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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
JPL announces Earth has another Moon!
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2017 Oct 23, 19:26 -0400
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2017 Oct 23, 19:26 -0400
https://youtu.be/SbbAnVU4rmY
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has announced that 2016 HO3 is in a multi century stable orbit with the earth. You can view the official video by following the link. Think of the double lunars!
Sadly, we will now have to demote the Earth to a minor planet, as it has not yet cleared it's orbit of other objects. 2016 HO3 is a prime example!
Another example would be 2017 UJ2, which came within 0.0009 AU of the semi planet Earth on 20 October. Note that the Earth - Moon distance is approx 0.0026 AU. The skies are filled with Near Earth Objects, clearly our orbital path isn't cleared!
In the days before telescopes, there were only 5 planets, to wit, Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter. Earth was not on the list of planets, because we were the center of the Universe. We certainly were not living on a wandering star. The heavens moved, we didnt, otherwise, we would all fly off.
Astronomy has carefully demoted us from center of the universe to just a planet orbiting the sun. Then discovered a bunch of other objects orbiting the sun like Ceres, Neptune and Uranus. Asteroids couldn't be planets, because then there would be "too many" planets, even if Ceres is spherical. Pluto can't be a planet, because all the other spherical bits and bobs in the Kuiper Belt would be too. So astronomy asserted a definition. A planet must clear the neighborhood of its orbit of other bodies. Our demotion is now complete.
Welcome to Semi Planet Earth!
(Please note this is written totally tongue in cheek and not meant as a serious critique of the IAU Definition of a Planet.)
