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Tommy_Carcetti

(43,079 posts)
Thu Feb 27, 2020, 05:52 PM Feb 2020

Feeling depressed? Down? Scared? Defeated? Well, cheer up! We've got a tiny new moon!

For real! Apparently it's the size of a car, but it's totally ours!

Unfortunately, it won't last forever though. Bummer.

Snip:



https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/02/mini-moon-earth/607171/



This is going to sound preposterous, but I promise it’s true: Earth has another moon.

It is not the kind that will illuminate the night sky. It’s invisible to the naked eye and too tiny to do any classic moon moves, like tugging on the planet’s oceans. But it’s there, orbiting the Earth, accompanying us on our journey around the sun.

A pair of astronomers discovered the miniature moon on the night of February 15. It showed up in the nightly observations of the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded project in Arizona. The survey is designed to study asteroids and comets near Earth, the kind that could potentially menace the planet if they got too close. To Kacper Wierzchos and Teddy Pruyne, the mystery object appeared as a few pixels of light moving quickly across a dusky, fixed background.

Researchers at other observatories and amateur astronomers around the world raced to monitor the newcomer in the sky, collecting as much data as they could. When they calculated its orbit, they were baffled. The object wasn’t a newcomer at all. So far, their work suggests that the object has been moving around us, gravitationally bound to the Earth for the past many months—at least a year but potentially closer to three. We’ve had a tiny new moon all this time, and we didn’t know about it.

So, what exactly is this thing?

Astronomers don’t know everything yet—it’s been less than two weeks!—but they’ve identified some traits. The object is about the size of a compact car and traces a rambling loop around Earth about every four months or so. As the object passed by Earth on its path through space, the planet’s gravity pulled it close. And in that moment, it became a moon.

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Feeling depressed? Down? Scared? Defeated? Well, cheer up! We've got a tiny new moon! (Original Post) Tommy_Carcetti Feb 2020 OP
It's a spaceship. And they have a book. It's called, "How to serve man." Squinch Feb 2020 #1
"That's no moon" Roland99 Feb 2020 #2
Well, I'm not going to be 'mooning' over it. Ha! SWBTATTReg Feb 2020 #3
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