"Disagreeing has never been so much fun!"
Reinstate Pluto as a planet!
Pluto is not a "planet". Get over it
In 2006, the IAU demoted Pluto from a planet to a "dwarf planet". Should its planetary status be reinstated?
Neutral Fans: (0)
Side A Comment
markei - 3/6/09 @ 11:35 AM:
My wife says that if they are going to re-classify things, there should be a "grandfather clause" for Pluto.
Save Planet Pluto t-shirts will be available soon.
Save Planet Pluto t-shirts will be available soon.
Side A Comment
laurele - 2/11/09 @ 7:44 PM:
The need for an object to "clear its orbit" was concocted by a tiny group within the IAU who already had an agenda of demoting Pluto. The demotion of Pluto was done by four percent of the IAU, most of whom are not planetary scientists, and was immediately opposed by a petition of an equal number of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. The IAU planet definition makes no sense because it says a dwarf planet is not a planet at all. That's like saying a grizzly bear is not a bear! Also, the definition classifies objects solely by where they are while ignoring what they are. If Earth were in Pluto's orbit, according to the IAU definition, it would not be a planet either.
An alternate planet definition proposed by many astronomers is simply that a planet is any non-self-luminous spheroidal body orbiting a star, with the spheroidal, or roundness criteria being the key. This gives our solar system 13 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. So AugTheCnqror, you can, like I do, teach your little nephew that Pluto is in fact still a planet.
An alternate planet definition proposed by many astronomers is simply that a planet is any non-self-luminous spheroidal body orbiting a star, with the spheroidal, or roundness criteria being the key. This gives our solar system 13 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. So AugTheCnqror, you can, like I do, teach your little nephew that Pluto is in fact still a planet.
Side A Comment
AugTheCnqror - 2/9/09 @ 3:32 PM:
makes me feel old when i tell my little nephew, "When i was your age Pluto was a planet!"
Side A Comment
mama kaz - 2/2/09 @ 8:43 PM:
I love Pluto and was shocked to learn that a planet can be discredited. What's next?
Side B Comment
ioneill - 1/18/09 @ 11:51 PM:
Although sad, Pluto is technically too small to "clear its own orbit". These new rules had to be drawn up to cater for the growing number of small rocky bodies being discovered (one bigger than Pluto!). Pluto will always be known with fondness and it hasn't been kicked out of the Solar System, it's simply caught in the middle of a reclassification of what constitutes a planet...
