An object that is at least as big as Pluto and about three times farther from the sun has been found. There is some debate on whether or not it deserves to be classified as a planet.
The team had hoped to analyze the data further before announcing the planet but were forced to do so Friday evening because word had leaked out, Brown said.
"Somebody hacked our website," he said, and "they were planning to make [the data] public."
Proving that even very intelligent people can do silly things like putting information they want to be kept secret where it can be found by hackers. (Hacking an astronomy site is totally off the scale of geekiness.)
The planet hasn't yet been named. For now it's being called 2003 UB313. The team has submitted a name proposal but hasn't chosen to share it with us yet.
Posted by marybeth at July 30, 2005 09:36 AM ScienceI sent these out in an email. Forgot to add your name to the list!
New Planet!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050729_large_object.html
Water on Mars!
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMGKA808BE_0.html
I linked to the new planet story because of the computer hacking angle but I thought that the ice on Mars was a bigger story. I meant to add info on it to this post but forgot. Thanks for adding the link to it.
Posted by marybeth at July 31, 2005 04:35 PM