As if it is not embarrassing enough to be the only planet in the solar system sharing a name with a Disney character, poor Pluto has detractors talking trash and saying he is not even a real planet.
According to media reports, attempts were made this week to demote poor Pluto from planet to "dwarf planet." Are we going to let some astronomers determine the fate of Pluto? I think not.
To paraphrase Public Enemy, "We must fight the power" (of the International Astronomical Union).
Pluto is the Rodney Dangerfield of the solar system, the object in space that just gets no respect. Perhaps Pluto wishes he had not been spotted in 1930 by American astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh, at Lowell University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Tombaugh found the planet during a search sparked by Percival Lowell, saying he thought there was a planet in that area.
There is not as much information known about Pluto compared to other planets. For a while after the discovery, Pluto was probably living the high life, enjoying being the newest planet on the block and the attention and respect that garnered, not to mention getting invited to the best darn parties in the galaxy.
Not now; that all came to an end in the latter part of the 20th century when people started to say Pluto wasn’t big enough to be a real planet. Part of the problem is that Pluto is not as large as originally thought. What was gradually discovered, though, is that Pluto had a moon, Charon. This sparked some confusion.
The book Mysteries of Mind Space & Time explains the problem: “So Pluto is not the unbelievably dense world that astronomers were puzzling over in the 1960s. It is just a small frozen snowball of a planet – or rather, a double planet.”
Article comments
1 - Scott Butki
Keep hope alive.
BBC quotes experts questioning the validity of the vote
2 - PoizonMyst
Its not a real planet for many reasons, bar just it's size. And all the text books, encyclopedias, and science material need to be rewritten anyway due to the existence of 2003 UB313 (Xena) - whether we decided to include it as a planet or not.
Pluto will continue to be studied (theres a spacecraft on its way to Pluto right now), as will many other objects in the solar system (such as the newly upgraded Ceres).
Perhaps, rather than thinking of Pluto as being demoted - and being the last and smallest planet discovered - we should put a positive spin on the situation by thinking of it as the first of its kind - the prototype for a new category of objects.
3 - chancelucky
Okay, I'll join, of course only if you note that I posted mine first :}.
One of the issues, is that whatever makes Pluto a planet, 2203ub313 is larger and I think sweeps its own orbit (they may not be sure yet) and also it's further out than Pluto. So Pluto then ceases to be the outermost planet anyway.
The whole Charon question is also really interesting. If they orbit one another, one's got to be a moon or can you have two planets locked together? Kind of like the solar system's version of gay marriage.
4 - Victor Plenty
Star systems are known to exist in doubles and even triples, which is one reason some have considered dubbing Pluto and Charon a double planet system.
The main reason for excluding Pluto from the planet category is simple: no logical definition can include Pluto without also including at least a dozen other currently known objects as planets. It's quite likely improved telescopes could raise this number into the hundreds. Eventually, deep space missions might even detect thousands of other objects roughly comparable to Pluto in size and orbit.
I haven't seen any astronomers suggest UB313 has cleared its orbit and would qualify as a planet under the new definition. However, some suggest there might be another very large planet, maybe even one as big as Jupiter, out beyond the Kuiper belt where we don't yet have the ability to see very well. Any object that large will almost certainly qualify as a planet by anyone's standards.
So that's another complication to add into the mix.
5 - Scott Butki
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
6 - Scott Butki
Ok, here's a sharp piece which manages to do a pretty good job of analyzing both the problems of pluto and the problems of Tom Cruise.
Excerpt:
"Pluto was also told to clear its desk because it's much smaller than its cohorts, and has been relegated to "dwarf planet." Tom Cruise is only 5 feet 7 inches tall, and is often referred to by Hollywood insiders as "dwarf box office draw."
Astrology.com says Pluto "rules destruction, death, obsession, kidnapping, coercion, viruses and waste." Tom Cruise royally kicked the butt of all those things in Mission: Impossible I through III."
7 - CallmeMaddy
I don't know. I heard that according to the official defintion of planet, Pluto did not qualifly. And if we were to change that defintion many other things in space would have to be promoted to planet, including Earth's moon.
Apparently, there would be 53 planets. I'm sorry, but I hated memorizing the solar system in grade school. There was only nine back then. Now, if there was 53, I would possibly die of boredom and fail science for sure. Lucky kids only need to learn eight now.
Besides, we will probably still learn about pluto in school. In 8th grade, we always learned about some moon on Jupitar. (Which, I don't remember the name of, because I was probably asleep. I hate science. Let's go back to history. History, I can do.)
CallmeMaddy
8 - Scott Butki
Well, we can change the definition of human in such a way that I no longer qualify but that doesn't make it right.
9 - Hoobert
The only reason for trying to keep the Pluto classified as planet is prestige - it was the only "planet" discovered by an American. So indeed, "We must fight the power" that is American cultural aggression and keep Pluto demoted.