Posts: 4437
From: Sierra Vista, Arizona
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 08-13-2016 10:17 AM               

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An astronomer at Queens University has discovered a trans-Neptunian object that sits above the plane of the solar system and is moving upwards – a fact that makes it an oddity, reports New Scientist.

The TNO orbits in a plane that's tilted 110 degrees to the plane of the solar system. What's more, it swings around the sun backwards unlike most of the other objects in the solar system. With this in mind, the team that discovered the TNO nicknamed it "Niku" after the Chinese adjective for rebellious.

To grasp how truly rebellious it is, remember that a flat plane is the signature of a planetary system, as a star-forming gas cloud creates a flat disk of dust and gas around it. "Angular momentum forces everything to have that one spin direction all the same way," says [Michele] Bannister. "It's the same thing with a spinning top, every particle is spinning the same direction."

That means anything that doesn't orbit within the plane of the solar system or spins in the opposite direction must have been knocked off course by something else. /