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Add a tenth planet to the solar system -- or possibly subtract one. Astronomers announced Friday that they have found a lump of rock and ice that is larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system.
The discovery will likely rekindle debate over the definition of "planet" and whether Pluto still merits the designation.
The new object -- as yet unnamed, but temporarily known as 2003 UB313 -- is now 9 billion miles away from the sun, or 97 times as far away as the Earth and about three times Pluto's current distance from the sun.
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Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's orbit ranges between 2.7 billion and 4.6 billion miles.
The astronomers do not have an exact size for the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is larger than Pluto, the smallest of the nine known planets.
"It is guaranteed bigger than Pluto," said Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech in Pasadena and a member of the team that made the discovery.
The discovery was made Jan. 8 at Palomar Observatory in San Diego County. Brown and the other members of the team -- Chadwick A. Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and David L. Rabinowitz of Yale University -- then found that they had, unknowingly, taken images of the planet, using the observatory's 48-inch telescope, as far back as 2003.
Brown said they had a name they have proposed for the planet, but did not want to disclose it publicly until it had been formally approved by the International Astronomical Union.
The discovery will likely rekindle debate over the definition of "planet" and whether Pluto still merits the designation.
The new object -- as yet unnamed, but temporarily known as 2003 UB313 -- is now 9 billion miles away from the sun, or 97 times as far away as the Earth and about three times Pluto's current distance from the sun.
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Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's orbit ranges between 2.7 billion and 4.6 billion miles.
The astronomers do not have an exact size for the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is larger than Pluto, the smallest of the nine known planets.
"It is guaranteed bigger than Pluto," said Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech in Pasadena and a member of the team that made the discovery.
The discovery was made Jan. 8 at Palomar Observatory in San Diego County. Brown and the other members of the team -- Chadwick A. Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and David L. Rabinowitz of Yale University -- then found that they had, unknowingly, taken images of the planet, using the observatory's 48-inch telescope, as far back as 2003.
Brown said they had a name they have proposed for the planet, but did not want to disclose it publicly until it had been formally approved by the International Astronomical Union.
