Tuesday, July 12, 2011

A Neptunian Year

The heat's still on here at my little corner of the Earth, but not as much as in Texas, sources tell me. We're lucky that we didn't lose power Monday morning when a fast-moving storm blew through, as many thousands in metro Chicago did. The storm woke me up around dawn, but didn't seem all that vicious. Guess that was a mistake on my part. My head's pretty foggy in those circumstances.


Wired UK reported that today marks 164.79 years since the discovery of Neptune by Johann Gottfried Galle and Heinrich Louis d'Arrest in 1846. Interesting because 164.79 Earth years is the orbital period of Neptune.


I'm not energetic enough to figure out the exact day when that maligned planet Pluto will mark one Plutoian year since Clyde Tombaugh discovered it, but I know it will be sometime around the year 2178 (1930 + 248). Maybe by then mankind will have that pesky "what's a planet?" question all sorted out.

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