Pluto No Longer A Planet But Is Called A "dwarf" Planet - new definition
red_dragon_here
Aug 24 2006, 06:54 PM
It seems that astronomers have voted to remove Pluto off the list of planets. The textbooks have to be rewritten everywhere in the world. Children need to learn one planet less.
Now what are the astrologers going to tell. Are they going to tell that they knew this was going to happen ? At least I think people can stop believing astrologers who make things up for their own profit.
Well if there was a reason for it then ok. But what has changed. Pluto is still there isnt it and if it isnt a planet then what is it. Maybe because its that far away they just want to ignor it so they never have to think of studying it. Hell i dont know but there must be some scientific reason for it.
I think there was always a debate on whether Pluto was a planet or a huge meteor. I guess they finally decided? Though, this is the first time hearing about them making a decision to switch. I wonder if this is accurate in any way.
The decision establishes three main categories of objects in our solar system.
* Planets: The eight worlds from Mercury to Neptune. * Dwarf Planets: Pluto and any other round object that "has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and is not a satellite." * Small Solar System Bodies: All other objects orbiting the Sun.
These definition seems to be good and clear. Every planet should have their neighbourhood cleared, this means, only big objects would qualify as planets, which is good, because whenever we think about planet, we think about life and in a small planet like Pluto, which is dead Rock, life cant sustain.
This is really interesting and will change the universe as we know it. They say they have found hundreds of dwarf planets and are now discussing on selling the names of the planets to whoever wants to buy it. I think that'd be really cool. The money would go to education/science industry. I would buy one but they'd be expensive. Think about it though, they'll be selling dwarf planets on Ebay or atleast the name of them.
I personally can't see how after all these years, a couple of astronomers have the power to announce pluto not a planet.
I agree with a couple of the above posts, pluto in my opinion still is a planet. It's just so far away that scientists didn't want to bother with it and declared it as not a planet.
It really is a shame that the children have to learn from changing text books and some people thinking that pluto is a planet and others not. I don't know why they didn't just keep it marked down as a planet. It certainly would have made life a lot easier and saved the bother of remembering which planet's been lost.
I guess, at the end of the day, that it's up to the scientists to decide which planets belong in the solar system though.
Just found out about this in the paper, all i have to say is that im very (fill in the blank) about this happen. Just because it's not doing what these "scientists" say it supposed to do doesn't give them the right to destroy 76 years of scientific history. They should have just left it alone until after the sattelite that was going to observe it got there.
Here's the worse part now all the books are wrong because of this descision that was made and to make it even more worse the kids in the elementary school will get confused as well since the tell will be telling them one thing while the book will tell them the other.
That of course will last 7 years until the books get updated from what i read a few weeks ago.
Regaurdless what our "intelliegent" scientists say pluto, though distant it is, I still consider it a a major planet in our solar system.
and to make everyone a bit more stupider wikipedia made the changes.
That is a little bit dispointing, but I don't think it will be followed up well. Practically every one the Earth (except scientists) know it as Pluto, the nine planet fro the Sun and that's what everyone taught their kids. They would have to majorly change all the textbooks and I can't see anyone recognizing it as a "dwarf planet" until many years. What kind of name is "dwarf planet" anyways?
As I said in this other thread here, I don't understand why scientists need to mess around bothering about whether pluto is a planet or whether it isn't.
It's quite a long way away, that it's hard to determine whether it's a planet or not as even the modern technology isn't really good enough to be able to measure the size etc. For simplicity sake, I feel planets shouldn't be able to be changed just by a couple of astronomers. There should have been more discussion on the topic rather than just hearing it's been changed.
Lots of children are now having to be retaught the planets and/or told that pluto no longer exists. However, I guess this may be for the best, as it's ensuring that children are being educated and taught the most correct information.
Ah well, I guess Pluto is still something out there in space that we're aware of, even if it's no longer classed as a planet.
basically if a celestrial object that is being considered as a planet does not have a regular orbit that goes in a circle around the our sun or in another system is considered a swarf planet here is a link on some more info about a dwarf planet.
Yes! Pluto is not a planet anymore since 2006. It is one of the dwarf planets together with Ceres and Eris. Pluto is also a part of the Kuiper Belt Region which is really far away from the sun. There were also some claims that there are still even bigger planets behind pluto..
According to some sources...
QUOTE
The 2006 definition of "planet" by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) states that in the solar system a planet is a celestial body that:
* is in orbit around the Sun, * has sufficient mass so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and * has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit.
A non-satellite body fulfilling only the first two of these criteria is classified as a "dwarf planet", whilst a non-satellite body fulfilling only the first criterion is termed a "small solar system body" (SSSB). The definition was a controversial one, and has drawn both support and criticism from different astronomers.
Why is Pluto not a planet any more? Some might say it's a dwarf planet. So it should be treated like the rest of the other eight planets. So what if it's smaller than the others it's still there. Ok what if there were nine people including you and you were the smallest. I'm sure you wouldn't want to be left out just because you were small. Most people say the reason why pluto was taken out of the solar system was because they found two new plantes. So they said "what are just going to keep adding more planets or what?" so they toke pluto off. Now thats not fair to pluto.
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