Sentences with phrase «distant orbiting bodies»

Hajdukovic's quantum gravity might create a similar discrepancy with more distant orbiting bodies, he says — which is where Eris and its moon Dysnomia come in.

Not exact matches

This clustering of orbital parameters of the most distant KBOs suggested a large, planetary size body shepherding their orbits.

Some candidates can be checked further using another technique that looks for «wobbles» in the star caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting body, but Kepler 452 b is too distant and small for that.

Like an unseen spider visibly tugging on a web of gravitational strings, a hidden celestial body is luring distant space rocks into clusters of orbits too conspicuous to ignore.

As improved telescope technology finds smaller and more distant asteroids, astronomers have identified clusters of similar - looking bodies clumped in analogous orbits.

But only the lucky binaries seem to have planets that orbit them; some stellar binaries that lack orbiting bodies have a different third party — a distant star that's so massive, its gravitational fluxes actually change the orbit of the stellar binary, causing the two stars to shrink together in a process called orbital decay.

Since January, scientists have been chasing Planet Nine: a distant hypothetical world that could have 10 times the mass of Earth and explain the peculiarly clustered orbits of six icy bodies beyond Neptune.

This mixture resembles the composition of ancient bodies from cold distant orbits — such as Comet Borrelly, which another NASA probe flew past in 2001 (ScienceNOW, 18 December 2001).

Astronomers also use NIRC2 to map surface features of solar system bodies, detect planets orbiting other stars, and study detailed morphology of distant galaxies.

The goal, says former survey leader Robert Millis, was to discover enough distant bodies to begin to understand the scale of the belt, the three - dimensional distribution of these objects in space, and their orbits.

It might be lingering bashfully on the icy outer edges of our solar system, hiding in the dark, but subtly pulling strings behind the scenes: stretching out the orbits of distant bodies, perhaps even tilting the entire solar system to one side.

Other solar system bodies that are possibly dwarf planets include Sedna and Quaoar, small worlds far beyond Pluto's orbit, and 2012 VP113, an object that is thought to have one of the most distant orbits found beyond the known edge of our solar system.

Since these distant bodies move around the sky slowly, it will take about a year of follow up observations to understand their orbits — and their origins.

Each proposed scenario creates a population of icy bodies beyond the Kuiper belt and leaves a distinctive imprint on the orbits of these distant objects that would be still be observable today.