Research

Taking a dump: Or aka deficating, shitting, pooping. Also can be seen as taking a crap, taking a shit, [dropping a load], dropping the kids off at the pool,...

Learn about the history of NYC's sewer system, how it functions, and its importance to human and ecosystem health.

Cooking grease…wet wipes…and lots of other stuff…get flushed down the sewers creating fatbergs that clog pipes and drain wallets. You can keep things running...

The recent discovery of the Sedna-like dwarf planet 2012 VP113 by Trujillo and Sheppard has revamped the old-fashioned hypothesis that a still unseen trans-Plutonian object of planetary size, variously dubbed over the years as Planet X, Tyche and Telisto, might lurk in the distant peripheries of the Solar system. This time, the presence of a super-Earth with mass mX =2-15 m⊕ at a distance dX ≈ 200-300 astronomical units (au) has been proposed to explain the observed clustering of the arguments of perihelion ω near ω ≈ 0° but not ω ≈ 180° for Sedna, 2012 VP113 and other minor bodies of the Solar system with perihelion distances q > 30 au and semimajor axes a > 150 au. Actually, such a scenario is strongly disfavoured by the latest constraints Δ dot{\varpi } on the anomalous perihelion precessions of some Solar system planets obtained with the INPOP and EPM ephemerides. Indeed, they yield dX ≳ 496-570 au (mX = 2 m⊕) and dX ≳ 970-1111 au (mX = 15 m⊕). Much tighter constraints could be obtained in the near future from the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Scientists using ground-based observatories have discovered an object that is believed to have one of the most distant orbit found beyond the known edge of our solar system. Named 2012 VP113, it may be a dwarf planet. A dwarf planet is an object i...