nineplanets.org has the ‘nine’ crossed out and has put up a ‘ten’ next to it, but I’ll bet Bill Arnett is kicking himself for not securing ‘tenplanets.org’ before Derek Johnson grabbed it last year! If you haven’t heard that our solar system may have another planet - you’ll be doubly shocked when you learn that they want to name it ‘Xena’.It’s not much of a surprise that we hadn’t noticed Xena before. Right now it’s 3 times farther away than Pluto, and it’s orbit around the sun takes a respectable 560 years.

From the official NASA press release:

The planet was discovered using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif. The discovery was announced today by planetary scientist Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., whose research is partly funded by NASA.

The planet is a typical member of the Kuiper belt, but its sheer size in relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be classified as a planet, Brown said. Currently about 97 times further from the sun than the Earth, the planet is the farthest-known object in the solar system, and the third brightest of the Kuiper belt objects.

The problem is that there is no definition of what a planet is really, so scientists will be arguing about whether to really include Xena or not in the coveted ‘real planet’ club. Of course, if they deny entry to Xena, they would really have to kick Pluto out as well, since Pluto is smaller and possibly even more asteroid like.