Science Saturday 02/23
Welcome to Science Saturday. I don’t like it when I don’t post in between Saturdays, but I’m giving Deathless all of my writerly attention right now. There’s plenty going on outside of writing, too. Anyway, here’s what happened this week in the world of science:
Science Magazine: FarFarOut
Astronomers searching for Planet Nine recently discovered our solar system’s farthest known object. The object, an asteroid or dwarf planet of unknown size, is orbiting our sun at a distance of 140 times the orbit of Earth. The object’s discoverers creatively named it “FarFarOut” since it beat the previous distance record set by “FarOut” a dwarf planet that orbits the sun at 120 times Earth’s orbit that was discovered by the same team in late 2018.
Phys.org: Pressure of Protons
Physicists were able to measure the pressures found inside protons for the first time in history. The resulting data seems to indicate that each individual proton’s core is under more pressure than that of a neutron star, the densest known objects in the universe. The fact that protons are present in basically everything makes this statistic pretty mind blowing.
LiveScience: Earth’s Atmosphere
We seldom think about it, because we breathe it every day, but Earth’s atmosphere is very unique . In fact, it is the only one like it that we know to exist in the universe. Composed of a little less than 80% Nitrogen and 20% oxygen, our atmosphere is what gives life a chance on our planet, and in turn, life here is what keeps the atmosphere the way it is.
ScienceNews: Japan Shot an Asteroid
Don’t let your imagination get the best of you here, Japan didn’t laser an asteroid out of the sky or anything. Instead, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully landed on the Ryugu asteroid, and fired a bullet into its surface to kick up dust. The dust was presumably collected, but there’s no way of knowing how much it caught until the spacecraft returns to earth in 2020. The craft will attempt 2 more dust captures before then.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the weekend.
65 Replies to “Science Saturday 02/23”
So Just how fast is this farfarout planet moving if it orbits the sun at 140 times the rate of Earth??
It probably isn’t, but it’s exact speed isn’t known yet. It’ll take a few years to figure out how fast it’s going. The 140 refers to distance from the sun, not rate of speed. To put it differently, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is called an astronomical unit. FarFarOut is estimated to be 140 astronomical units away from the Sun, or 13,010,000,000 miles.