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It's official! -- The Solar System now has 8 planets
Not really going to change the course of human events, but it's still pretty cool news!
From Yahoo!
Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.
After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn't — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.
Although astronomers applauded after the vote, Jocelyn Bell Burnell — a specialist in neutron stars from Northern Ireland who oversaw the proceedings — urged those who might be "quite disappointed" to look on the bright side.
"It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called 'planet' under which the dwarf planets exist," she said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella.
"Many more Plutos wait to be discovered," added Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The decision by the prestigious international group spells out the basic tests that celestial objects will have to meet before they can be considered for admission to the elite cosmic club.
For now, membership will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."
Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.
Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.
Experts said there could be dozens of dwarf planets catalogued across the solar system in the next few years.
NASA said Thursday that Pluto's demotion would not affect its US$700 million New Horizons spacecraft mission, which earlier this year began a 9 1/2-year journey to the oddball object to unearth more of its secrets.
"We will continue pursuing exploration of the most scientifically interesting objects in the solar system, regardless of how they are categorized," Paul Hertz, chief scientist for the science mission directorate, said in a statement.
The decision on Pluto at a conference of 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries was a dramatic shift from just a week ago, when the group's leaders floated a proposal that would have reaffirmed Pluto's planetary status and made planets of its largest moon and two other objects.
That plan proved highly unpopular, splitting astronomers into factions and triggering days of sometimes combative debate that led to Pluto's undoing. In the end, only about 300 astronomers cast ballots.
Now, two of the objects that at one point were cruising toward possible full-fledged planethood will join Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto whose discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, has nicknamed Xena.
Charon, the largest of Pluto's three moons, is no longer under consideration for any special designation.
Brown, who watched the proceedings from Cal Tech, took Thursday's vote in stride — even though his discovery won't be christened a planet.
"UB313 is the largest dwarf planet. That's kind of cool," he said.Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us. - Matthew Mcconaughey - Interstellar
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08-24-2006, 02:31 PM #2j7wild Guest
I don't get it!
How is Pluto not a planet all of a sudden?
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Great! Pluto is not really a dog. Instead he becomes one of the [not seven] but dozens of dwarfs (dwarves?)
"Heart and humour and humility will lighten your heavy load"
Joni Mitchell
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Well basically there is too much crap floating around far off that circles the sun. If you go far enough you will still find objects that are circling the sun, be they rocks or other things. The heliopause is pretty far off so if we were to classify every orbiting object as a planet we'd have hundreds.
Pluto failed the requirement of sufficient mass to have a clear orbit.
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yep, this was voted here, in Prague...and every single Czech is makin fun of it, coz its so stupid and pathetic. Good score scientists, ha ha ha ha ha!!
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Because the definition of a planet was changed and Pluto's orbit crosses with Neptune's orbit and planets now have to have a defined, independent orbit.
Strange, eh?
I had to edit a story on this for a noon newscast. The entire newsroom was like "Pluto is now a 'Pluton' planet?!"
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08-24-2006, 08:27 PM #7
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Neptune is on the same plane as the other planets.
The orbit thing sounds like the deciding factor, but other minor points may have helped too. For example, Pluto does not rotate around its own center of gravity (like earth) -- the center of gravity is actually between Pluto and its "moon"
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I don't get it too and look what I found. I always thought that LV-426 is a planet, discoverd by the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo but it isn't!!
From Wikipedia:
LV-426, also known as Acheron and home to a small population of xenomorphs (stranded from a crash-landing), is the name of the fictitious moon (frequently but erroneously referred to as a planet) where the Alien was first encountered by humans in the movie Alien (1979) of the Alien Series. It bears a strong resemblance to Saturn's moon, Titan. Some materials related to the franchise refer to it as "LB-426"; fans are not in agreement over which name is correct, as it's somewhat hard to hear in the film, but "LV" is the more commonly used of the two.
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A dwarf planet, they call it.
Then again, a week ago we had 12 planets in our Solar System.
Actually Pluto being demoted is not a big deal in the history of the universe. It's only been a planet for 76 years (interesting number considering that's how long Halley's Comet takes to orbit the Sun). Takes even longer for the little bugger to circle around its orbit.
We're having trouble adjusting it because we happen to live in the age where information/misinformation travels faster and gets repeated more than any other time in mankind's history. The concept that Pluto being the 9th planet is rooted in our mindset because we've been educated that way since we're kids. Old habits die hard. (Bad analogy, but) it's like changing a password one's been using for years. Takes a while to adjust, but the more you use the new password, or the more you make mistakes of typing the old one, the sooner you will adjust to it.
So if nothing's changed from now on for another say 100 years, people 3 or 4 generations later will get used to the fact that Pluto's a dwarf planet.
"The idea was to be a symbol. editman could be anybody, that was the point."
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08-25-2006, 09:16 AM #12
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Thank god i didn't listen in school What's Pluto?? a dog in Walt Disney??
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08-25-2006, 10:55 AM #13
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I remember learning the order of the planets this way:
My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.
My - Mercury
Very- Venus
Educated - Earth
Mother - Mars
Just - Jupiter
Served - Saturn
Us - Uranus
Nine - Neptune
Pizzas - Pluto
(There was a little jingle that went with that, but that is hard to type, and acutally, for the jingle, the "P" stood for "pizzapies", but I stick with "pizzas" unless I am singing it, which I rarely do.)
And then I learned that was the wrong order... temporarily, since Pluto's orbit actually brought it inside of Neptune's orbit for a short period, but that order was still considered correct since that was the order most of the time (Pluto is now back to being farther out than Neptune).
Now I guess we have to cut out the pizzas and determine something that mother served us that begins with an "N". Any suggestions?
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Let's see N...
Noodles
Neopolitan Ice Cream
Nothing (that mean old woman!)
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Debate on Pluto not yet settled
All this bickering over pluto is entertaining to say the least...
From livescience.com managing editor Robert Roy Britt
(site link)
More than 300 astronomers have signed a petition denounced the IAU’s new planet definition that demotes Pluto. The petition states simply:
“We, as planetary scientists and astronomers, do not agree with the IAU’s definition of a planet, nor will we use it. A better definition is needed”
The petition, which began circulating right after last week’s vote, is one more sign that this whole debate is far from over. In another move today, the world’s largest group of planetary scientists issued a statement suggesting the definition would get worked over between now and the next IAU meeting in 2009.
While it might have seemed to the public and the press that Pluto’s demotion was a done deal (and I’m on record as saying the defintion should not be altered beyond minor tweaks to clarify) I would not bet against Pluto’s possible resurgence. Just as science promises to march forward, so too will all this bickering and posturing. And why not? It’s great fun, some of the best scientific theater of our generation.
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