n a solar system of heavenly bodies, scientists have discovered an ugly duckling -- an oblong-shaped rock in the vicinity of Pluto that may one day light up Earth's sky as a giant comet. The rock, known as 2003 EL61, is one of the strangest objects in the solar system. It is shaped like an American football and completely rotates every four hours. "Out in space there is this crazy thing spinning end to end that is as big as Pluto," said Mike Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology who discovered the object two years ago. Brown and colleagues at Caltech believe it got its odd shape after a collision with another object about 4.5 billion years ago that sent chunks of the rock scattering, creating two moons and a lot of space debris. "When we tried to find out what it was made of we found that it was mostly rock. Nothing else out there is made out of rock. Everything else out there is made out of ice," Brown said in a telephone interview. "We thought maybe a long time ago something ran into it and knocked off all of the ice, and hit it so hard it got it spinning -- and the spinning is what made it shaped like a football," Brown said. For the full article Click Here .

"God doesn't play dice with the universe" - So now he plays football, already?

And American football too. Disgusting. <g>

Could be Ozzie rules. AFL they call it these days. Wonder where the goalposts are?