Pluto should get back planet status, say astronomers »
Posted By JamesMarcus 1 year, 4 months ago in Science & TechnologyHas Pluto gotten the short end of the stick? Some senior scientists, including NASA experts, seem to think so. At the Great Planet Debate conference this Thursday in Maryland, some will protest Pluto's recent downgrade from planet to second-rate "plutoid." Dr. David Morrison, director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute in California, said: "Astronomers use adjectives such as giant and dwarf to describe different subclasses of objects like planets, stars and galaxies, so why could Pluto not remain as a dwarf planet just as Jupiter is a giant planet?" Other astronomical bigwigs, such as Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson of the American Museum of Natural History, will argue that the celestial snowball has gotten exactly what it deserves.
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JamesMarcus
James Marcus is a writer, translator, critic, and editor. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut and ...
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drpolyphemus1 year, 4 months ago
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Pluto wasn't even considered a planet when it was discovered. But making it a planet made it the ONLY planet discovered by an American. Making it a planet is ridiculous because you must make thousands of other fragments of the same size that are now known to exist in the same region planets as well. It was strictly political.
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It's like making one new small island a new continent and then saying all small islands, even those a bit larger are not continents.
and if 9 is a BETTER number, then 9000 must be an EVEN BETTER number. A thousand times better. What vacuous thinking.
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smithichie1 year, 4 months ago
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This is like voting whether or not whales are fish or mammals. Whales don't meet the definition of a fish and Pluto does not meet the definition of a planet.
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What's so bad about reclasifying Pluto as the last planet to the first dwarf planet? If Pluto were to remain a planet our solar system would go from 9 planets to hundeds, if not thousands. As our detecting abilities have grown we keep discovering Pluto sized objects far beyond Pluto.-
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Dajav281 year, 4 months ago
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who cares, what gives us the right to classify it either way? all you do when you change its classification is make the things taught for generations wrong. so modify how its taught now instead of changing things. the solar system as well as many other aspects of life are fully beyond comprehension. we can guess all we want, doesn't mean we are right or even close. leave things alone. set news rules if you want for things discovered after but the what is as it is, otherwise before you know it we as arrogant humans will be rewriting history.
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drpolyphemus1 year, 4 months ago
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Let us not forget that an American judge determined that tomatoes were a vegetable, though they are scientifically a fruit. He said that they were a vegetable because they were "used" as a vegetable. This enabled the US to make more profit and protect their markets against foreign imports.
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Politics and money make a big difference when determining categories.
Of course Pluto is not a planet. Never was. Unless we change the definition of a Planet.
Like the old rhyme goes "If WISHES were HORSES beggars would ride"
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capn_caveman1 year, 4 months ago
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I'm going to have to vote no on Pluto regaining its status as a planet. Pluto is a fascinating object, but it's not even the largest known object in the Kuiper belt. It just happens to be the closest large object that we can detect easily. Pluto's orbit isn't even like the other 8 planets in the solar system - it's far more inclined to the plain of the solar system that the other 8 planets roughly share and the orbit is far more elliptical.
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smithichie1 year, 4 months ago
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Before the term 'asteroid' was coined, each one discovered was considered a planet. In 1850 some considered the solar system as having nearly 25 planets. We came to realize these objects weren't quite the same as a planet, namely their size wasn't sufficient to make them round. Pluto meets that part of the defintion, but we have come to realize that unlike the 8 Planets, Pluto is not the dominate mass in it's vicinity, it has not cleared it's orbit.
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The point is, if we had kept up with naming everything we saw a planet, we would have thousands of planets in our solar system. A huge number of planets isn't the problem, it's the watering down of the defintion of the word 'planet' that's the problem. If the word planet includes everything from asteroids to dwarf planets, the word 'planet' becomes as vague as the word 'body'. There are countless bodies orbiting our sun, from the size of Jupiter to smaller than dust and the differences between such bodies is just as extreme as the difference between that dust and Jupiter. The word planet tells us something about that body and what properties we can expect from it. Pluto does not meet all of those properties and needs reclassification.-
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Dusty7541 year, 4 months ago
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I have to agree somewhat with planetary size, but on what does one classify the size of the planet? The largest planet in our solar system is Jupiter. However, it is believed that Jupiter does not have a solid core, but a liquid core. In otherwords if you could handle the gravity and pressures you could concieveably travel right through the planet. So does the lack of a solid core make Jupiter a planet? Is the core a globe shape? Perhaps they should re-instate Pluto's status as a planet because it had been grandfathered into that status.
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Dajav281 year, 4 months ago
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under your definition nothing except earth is a planet as nothing in our solar system qualifies by sharing even 1/10th of the requirements of being a planet as those things that the earth has. If the Earth is a definition of what a "planet" is then there is only one planet in this solar system.
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PsychoHosebeastComment removed: Spammer, Abusive2 Replies
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memestryker1 year, 4 months ago
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We categorized it as a planet from our ignorance and lack of technology to assure accuracy. Now the truth is out, and I consider it imperative to let the truth guide us. Pluto is not a planet. I think it adds to the interest in astronomy to see how our knowledge enables us to more accurately describe our world.
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The story of Pluto is an excellent one for teaching children how science and technology improve our ability to describe the natural world. -
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wiglr1 year, 4 months ago
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First of all, the term "dwarf" isn't very politically correct. If anything, it should be called a "little planet". But why put Plutonians through this demoralizing agony anymore? Just let it be what it always has been - the cutest, nicest planet in the Solar System.
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tsanir1 year, 4 months ago
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The truth is that they can change their definition of planet to mean anything they want, and the new defintion doesn't sit right with a lot of us, regardless of whether or not Pluto is included. Give us a definition that makes logical sense, and I'll accept it.
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adcockhappyfeet1 year, 4 months ago
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Perhaps since Pluto is so cold, it has shrank in volume and would be much bigger if heated to the gas stage. Anyway, Jupiter's only real surface is its Earth size core. And Jupiter is a giant Planet. Pluto actually has a noncore surface.
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seolady1 year, 4 months ago
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I know, that's so annoying. Pluto was known long before as the 9th planet, why do they need to drop it and now adding it again? This would change a lot of textbooks and would make some students more confused. They could changed the discription of the planet, etc. But not drop it then add it up again, that's annoying
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Dajav281 year, 4 months ago
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Dr Tyson and the rest of his like minded colleagues should do us all a favor and leave well enough alone. For numerous decades pluto was a planet, we were all taught that it is the 9th planet in our solar system and then all those Big Wigs have to go changing things. Its a planet, always was, always will be. when it comes down to it those Big Wigs "know" very little. Most of what we as a people know about things outside of earth are in fact assumptions based on our belief that we are the intelligent lifeforms and our method of discerning importance is the only one that counts. does it really matter if it is a planet or a planetiod? No itr doesn't but it was considered that for as long as it has been known about so leave it as one.
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Mdiar1 year, 4 months ago
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I voted no. It isn't so difficult to re-learn it... hell, I was actually taught of some eleven planets in school because of Pluto being a planet then other bodies have to be. No matter what, y'all have to relearn stuff sometimes. That's just life.
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puffin1 year, 4 months ago
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planets_in_astrology
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As a Scorpio I can totally do without Pluto ... god of the underworld, wealth .. nuclear armament? Every other sign gets a Greco-Roman masterpiece and we get a friggin' picture of Hitler & Mussolini.
I'll take the lesser malefic, Mars ( ..in all his naked man-glory.. ) ty!-
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Mdiar1 year, 4 months ago
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My ruling planet is Jupiter ;)
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Sagittarius all the way!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_%28astrology%29
http://www.astrologyindepth.com/Sagittarius
Oddly enough, this actually is a decent description of me in associated traits and careers. Not so much in the physical.
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