Astronomers say Pluto is not a planet

August 24, 2006

 

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - 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 9 1/2-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 in Pasadena has nicknamed Xena.

 

Charon, the largest of Pluto's three moons, is no longer under consideration for any special designation.

I'm gutted.

 

My favourite planet...gone.

didnt they say a couple of years ago that they discovered a 10th planet :confused:

 

i remember they give it a name and everything, it was on the first pages of the paper and everything...

 

 

i googled "10th planet" and it found a bunch of articles

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/29jul_planetx.htm

Yeah that's 2003 UB313. If they passed the redefinition of planet proposed last week, it, along with Ceres and Charon, would have been added to the solar system. Instead, we end up with 8 planets and not 12. hmm

If Gustav Holst was still alive he would be very happy.

Pluto loses status as a planet...

 

...except in america where Pluto or the other planets doesn't exist.

 

Pluto loses status as a planet

Astronomers have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

 

About 2,500 scientists meeting in Prague have adopted historic new guidelines that see the small, distant world demoted to a secondary category.

 

The researchers said Pluto failed to dominate its orbit around the Sun in the same way as the other planets.

 

The International Astronomical Union's (IAU) decision means textbooks will now have to describe a Solar System with just eight major planetary bodies.

 

Pluto, which was discovered in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh, will be referred to as a "dwarf planet".

 

There is a recognition that the demotion is likely to upset the public, who have become accustomed to a particular view of the Solar System.

 

Teary-eyed

 

"I have a slight tear in my eye today, yes; but at the end of the day we have to describe the Solar System as it really is, not as we would like it to be," said Professor Iwan Williams, chair of the IAU panel that has been working over recent months to define the term "planet".

 

The need for a strict definition was deemed necessary after new telescope technologies began to reveal far-off objects that rivalled Pluto in size.

 

Without a new nomenclature, these discoveries raised the prospect that textbooks could soon be talking about 50 or more planets in the Solar System.

 

Amid dramatic scenes in the Czech capital which saw astronomers waving yellow ballot papers in the air, the IAU voted to block this possibility - and in the process took the historic decision to relegate Pluto.

 

The scientists agreed that for a celestial body to qualify as a planet:

 

* it must be in orbit around the Sun

* it must be large enough that it takes on a nearly round shape

* it has cleared its orbit of other objects

 

Pluto was automatically disqualified because its highly elliptical orbit overlaps with that of Neptune. It will now join a new category of dwarf planets.

 

Icy reaches

 

Pluto's status has been contested for many years. It is further away and considerably smaller than the eight other "traditional" planets in our Solar System. At just 2,360km (1,467 miles) across, Pluto is smaller even than some moons in the Solar System.

 

"PLUTO - A 'DEMOTED PLANET'

Named after underworld god

Average of 5.9bn km to Sun

Orbits Sun every 248 years

Diameter of 2,360km

Has at least three moons

Rotates every 6.8 days

Gravity about 6% of Earth's

Surface temperature -233C

Nasa probe visits in 2015"

 

Its orbit around the Sun is also highly tilted compared with the plane of the big planets.

 

In addition, since the early 1990s, astronomers have found several 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 would be better categorised alongside this population of small, icy worlds.

 

The critical blow for Pluto came with the discovery three years ago of an object currently designated 2003 UB313. After being measured with the Hubble Space Telescope, it was shown to be some 3,000km (1,864 miles) in diameter: it is bigger than Pluto.

 

2003 UB313 will now join Pluto in the dwarf category, along with Pluto's major moon, Charon, and the biggest asteroid in the Solar System, Ceres.

 

Named after the god of the underworld in Roman mythology, Pluto 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.

 

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/5282440.stm

That's bullshit. I'm starting a campaign to keep Pluto as a planet!

Does it really fucking matter that Pluto is a planet or not?

 

I won't lose sleep over it being downgraded

http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33715 :)

If Gustav Holst was still alive he would be very happy.

 

Indeed. It seems some Holst expert went ahead and wrote a movement for Pluto in 2000 anyways. Haha too bad.

Why didn't I see that.

 

Can someone :lock: this thread?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF MY WHOLE LIFE HAVE BEEN SHATTERED!!!! POOR PLUTO! :(:(

 

 

but really, all that crap they shoved into our heads in the 4th grade has now been rendered useless. thanks a lot, yo. :dozey:

no need to lock it, I'll just merge the two threads

http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33721 will no longer exist in a moment

merge complete

 

Pluto is now a mickey-mouse planet

 

Beat that, Mark :P

oh come on! i read this in the new paper yesterday too..they should just leave pluto alone and let it be a bloody planet!!

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?Stpp

 

Sign my petition to save the planet Pluto!

 

Its a lovely planet, not a dwarf!

im signing it!!

im telling my friends to sign it too

What's the point?

 

Really does it matter than Pluto is a planet or not?

 

if they decided to keep it as a planet than they would have to make 3 more planets and it will continue growing.

[What's the point?

 

Really does it matter than Pluto is a planet or not?

 

if they decided to keep it as a planet than they would have to make 3 more planets and it will continue growing.

/QUOTE]

 

yea! What the heck are those guys thinking about?!

What if your local football team was relegated to the conference with no hope of getting back to the prem where they belong?

 

this is the intergalactic equilivent.

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

 

That Dr Alan Stern bloke has signed my petition (i asked him)

But if Pluto's a planet then, then so's Ceres, Charon and Xena

You know what they say - "More the Merrier"

 

Pluto has been a planet for over 70 years so why change it now?

our knowledge of the universe and developments in optical thingi's have improved so we can look at things in a different light so to speak and re-evaluate out opinions on things.

 

Crikey, imagine what would happen if Pluto was called Mickey, damned emotional attachments