Pluto: Planet or not?

[The Spartan (Returns)]

well Peter Griffin had his own gravatational pull. do you consider him a planet i think so.

[Sir Moody]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4795755.stm

"plutons"

[Hepcat]

well Peter Griffin had his own gravatational pull. do you consider him a planet i think so.

Well I don't think that is quite the issue.

After discussing it with my science teacher he thinks that it is just an attempt of scientists who can't make any real discoveries to get their names in the text books. Or the type of scientists who feel the need to question everything, who go to the hair dressers and say "Now is that REALLY a har cut?".

Pluto has always been a planet and there is no decent reason why we should change it now.

Having the classes of planets is a much better idea.

[JFC]

Surely we should be asking ourselves....

We need a 'nails' Solarsystem, not a pansy one. When and indeed it might happen, we meet a new civilisation, we can say.. eh?! call this a planet? We've got a couple of these at home. We call them Garages... somewhere to park your car. Now hand over your technology and natural resources or the women and kids with tentacles get it.

[English assassin]

This is where I was coming from, but I was worried the aliens would say "pah, only 8 planets, we've got 67, now, we call this a laser gun..."

Wnat we need is about 40 planets the size of Pluto, all with anti-matter missiles on, that would really show aliens that the human race is not one to mess with.

[Ja'chyra]

This is where I was coming from, but I was worried the aliens would say "pah, only 8 planets, we've got 67, now, we call this a laser gun..."

Wnat we need is about 40 planets the size of Pluto, all with anti-matter missiles on, that would really show aliens that the human race is not one to mess with.

Maybe then we would stop killing each other .........nah that's just ridiculous

[English assassin]

Damn, beaten to it with a quote before I could edit, anyway, I just wanted to add that its a stroke of genius to call these new planets Plutons. No one would dare invade a solar system that is packed with Plutons would they? Its one bad ass name.

Gentlemen, I declare that the War on Space-Aliens is won.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Gentlemen, I declare that the War on Space-Aliens is won.

anyway... i was watching the news and this guy said 'it's just gonna get people confused' but i think that calling things which aren't quite a planet a 'pluton' is quite cool... especially since we've got one in our solar system and we've won the war against aliens (apparently)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Its not really a planet, it has a dodgy orbit.

[Avicenna]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4798205.stm

Gentlemen, the rocks now have an equal number to the large and small planets!

[Banquo's Ghost]

Its not really a planet, it has a dodgy orbit.

That's very plutonist.

Just because a rock is a bit eccentric doesn't mean it's dodgy. We now say orbitally challenged.

[English assassin]

"Differently orbited", please. The post above is orbitist and I demand its removal.

[Lemur]

LOL, EA. That was a genuine out-loud laugh. Thanks!

[The Stranger]

whahahahahah Banquo :P that really made me laugh

[ZombieFriedNuts]

They are going to call Pluto a Pluton and all the others that are about the same size which is about three

[Cowhead418]

Pluto is a small, worthless rock that for some reason is called a planet. The discussion over whether there should be 12 planets is ridiculous and hilarious at the same time.

[JFC]

I'm not laughing. I actually feel sorry for the thing. Next we'll be declasifying people with dwarfism to Plutons. Shame.

[Devastatin Dave]

It is, size doesn't matter, atleast that's what many dissappointed women I've known in the past would say to me!!!

[BDC]

They are going to call Pluto a Pluton and all the others that are about the same size which is about three

Plus about another 100 that haven't been spotted or properly identified yet. Maybe more.

[Hepcat]

None of the planets have a perfectly round orbit, the fact that plutos is at a different angle to the other ones doesn't matter, I say it is a planet, it will be hard to define the difference between planet and pluton unless there is an exact minimum radius or volume or something that it must be below.

[Banquo's Ghost]

It's official and the voting is in.

Pluto no longer a planet.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Pluto loses status as a planet
Artist's impression of Pluto, BBC
Pluto's status has been contested for many years
Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly.

Astronomers rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club.

Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh.

The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.

The decision was made at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague. The astronomers voted by raising their yellow ballot papers for a count.

"The eight planets are Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune," said the IAU resolution, which was passed following a week of stormy debate.


PLUTO - A 'DEMOTED PLANET'

The IAU's proposal to raise the number of planets in the Solar System to 12, adding the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's "moon" Charon and the distant object known as 2003 UB313, met with opposition.

Robin Catchpole, of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, told the BBC News website: "My own personal opinion was to leave things as they were; I met Clyde Tombaugh and thought how nice it was to shake hands with someone who had discovered a planet.

"But since the IAU brought out the proposal for new planets I had been against it - it was going to be very confusing. The best of the alternatives was to leave the major planets as they are and then demote Pluto. So I think this is a far superior situation."

Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society in California commented: "The classification doesn't matter. Pluto - and all Solar System objects - are mysterious and exciting new worlds that need to be explored and better understood."

Pluto's status has been contested for many years as it is further away and considerably smaller than the eight other planets in our Solar System.

Since the early 1990s, astronomers have found several other objects of comparable size to Pluto in an outer region of the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt.

Some astronomers have long argued that Pluto belongs with this population of small, icy "dwarf planets", not with the objects we call planets.

Allowances were once made for Pluto on account of its size. At just 2,360km (1,467 miles) across, Pluto is significantly smaller than the other planets. But until recently, it was still the biggest known object in the Kuiper Belt.

That changed with the discovery of 2003 UB313 by Professor Mike Brown and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). After being measured with the Hubble Space Telescope, it was shown to be some 3,000km (1,864 miles) in diameter, making it larger than the ninth planet.

Named after the god of the underworld in Roman mythology, it orbits the Sun at an average distance of 5.9 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) taking 247.9 Earth years to complete a single circuit of the Sun.

An unmanned US spacecraft, New Horizons, is due to fly by Pluto and the Kuiper Belt in 2015.

As far as I understand it, the plutons have been sent packing too. Not least because the geologists complained they have all the plutons.

So, there are only eight planets. Pluto should have hired GW's electoral lawyers.

[Strike For The South]

...Im starting a petition

[Hepcat]

I don't see why they believe that there is anything wrong with having too many planets. Just because there is more doesn't mean they can't be classed as planets, I am sure that there are solar systems out there with many more planets than our solar system. Somehow I don't see how the primary school children are going to suddenly change after being taught that pluto was the smallest planet in the solar system.

[BDC]

The IAU messed up. The head of something at NASA said that according to their new rules the Earth and Jupiter and others aren't planets either. Have their own asteroids that follow them about, therefore haven't cleared their local space. Behold Jupiter, the new dwarf planet. Hahah.

[English assassin]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5283956.stm

It seems it may not be all over for Pluto.

The lead scientist on Nasa's robotic mission to Pluto has lambasted the ruling, calling it "embarrassing".

...well he would wouldn't he....

This is an absolutely great debate, because we get to watch astronomers bitch slap each other and, at the end of the day, its not as if it matters in the slightest.


(Anyway, there can be no debate, Patrick Moore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore says Pluto is not a planet and for me that has settled the issue. Slightly OT, I read in Wikipedia that Sir Patrick is co-authoring a book on the origins of the Universe with Queen guitarist Brian May. Can this be true? If so this will be a must have book surely. I bet there won't be any of that goobledegook Stephen Hawking puts in his books with Patrick and Brian. Amend your Amazon wish lists now, whimsy fans.)

[DukeofSerbia]

International Astronomical Union


IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes

The Final IAU Resolution on the definition of "planet" ready for voting

The IAU draft definition of "planet" and "plutons"

[macsen rufus]

What really matters is that similar things are classified in a similar way. I'm sure the confused schoolkids will not be scarred for life, it's the rickety old fuddy-duddies that will not be able to cope. I went through primary school learning £Sd til it suddenly turned into £ and p. IIRC it was granny who couldn't hack decimalisation, not me

There is no room in science for "what people are used too". Might as well still have a geo-centric model if that was acceptable.

And as for the astrological implications, well, without Pluto in my natal chart I wouldn't be half so brooding and sinister

That's just my "orbitally challenged" tupenn'orth....

[AmbrosiusAurelianus]

I'll always think of Pluto as a planet. Why don't they just call this new planet Mickey?