Saturday, October 19, 2002
Discoveries
I may be mistaken but it seems that there's been a little more science in my newspaper of late. Especially of the astronomical variety anyway. The Kuiper Asteroid Belt lies distant from ourselves beyond Pluto. Seems that one rather large asteroid, Quaoar, was found orbiting the sun just beyond Pluto. Quaoar is one of several large asteroids and is just over half the size of Pluto. There are many who think that Pluto is really just a large asteroid from this belt and shouldn't be designated a planet.
There's also been some excitement about finding what appears to be evidence of a black hole in the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. It was the work of Einstein that predicted the existence of black holes but alas, how to find one? Scientists followed the orbit of a star called S2 that appears to orbit the centre of the Milky Way. The movement of S2 would indicate an object of enormous gravity. Since they can't see it, the conclusion is a black hole.
I may be mistaken but it seems that there's been a little more science in my newspaper of late. Especially of the astronomical variety anyway. The Kuiper Asteroid Belt lies distant from ourselves beyond Pluto. Seems that one rather large asteroid, Quaoar, was found orbiting the sun just beyond Pluto. Quaoar is one of several large asteroids and is just over half the size of Pluto. There are many who think that Pluto is really just a large asteroid from this belt and shouldn't be designated a planet.
There's also been some excitement about finding what appears to be evidence of a black hole in the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. It was the work of Einstein that predicted the existence of black holes but alas, how to find one? Scientists followed the orbit of a star called S2 that appears to orbit the centre of the Milky Way. The movement of S2 would indicate an object of enormous gravity. Since they can't see it, the conclusion is a black hole.
