Moments of Awareness

A small asteroid that zipped by the Earth this week has turned out to be no slow poke. It is the second-fastest spinning asteroid ever seen, astronomers say. The space rock, called asteroid 2010 WA, flew within 24,000 miles (38,000 kilometers) of Earth Tuesday night (Nov. 16). [ Photo of asteroid 2010 WA ] The asteroid was tiny, just 10 feet (3 meters) across and posed no threat of hitting Earth. In fact, it was so small that it would break apart before passing through Earth's atmosphere, NASA scientists said. But the relative harmlessness of asteroid 2010 WA did not make it any less interesting to scientists. Astronomers with the Magdalena Ridge Observatory near Socorro, N.M., trained a 2.4-meter telescope on the asteroid as it sailed past the Earth Tuesday at 10:44 p.m. EST (0344 Nov. 17 GMT) . What they found was surprising. "We measured the rotation rate of the asteroid at about 31 seconds," astronomer Eileen Ryan, the observa...

- Should Pluto Be a Planet After All? Experts Weigh In

By Peace Jaway November 26, 2010

Now that Pluto may have regained its status as the largest object in the outer solar system, should astronomers consider giving it back another former title — that of full-fledged planet? Pluto was demoted to a newly created category, "dwarf planet," in 2006, partly because of the discovery a year earlier of Eris, another icy body from Pluto's neighborhood. Eris was thought to be bigger than Pluto until Nov. 6, when astronomers got a chance to recalculate Eris' size . Now it appears that Pluto reigns — though only by the slimmest of margins (the numbers are so close as to be nearly indistinguishable, when uncertainties are taken into account). The new finding brings renewed attention to Pluto, and to the controversial decision to strip the frigid world of its planet status. Should Pluto be a planet? Should Eris, and many other objects circling the sun beyond Neptune's orbit? Or is the current system, which recognizes just eight rela...