NASA releases budget request for Fiscal Year 2017. Credit: NASA
The Obama Administration has announced its new Federal budget and is proposing to cut NASA’s Fiscal Year 2017 Budget to $19 billion by carving away significant funding for deep space exploration, whereas the overall US Federal budget actually increases to over $4.1 trillion.
This 2017 budget request amounts to almost $300 million…
I like this administration a lot.
But not this!
If you have been following astronomy news today, you probably saw a lot of talk about a ninth planet in our solar system. Caltech astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown have used mathematical modeling and computer simulations to show that a planet-sized object could exist in the outer solar system and that this object could be influencing the elongated orbits of Sedna-like bodies.
This planet would be about 10 times the mass of the Earth and 20 times farther from the Sun than Neptune. At this distance, the planet would take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one orbit.
This paper is free for 30 days, so if you want to look at it, you better get it now. Keep in mind that this is a prediction of a new planet, NOT the discovery of one.
Happy reading!
The original Mike Brown, the most prolific planet hunter in the history of humankind.
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