Pluto no longer a planet

[Pegasus69]

Posted by D-Base - Poor Pluto, it must be lonely being the only fired planet in the solar system.

Actually there was another planet fired from our solar system. I think it was in the 1860's that Ceres was named as a planet and then removed within the same decade. I am gonna miss Pluto though.

 

[Austin40acres]

Two questions:
1. What will the folks at the old observatory do now, when they're so proud of the fact that they figured out there HAD to be another planet because of calculating gravitational pulls?

2. I've heard Pluto is not a planet now, but a "dwarf planet". Is "dwarf" still pc? Or, is that where Sneezy, Doc, Dopey, etal went?

(OK, that's three questions. I lied. Take away my planet status.)

A4A

 

[MidnightPrism]

It's still a planet to me.


Weirdo scientists

 

[yvrpalms]

feel sorry for the little guy!

 

[Kojimon]

They had to do this to MY ruling planet?!

What will all of us Scorpios do now? I no longer have a ruling planet!!!

I feel like I am missing something now. That sucks.

Give the coolest planet back it's status!

 

[gsdx]

From what I heard today on the radio, Pluto in now classified as a 'dwarf planet'.

 

[ross_1986]

does it mean he lost his job?

Awww!! That's so cute!

 

[Charliose]

Wait... more pizza?

 

[Kulindahr]

Actually there was another planet fired from our solar system. I think it was in the 1860's that Ceres was named as a planet and then removed within the same decade. I am gonna miss Pluto though.

Yes, Ceres was briefly thought to be a planet.

The trouble has been a matter of defining just what a "planet" is. By one definition I recall from astronomy in college, a planet is a body which formed in its own orbit around its star as the system developed from the primeval dust/gas cloud -- in which case Ceres has a better claim than Pluto... maybe. Some definitions look at size, instead of origin.

It isn't just Pluto, though -- the other end of the scale is under scrutiny, too; i.e. what's the line between a gas giant (planet) and a brown dwarf (star)? Depending on where the line is put, Jupiter may not be a planet, either....

 

[Kulindahr]

How are they able to make this decision when they can't even agree if a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable...?

================================================

That's the government, not the scientists. Ask a botanist, and he'll tell you that a tomato is a Plantae Tracheobionta Magnoliophyta Magnoliopsida Asteridae Solanales Solanaceae Solanum lycopersicum.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, for purposes of trade the tomato is a vegetable. But to scientists, "vegetable" is a term with no meaning; that word only matters to cooks.

 

[Xenrai]

They had to do this to MY ruling planet?!

What will all of us Scorpios do now? I no longer have a ruling planet!!!

I feel like I am missing something now. That sucks.

Give the coolest planet back it's status!

Well, I was gonna say that this is a good thing. We no longer have a ruler, so now we can be the rulers. But it seems HoodedRat screwed that one up. Now we have to worry about Mars?

 

[mike_n_herrin]

crap. i just posted in this thread: http://justusboys.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113203



ok i'll say it again:
i was somewhat surprised by this announcement. There was apparently an option to leave it as a planet because it's been one for so long...but that didn't go over either. so i guess this means the 10th planet is out now too? i can't remember if it was bigger than pluto or not...i think it was... bugger it.

 

[Andreus]

i think i read that they all have unstable orbits

its interesting that there are oort cloud objects big enough to almost be planets

i wonder what else is out there on the edge of our system.

 

[frankfrank]

This decision completely puzzled me. I can see Ceres not being a planet, but 2003-whatever-it-is and Pluto seem like planets to me. Pluto has actually managed to capture and keep a MOON for chrissake.

So I guess that they thought Pluto didn't qualify because of its irregular orbit (which sometimes brings it inside of Neptune's). But ALL of the planets have elliptical orbits, some less so than others. Earth's solar distance varies by 2% each year.

After all, does anybody even know "where" Pluto came from? Why couldn't it have been formed along with the other 8 (or 9, if you count 2003whatsitsname), and seriously knocked into a more elliptical orbit by something that passed really close to it 1.7 billion years ago?

I guess that astronomy has nevr fully defined exactly what a planet it, and that's where a good part of the problem therein lies.

 

[NedNickerson]

The next thing we're going to be hearing is that we are really nothing more than a speck of dust balancing on a tuff of a dandelion blossom gone to seed...

 

[TaigaStar]

So Pluto (I'm another Scorpio) is voted out of the planets. What ever happened to Sedna? And the other three they just found? Do astronomers have nothing better to do with their time than vote on whether something is a planet or not?
What is the technical definition of a planet? Half of the bodies in our solar system aren't even rock, so why are they considered planets? Sol System has four bodies that are composed exclusively of dense gas (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), and yet they're conidered planets. Mercury, Venus, Terra (Earth), and Mars are composed of rock- they're planets too. What about Luna (our moon), Phobos and Deimos? They're rocks and they're larger than Pluto, yet we call them "satellites." Why do Mercury and Venus get planetary status without their oun lunar satellites? And Sol is not a sun, it's a star; any star with an orbiting body is considered a sun, but stars just drifting around are considered differently...

Maybe, just maybe, we should aim a communication somewhere into space and ask someone to help us overcome our own inability to label these damned things!

 

[luminum]

This sucks. And now it fucks up Sailormoon, too.

 

[cocktales]

Poor, poor Pluto!

At the stroke of a pen of some Astronomers, Pluto is considered NOT to be a planet........after ALL those years!!!

Like some of the rest of you, I learned how to remember the planets too with a slogan:

[SIZE=+2][/SIZE][SIZE=+2]M[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]y [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]V[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]ery [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]E[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]xcellent [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]M[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]other [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]J[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]ust [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]S[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]erved [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]U[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]s [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]N[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]ine [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]P[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]izzas: [/SIZE]

[SIZE=+2]Mercury,Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto[/SIZE]

Soooo, now I guess we will have to remove pizzas and say: [SIZE=+2]M[SIZE=+2]y [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]V[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]ery [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]E[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]xcellent [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]M[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]other [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]J[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]ust [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]S[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]erved [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]U[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]s [/SIZE][SIZE=+2]Noodles[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]: [/SIZE]
[SIZE=+2]Mercury,Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune [/SIZE]

In college I remember "vividly" needing another 2 or 3 credits for science and did NOT have anything to take but basic Astronomy 101........well, I worked my fanny off on that course....thinking I would have a "crip-course"! NOT!!

Goes to show ya, don't think that after years and years, things will NOT change!!!

Who'dathunkit?

[/SIZE]

 

[Ddouble]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060825/ap_on_sc/planet_mutiny

Dinky Pluto loses its status as planet
By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer

Pluto, beloved by some as a cosmic underdog but scorned by astronomers who considered it too dinky and distant, was unceremoniously stripped of its status as a planet Thursday.

The International Astronomical Union, dramatically reversing course just a week after floating the idea of reaffirming Pluto's planethood and adding three new planets to Earth's neighborhood, downgraded the ninth rock from the sun in historic new galactic guidelines.

The shift will have the world's teachers scrambling to alter lesson plans just as schools open for the fall term.

"It will all take some explanation, but it is really just a reclassification and I can't see that it will cause any problems," said Neil Crumpton, who teaches science at a high school north of London. "Science is an evolving subject and always will be."

Powerful new telescopes, experts said, are changing the way they size up the mysteries of the solar system and beyond. But the scientists at the conference showed a soft side, waving plush toys of the Walt Disney character Pluto the dog — and insisting that Pluto's spirit will live on in the exciting discoveries yet to come.

"The word 'planet' and the idea of planets can be emotional because they're something we learn as children," said Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped hammer out the new definition.

"This is really all about science, which is all about getting new facts," he said. "Science has marched on. ... Many more Plutos wait to be discovered."

Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn't meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit." That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine.

Astronomers have labored without a universal definition of a planet since well before the time of Copernicus, who proved that the Earth revolves around the sun, and the experts gathered in Prague burst into applause when the guidelines were passed.

Predictably, Pluto's demotion provoked plenty of wistful nostalgia.

"It's disappointing in a way, and confusing," said Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh.

"I don't know just how you handle it. It kind of sounds like I just lost my job," she said from Las Cruces, N.M. "But I understand science is not something that just sits there. It goes on. Clyde finally said before he died, 'It's there. Whatever it is. It is there.'"

The decision by the IAU, the official arbiter of heavenly objects, restricts membership in the elite cosmic club to the eight classical planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Pluto and objects like it will be known as "dwarf planets," which raised some thorny questions about semantics: If a raincoat is still a coat, and a cell phone is still a phone, why isn't a dwarf planet still a planet?

NASA said Pluto's downgrade would not affect its $700 million New Horizons spacecraft mission, which this year began a 9 1/2-year journey to the oddball object to unearth more of its secrets.

But mission head Alan Stern said he was "embarrassed" by Pluto's undoing and predicted that Thursday's vote would not end the debate. Although 2,500 astronomers from 75 nations attended the conference, only about 300 showed up to vote.

"It's a sloppy definition. It's bad science," he said. "It ain't over."

Under the new rules, two of the three objects that came tantalizingly close to 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, has nicknamed "Xena." The third object, Pluto's largest moon, Charon, isn't in line for any special designation.

Brown, whose Xena find rekindled calls for Pluto's demise because it showed it isn't nearly as unique as it once seemed, waxed philosophical.

"Eight is enough," he said, jokingly adding: "I may go down in history as the guy who killed Pluto."

Demoting the icy orb named for the Roman god of the underworld isn't personal — it's just business — said Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and host of the PBS show "Star Gazer."

"It's like an amicable divorce," he said. "The legal status has changed but the person really hasn't. It's just single again."

 

[flyingfree]

What's next? Scientists will agree that 7UP is really 6UP.