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 Thin White Duke
Stranger
Registered: 10/20/04
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 Pluto no longer a planet 
#5992948 - 08/24/06 03:15 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5282440.stm
Pluto loses status as a planet
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by US astronomer Clyde Tombaugh
More details
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.
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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".
Voting and the IAU meeting (IAU)
The meeting had seen some fierce arguments before final voting
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'
The New Solar System (Not to scale) (BBC)
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.
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OneMoreRobot3021
Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
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I'm sure Pluto's crying in its space boots.
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Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.
-Erik Davis
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 Edgekrusher
God
Registered: 10/10/05
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I actually watched some news early this morning and they announced that Pluto would hold onto is planet status.
Of course, I recieve all my news from Comedy Central... so who knows.
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Asante
Omnicyclion prophet
Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 87,330
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What nonsense!
Who cares Jupiter is a Gas Giant.. its still a planet!
Why discriminate against Pluto and call it less than a planet?
Its still about 7.500km if you walk around its equator, thats planet enough for me.
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Omnicyclion.org
higher knowledge starts here
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notapillow
I want to be a fisherman
Registered: 09/29/03
Posts: 31,129
Loc: A rare and different tune
Last seen: 4 years, 2 months
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Re: Pluto no longer a planet [Re: Asante]
#5993152 - 08/24/06 04:35 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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pluto was always my favorite s a kid
this is bull shit 
space is full of crazy chotic splatterings. trying to calsify them just gets you more confused.
planet or no its still orbiting the same star
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blink
eye of horus
Registered: 03/31/02
Posts: 11,349
Loc: Geographic Location (Stat...
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Post deleted by blinkidiotReason for deletion: Im sorry
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Annom
※※※※※※
Registered: 12/22/02
Posts: 6,367
Loc: Europe
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It's a logic decision because we don't want too many planets. It's a waste of time, money and effort though; only schoolbooks will change.
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ToTheSummit
peregrinus
Registered: 08/22/99
Posts: 9,126
Loc: Las Vegas
Last seen: 7 days, 18 hours
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I always thought calling Pluto a true planet was a bit sketchy. The debate has raged in the astronomical community for many years.
The one thing about it that I could never get past was its orbit. Its tilted, oblong orbit made it very strange. At times its orbit actually comes inside the orbit of Neptune, making it the eighth planet and Neptune the ninth. And its orbit is tilted quite a ways off the solar plane while all the other planets orbit within a few degrees of it. And Pluto is small, smaller then many of the solar systems moons (including our own moon).
On the other hand, Pluto has a moon of it own (Charon). Charon is is so large (in relation to Pluto) that it causes the two to orbit around each other in a sort of wobbly dance. Some even considered it a 'dual-planet'. But, this simple fact that Pluto does have a moon of its own was always the best argument I had for keeping its status as a planet.
But now that objects of similar and even larger size are being found orbiting even farther out in our solar system I would have to agree with the decision to demote poor Pluto. But as long as I live I will always have the urge to spit out Pluto's name at the end when I rattle off the names of the planets in our solar system.
RIP "planet" Pluto.
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You invented the wheel....You push the motherfucker!!
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Corporal Kielbasa
Registered: 05/29/04
Posts: 17,235
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I can't waite till we figure out that we are nothing more then an actual cell inside of a larger beaing.........
People will probably freak out
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eris
underground
Registered: 11/17/98
Posts: 48,024
Loc: North East, USA
Last seen: 7 months, 3 days
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Interesting that they would just "change status" of it like that. 
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Immortal / Temporarily Retired
The OG Thread Killer
My mushroom hunting gallery
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DNKYD
Turtle!
Registered: 09/23/04
Posts: 12,326
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Damn scientists with their semantics. Have they nothing better to do with their time than squabble over what chunk of rock is a "planet", or "planetoid", or "asteroid", or "giant round space turd"?
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Rhysaboveit
Day Tripper
Registered: 05/26/06
Posts: 218
Loc: Miami Fl
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...Wait what?
I just read in the newspaper a couple days ago they where planning to say there were 12 planets instead of 9 and that pluto would get to keep its planet status.
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No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastard will see them soon enough
"There's a uh, big machine in the sky, some kind of, I dunno, electric snake, coming straight at us."
"Shoot it."
"Not yet, I want to study its habits. "
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Prisoner#1
Even Dumber ThanAdvertized!
Registered: 01/22/03
Posts: 193,665
Loc: Pvt. Pubfag NutSuck
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Re: Pluto no longer a planet [Re: blink]
#5993674 - 08/24/06 07:10 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
blinkidiot said:
URANUS IS NOT A PLANET EITHER!
it's the planet grundleflap
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Asante
Omnicyclion prophet
Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 87,330
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Re: Pluto no longer a planet [Re: Rhysaboveit]
#5993739 - 08/24/06 07:25 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
I just read in the newspaper a couple days ago they where planning to say there were 12 planets
The conservatives have won.
"The bleeding heart stargazers were oh so eager to add more so called planets, but Pluto never was a planet, and never will be" 
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Omnicyclion.org
higher knowledge starts here
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AlteredAgain
Visual Alchemist
Registered: 04/27/06
Posts: 11,181
Loc: Solar Circuit
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it's still a planet in my sphere of reality. 
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SHiZNO
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Registered: 03/14/03
Posts: 1,467
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Re: Pluto no longer a planet [Re: AlteredAgain]
#5993935 - 08/24/06 08:11 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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This is the true beauty of science
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