Pluto is probably a planet!
You may have heard some of the controversy surrounding Pluto recently. As the smallest of the traditional nine planets, some astronomers had been quietly grumbling that the chunk of rock didn’t deserve the esteemed title of “planet”. It’s actually just one of many small, rocky bodies that orbit the outer edge of our solar system, but they were all found to be smaller than Pluto and so the debate was generally ignored. Then (gasp!) astronomers last year found another rocky body at roughly the same distance as Pluto that was larger. Now, the debate was at the forefront - if Pluto was a planet, shouldn’t this new body, nicknamed Xena, also be? Are there now 10 planets? Or perhaps just 8? What defines a planet? And as our telescopes improve are we going to find more and more planets?!
Well, a panel appointed by the International Astronomical Union last week recommended that Pluto should keep its planetary status, and indeed future planets could be added to the official solar system list. They also suggested that there be three categories of planets: terrestrial (solid planets with atmosphere, like Earth and Mars), gas giants (like Jupiter and Saturn) and then “dwarf planets” which would include Pluto and possibly the newly found Xena.
The proposal still has to be voted on next week by a huge meeting of the Astronomical Union, and it’s not clear whether they’ll approve - Pluto is kind of unpopular at the moment!
One thing that was interesting was there was a science writer on the panel, Dava Sobel (who’s visiting Brisbane soon, incidentally) who I guess was giving a sort of “popular opinion” view. But her comments were pretty odd…
“People love Pluto, children identify with its smallness,” she writes. “Adults relate to its inadequacy, its marginal existence as a misfit.” Sobel has several solar system models in her house. Asked if she had torn Pluto off any of them, she said “No, Pluto is definitely there.”
Still, I guess this is one case where emotional or psychological issues really should play a role - it would be pretty traumatic to have to rewrite all our textbooks, posters and who knows what else!
sineadio Says:
well i dont know whats happening now but i dont really feel that changing plutos status as being planetor dwarf planet or anything will change the way the common public people will see pluto to be. i mean, i’m still calling it a planet whether it is or not and thats because my whole life it has been that way. from my year 1 solar system books to now. im doing a project on the topic by the way (year 9) and its seems to me that every website has its own opinion. i suppose everybody does though. well thanks for the help- i got information from one line of this page. oh how i love comment boxes.
well bye then
i’ll never find this site again but ah well
me- lemonade
Unfortunately the scientific community went black and white on the issue of planets.
If they had thought outside the sphere (read box) they could have come up with a much better solution - classes of planets. Off the cuff a Class One planet would be anything similar in size to our own planet which would be a body with a gravitational field humans could adapt to; Saturn, Jupiter and the like could have their own class and so on. Pluto could have found a home as a planet but now is considered …
Somethings are best classified in shades of grey (or is it gray).
Well,
it could have been worse; it might have had some real importance.
B