Monday 1 August 2005

Six Figures

Just had the 100,000th visitor to the site.

Domain Name directcorp.net.au
IP Address 203.142.146.#
ISP Primus Telecommunications (Australia) Pty Ltd
Language English (Australia)
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution 1400 x 1050
Monitor Color Depth 16 bits
Time of Visit Aug 2 2005 12:43:50 am

Visit Number 100,000

10th planetWhile in other news, a Tenth Planet has been found in our Solar System.
You could call it the tenth rock from the sun. Scientists yesterday made the dramatic announcement that they had found the first new planet in the solar system in three quarters of a century. The planet - a giant lump of rock and ice, more than nine billion miles from the Sun - is the first to be discovered since Pluto in 1930. The breakthrough will cause the redrawing of the maps of our corner of the universe.
[...]
Dr Brown and his team have christened it Xena, after the warrior princess in the old television series, "... because we always wanted to name something Xena". But the formal decision on a name will be made by the International Astronomical Union.

Xena - if such it formally becomes - is the biggest object to have been discovered in the solar system since Neptune in 1845. More important, at about 2,000 miles across, it is considerably bigger than Pluto, which is what gives it the right to be considered our 10th planet.
Which rather puts things into perspective. I hope the IAU, a notoriously humourless body, Okay's the name, but I have my doubts. Still, I like the concept of a planet named after a fictional Warrior Princess.

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