetic field which took place recently as well as in the distant past. NASA’s website features a map showing the gradual northward migration of the north magnetic pole in the past century and a half.
It is not only the direction but also the strength of this magnetic field that is a concern. Which theory is right? 1. Feedback.