back to article Astroboffins dig into the weird backwards orbit of the Bee-Zed asteroid

Asteroid 2015 BZ509 – also known as Bee-Zed – is the only asteroid in our solar system with a confirmed retrograde orbit lasting 12 years; the same orbital period as Jupiter. The discovery was published in Nature in March by a team of physicists led by Paul Wiegert, a researcher at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. …

  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Did I just see that "asteroid" firing thrusters...

  2. Your alien overlord - fear me

    I doubt Bee-Zed's orbit is keeping Jupiter's orbit in line.

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
      Joke

      Yeah, Bee-Zed is a real danger to the solar system with its potential to knock Jupiter out of its current orbit....

    2. redpawn

      Have Faith

      If it weren't keeping Jupiter in check we would all be dead already. What part of resonance don't you understand. All hail Bee-Zed.

  3. WonkoTheSane
    Alien

    Weird

    I read that the Gateway asteroid orbited perpendicular to the ecliptic?

  4. Tom 7

    You cannae break the laws of physics Capn.

    It transparently doesnt so its not weird to me. Unusual but not weird.

  5. DropBear
    Boffin

    Most of the pictures and videos I've seen about BZ's orbit show a somewhat pretzel-like curve, but that's only when "viewed from Jupiter", ie. the "pretzel" follows / is locked to Jupiter as Jupiter orbits the sun. I suppose the astro-boffins doing the PR work found that shape more "interesting" than the Sun-relative orbit - apparently looking like a plain old, boring ellipse (which I personally find much more remarkable). Sadly, figuring out what the actual shape of the orbit is and whether it is a true ellipse - considering it is the result of "crossing paths" with Jupiter twice each time it goes around the Sun - is way beyond my math/astro-fu, but at any rate it closely resembles one...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    "Their icy exteriors are warmed by the Sun and they sublime"

    That's ridiculous.

  7. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    but their motion is locked and they never come within 176 million kilometers (109 million miles) of each other

    Obviously either Jupiter or BZ have a restraining order.

    This information is easily available at your local planning office, at Barnards Star. Even if it is locked in a filing cabinet, in a disused toilet with a sign on the door saying, 'beware of the leopard'.

  8. Gobhicks

    There's always one...

    Message ends

  9. Faux Science Slayer

    All stars begin as binary systems.....Ceres-Vesta....Hellas Planitia

    Mars has 635,000 impact craters, six over 400 km wide, and Hellas Planitia, which is

    2,300 km wide and 9 km deep, suggesting impact with a brown dwarf sized body,

    approximately 20% of the size of the Sun. The Planet X hypothesis solves a number of

    anomalies, Moons mass/orbit/origin, the 'fifth rocky planet' astroid belt and more.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's in the rules.

    Jupiter hasn't cleared its orbit of this asteroid, which means Jupiter is not a planet.

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