Thursday, February 28, 2008

Acamademic Application


In today's installment of Academic Application, I will be putting my years of study of the Spanish language to use, attempting to translate a story from Telemundo's website for all you gringos.

TOKIO (AFP) - Científicos japoneses se declararon el jueves convencidos de que existe un noveno planeta, hasta ahora desconocido, que gravita en los confines de nuestro sistema solar, dos años después de que la comunidad científica excluyera de esa categoría.

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese scientists announced Thursday that they are convinced that a new planet exists, which they did not know until now, and that lies in the confines of our solar system, two years after the scientific community ignored that topic.
Okay, let's see the English version of that article and see how close I got.
TOKYO (AFP) — Scientists at a Japanese university said Thursday they believed another planet up to two-thirds the size of the Earth was orbiting in the far reaches of the solar system.

The researchers at Kobe University in western Japan said calculations using computer simulations led them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the mysterious "Planet X" was found.

"Because of the very cold temperature, its surface would be covered with ice, icy ammonia and methane," Kobe University professor Tadashi Mukai, the lead researcher, told AFP.

The study by Mukai and researcher Patryk Lykawka will be published in the April issue of the US-based Astronomical Journal.

"The possibility is high that a yet unknown, planet-class celestial body, measuring 30 percent to 70 percent of the Earth's mass, exists in the outer edges of the solar system," said a summary of the research released by Kobe University.

"If research is conducted on a wide scale, the planet is likely to be discovered in less than 10 years," it said.

Planet X -- so called by scientists as it is yet unfound -- would have an oblong elliptical solar orbit and circle the sun every thousand years, the team said, estimating its radius was 15 to 26 billion kilometres.

The study comes two years after school textbooks had to be rewritten when Pluto was booted out of the list of planets.

Oh...two years after Pluto was excluded. I got three out of four clauses right...not too bad.

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