Did everyone hear about this yet? Astronomers may have finally nailed down the "10th Planet" mystery. For years on and off we've been hearing about the possibility of there being another object out beyond Pluto in our solar system (actually they estimate around 900 similar objects out there), and now it's almost confirmed. Sedna, as they are calling it right now, is just a bit larger than Pluto but much farther away from the sun. It's average distance from the sun is almost 3 times farther away than Pluto is, 17 kilometers to be more precise. It's 8 billion miles away at it's closest pass and 84 billion away when it is on the long ellipse of it's orbit. That means it takes 10,500 earth years to complete one full trip around it's orbit. They say that Sedna is so far away that if you were standing on the surface of the planet today (it's close right now only 8 billion miles away), you could hold up a pin at arm's length and cover the sun with it. And it's so cold the temperature never reaches above -400 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a warm summer day there. It's about 3 - 4 degrees above absolute zero during the winter months. Ouch. The classification of Sedna as an actual planet will take a while considering that 74 years after its discovery, people still argue about if Pluto is really a planet or not.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:17 AM