The 10th Planet

The New York Times is running a story about a debate between astronomers who both claim to have discovered the same object beyond Pluto. Apparantly the US Astronomers had been tracking it for quite some time, but chose to not report it yet. They also claim the Spanish Astronomers stole data to make the find.

A very interesting discussion of this yet to be named 10th planet can be found at Michael E. Brown’s website. Michael Brown is a Professor of Planetary Astronomy Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology and is one of the US astronomers that discovered the planet. His page answers questions such as: How do you find planets? How can you tell how big they are? How do you determine what planets are made of? In addition to topics relating to publishing scientific discoveries, which relates to the NY Times article above.