Tenth planet discovered

The Associated Press is reporting that a Caltech scientist has discovered a tenth planet in our solar system, well beyond the orbit of Pluto:

It’s icy, rocky and bigger than Pluto. And according to scientists who found it orbiting the sun, it’s the newest planet on our solar system’s block. The planet — the farthest-known object in the solar system — is currently 9 billion miles away from the sun, or about three times Pluto’s current distance from the sun.

“This is the first object to be confirmed to be larger than Pluto in the outer solar system,” Michael Brown, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said Friday in a telephone briefing announcing the discovery.

Brown labeled the object as a 10th planet, but there are scientists who dispute the classification of Pluto as such.

Astronomers do not know the new planet’s exact size, but its brightness shows that it is at least as large as Pluto and could be up to 1 1/2 times bigger. The research was funded by NASA.

Brown has submitted a name for the new planet to the International Astronomical Union, which has yet to act on the proposal, but he did not release the proposed name Friday.

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