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ASTEROIDAL WARMING

The Gore  Effect has some kind of fancy multi-named rival:

For the very first time, astronomers have witnessed the speeding up of an asteroid’s rotation, and have shown that it is due to a theoretical effect predicted but never seen before. The international team of scientists used an armada of telescopes to discover that the asteroid’s rotation period currently decreases by 1 millisecond every year, as a consequence of the heating of the asteroid’s surface by the Sun. Eventually it may spin faster than any known asteroid in the solar system and even break apart.

“The Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack effect is believed to alter the way small bodies in the Solar System rotate,” said Stephen Lowry, lead-author of one of the two companion papers in which this work is reported.

Hmm. What with YORP’s rotational heating and Gore’s locational cooling, the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe should be maintained quite nicely.

Posted by Tim B. on 03/08/2007 at 11:22 AM
  1. Sure, they say it’s the sun’s rays.  I bet anything it’s all those greenhouse gas emissions escaping from Earth, though.  Everybody knows human beings have turned this corner of the Milky Way into a slum.

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2007 03 08 at 12:05 PM • permalink

  2. ...the asteroid’s rotation period currently decreases by 1 millisecond every year, as a consequence of the heating of the asteroid’s surface by the Sun. Eventually it may spin faster than any known asteroid in the solar system and even break apart.

    That stupendous rate of angular acceleration compares with the rate of global warming. We’re all gonna fry about the time that sucker is spinning like a top.

    Posted by ErnieG on 2007 03 08 at 12:12 PM • permalink

  3. “The Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack effect is believed to alter the way small bodies in the Solar System rotate,” said Stephen Lowry, lead-author of one of the two companion papers in which this work is reported.

    Yeah well, the Ron Jeremy effect is well known to alter the way small bodies in the Solar System rotate as well but I don’t seem him getting written up in no stinking science journal.

    Posted by joe bagadonuts on 2007 03 08 at 12:12 PM • permalink

  4. I have found interesting weather effects on every solar system body - the most obvious being Jupiter growing a second Great Red Spot. All written up in science journals.
    And yet the IPCC says the Sun has no effect on Earth warming.
    The latest Policy paper claims the Sun is cooling down.

    Posted by papertiger on 2007 03 08 at 01:20 PM • permalink

  5. This is from MIT in 2002:

    Pluto and Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, are presently about the same distance from the sun, and each has a predominantly nitrogen atmosphere (with a surface pressure 100,000 times less than that on Earth), so one might expect similar processes to be occurring on these two bodies.


    A 1997 occultation of a star by Triton revealed that its surface had warmed since the Voyager spacecraft first explored it in 1989. On Triton, “Voyager saw dark material rising up as much as 12 km above the surface, indicating some kind of eruptive activity,” Elliot said. “There could be more massive activity on Pluto, since the changes observed in Pluto’s atmosphere are much more severe. The change observed on Triton was subtle. Pluto’s changes are not subtle.”

    Probably old news for you folks.

    Posted by papertiger on 2007 03 08 at 01:36 PM • permalink

  6. Here is a picture of Jupiter’s brand new red spot.
    His name is Junior.

    Posted by papertiger on 2007 03 08 at 01:59 PM • permalink

  7. I have found interesting weather effects on every solar system body - the most obvious being Jupiter growing a second Great Red Spot.

    I blame Bush.

    Posted by Merlin on 2007 03 08 at 02:26 PM • permalink

  8. #1 RebeccaH (my DILs name BTW)

    Slum, you say?  Yair, well like where else in the MW do they have SUVs and Nucular power plants?

    Posted by Jack from Montreal on 2007 03 08 at 02:44 PM • permalink

  9. Excellent linkage on that introductory line, Tim. :)

    Posted by PW on 2007 03 08 at 02:54 PM • permalink

  10. Inspired by the nearby baseball thread, I feel that YORP could also be a statistical measure of global warming religionists’s effectiveness, namely Yapping Over Replacement Preacher.

    Posted by PW on 2007 03 08 at 03:36 PM • permalink

  11. Anyone who had a solar radiometer as a kid could have predicted that.  Sheesh.

    Posted by Hucbald on 2007 03 08 at 03:58 PM • permalink

  12. Hey I know that guy Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack… He’s from Chicago. In fact, he owes me $100 if the Cubbies don’t win one of the next two World Series. Even bright people have blind spots.

    Posted by brett_l on 2007 03 08 at 04:07 PM • permalink

  13. Hey, Jupiter, you really need to put something on that. It’s lookin’ bad.

    Posted by ErnieG on 2007 03 08 at 04:42 PM • permalink

  14. At last an explanation for why days are getting shorter.
    Who woulda thunk that the Sun could affect things way out here in the Solar System?
    That is sooooo cool.

    Posted by Skeeter on 2007 03 08 at 04:58 PM • permalink

  15. Michael Moore and Al Gore are also responsible for the so-called ‘Moore-Gore effect’, whereby their combined, expanding mass is warping the solar system’s gravitational field and distorting asteroid orbits.  Some have predicted that if Gore and Moore approach each other within a certain critical distance, an event horizon will form, trapping even light itself.

    Posted by cuckoo on 2007 03 08 at 06:13 PM • permalink

  16. I thought the Gore Effect was in response to his blah-ing on about Gluteal Worming.  Soon as he shuts the fuck up, the Gore Effect will start diminishing…

    Posted by anthony_r on 2007 03 08 at 06:30 PM • permalink

  17. #12 - I wonder if this is the same Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack that I knew from Mrs. Duggan’s third grade class. He used to get the piss beat out of him everyday at lunch…

    Posted by Daddy Binx on 2007 03 08 at 07:27 PM • permalink

  18. #15
    Moore-n-Gore being on the same continent is unbalancing the Earth, with effects felt as far away as Uranus; the Klingons had to alter their Galactic maps to cater for the disturbance in the Solar System’s gravitational field.

    Posted by egg_ on 2007 03 08 at 11:27 PM • permalink

  19. I find some localised warming stops my ‘asteroids from swelling up, do I get a nobel prize?

    Posted by Habib on 2007 03 09 at 02:54 AM • permalink

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