Free Republic

An unusual dwarf planet discovered in the outer Solar System could be en route to becoming the brightest comet ever known. 2003 EL61 is a large, dense, rugby-ball-shaped hunk of rock with a fast rotation rate. Professor Mike Brown has calculated that the object could be due a close encounter with the planet Neptune. If so, Neptune's gravity could catapult it into the inner Solar System as a short-period comet. "If you came back in two million years, EL61 could well be a comet," said Professor Brown, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. "When it becomes a...

According to a report in New Scientist, the youthful looking family of objects were found in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy objects beyond Neptune. They appear puzzlingly fresh-faced, despite the fact that they probably formed in a collision more than a billion years ago. The largest member of the family, a rapidly tumbling blimp-shaped object called 2003 EL61, was discovered in 2005. In 2007, astronomers found five smaller objects travelling in similar orbits. Their paths suggested they all formed a single object that was broken apart in a collision more than a billion years ago. Now, a team...

A newfound object in our solar system's outskirts may be larger than any known world after Pluto, scientists said today. It also has a moon. Designated as 2003 EL61, the main object in the two-body system is 32 percent as massive as Pluto and is estimated to be about 70 percent of Pluto's diameter. Other news reports that the object could be twice as big as Pluto are false, according to two astronomers who found the object in separate studies and another expert who has analyzed the data. If the mass is only one-third that of Pluto, then theory holds...