eris

Shit has been going from bad to worse to our former ninth planet, Pluto. Not only did it lose its designation as a planet in our solar system late last year, being demoted to a lowly (and somewhat derogatory) “dwarf planet,” but as it turns out, it’s not even the largest dwarf planet in our solar system. Eris (formerly Xena), the planet responsible for Pluto’s demotion, was determined to be 27 percent more massive than our former ninth planet; planetary scientist Michael brown and his grad student Emily Schaller determined Eris’ mass by calculating the orbital speed of its moon Dysnomia. As if this announcement wasn’t enough, Schaller added insult to injury: “I think that really only the big eight planets distinguish themselves as clearly different from all the other objects.”

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