Pluto != Planet

Plutowned

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2006/08/24/pluto935.html

Pluto Is No Longer a Planet, Astronomers Say

By William J. Kole
Associated Press
Thursday, August 24, 2006; 9:46 AM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) – 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.

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.

It was unclear how Pluto’s demotion might affect the mission of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which earlier this year began a 961/27-year journey to the oddball object to unearth more of its secrets.

The decision 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.

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.

Glad we spent all the funds & resources on this :smash2:

lol pluto got demoted

I saw this on the news this morning.

I filed it under “Who gives a shit”

Why are these astronomers so concerned with this?

Cause planets are a big deal to astronomers, esp when they’re always trying to find more planets.

yeah, it doesnt change anything…its still going to be there, just as a swarf planet :lol:

haha demoted!

I thought this was old news, maybe they were just questioning the fact and now they proved it?

Yes, this has been an ongoing research project for a fwe years. Prior to that, it had been under debate & study for quite a while.

Now, they have “officialy” quantified it.

To the cost of how many millions of dollars…?

I want to see vids of the astronomers fighting over it!

for the same reasons New Yorkers fight with Jersey people over “who owns the statue of Liberty”. It’s just a battle of bigger dicks.

Who cares how much money they spent on research. Any new discovery about our surroundings in our solar system is a good discovery.

word…and its a big deal to astronomers because thats the shit they are into…and they could prolly careless if Chevy brings back the Camaro or not

why is that a good discovery?

I care how much money was spent on this. You should too, Mr. Kyoto aka Mr. Educate the Masses about nutrition aka Mr. Why Does America have so many problems. :stuck_out_tongue:

and its not even just about what they are in to, its about advancing technology and helping to understand further how we got here and what everything means.

This doesnt change any of that… it’s a RECLASSIFICATION.

It’s not like they just verified the existence of Dark Matter…

Yeah I had no idea about this until after I worked this morning. I was wondering why a guy came up to me this morning when I was Pluto and said, “Even though you’re not a planet anymore, at least YOU’RE still around”

I was quite confused. Now I know :slight_smile:

:lol: nice

reclassifying something scientists thought was a planet for many years doesnt mean we are understanding more and more about whats around us?

anyway, i wouldnt have the sig that i have if i wasnt incredibly interested in astronomy. so to me, its kind of a big deal…and obviously im not the only one :stuck_out_tongue:

Did they actually gain more understanding of anything or just change their mind as to what its label to be? It’s kind of like debating whether or not you can call an eclipse built after Diamond Star Motors dissolved in 1993 a DSM.

ahh… see, I dont have sig’s or av’s enabled on forums. :shrug:

Discovery: red shift; quarks; spin; anti-proton

Discovry != Reclassification

See what I’m saying?

Better classification of space objects is progress… it’s not a huge discovery, but it’s progress none-the-less. It’s the same reason we have genus’ for animals… it’s more efficient for biologists to know WHAT type of frog as opposed to just knowing it’s a frog.

Meh, I guess it’s cool. Actual scientific and technological progress has always been a side effect of astronomy, space exploration, etc. Short term anyways. Benefits from astronomical discoveries directly seem to take hundreds of years.

Well, in my incredibly un-thought-out and probably rather ignorant opinion anyways. :smiley: