Pluto no longer a planet

[pies4ever]

Pluto no longer a planet
August 25, 2006
12:00am

PLUTO was stripped of its status as a planet overnight when scientists from around the world redefined it as a "dwarf planet", leaving just eight classical planets in the solar system.

With one vote, toys and models of the solar system became instantly obsolete, forcing teachers and publishers to scramble to update textbooks and lessons used in classrooms for decades.
“Pluto is dead,” Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology bluntly said on a teleconference.

Discovered in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto has traditionally been considered the ninth planet, farthest from the sun in the solar system.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20246737-661,00.html

[Syd_Magpies_Girl]

Saw that this morning...I'm not surprised yet peeved off to an extent.

Imagine how much money the education departments all over the world will have to spend now to redo the text books because they think it's 'too small' to be a planet.

Meh.

[David]

this is pretty interesting, I was reading about it earlier this year....
I think the big problem was that over the past couple of years they've found objects out there that are actually bigger than pluto or around the same size... if I'm right there's about 100 of them, in the kuiper belt (? hope im right) anyways it was a case of, accept them all as planets (ridiculous), keep pluto as a planet cos we can't really define a planet anyway (rather inconsistent), or ditch Pluto. They made the right choice I reckon

[Didaicos]

The main reason they said is pluto is not big enough to have a drastic effect on the gravity around it when it is in contact with smaller object (i.e. moons)
Or something like that.
Pluto does have a moon (Charon) and two smaller ones (Nix and Hydra). But obviously not enough of an effect.

The main solar system object you should keep an eye on is the moons of Jupiter, in particular Europa....there's a good chance of life being discovered there in the not too distant future (according to lecturers I've had)....even if that life is only simple prokaryotes (single-cell bacterium).

[Donny]

So, it WAS only a Mickey Mouse planet all along (well, since we found it in about 1930). Perhaps that's why they named it Pluto.

Some interesting info about Pluto: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050215_pluto_anniv.html

Most of Pluto's orbit is out beyond that of Neptune. But the path is oblong, so Pluto spends part of its 248-year orbit -- the time it takes to make one circle around the Sun -- inside the track of Neptune.

Pluto's path is also extremely inclined, by 17.1 degrees, to the main plane of the solar system where the other planets travel.

Asteroids also circle the Sun in the solar system's main plane. So do some comets. But many comets, like Pluto, have highly inclined orbits. This similarity, plus Pluto's small size has led many astronomers to conclude that Pluto has been improperly classified all along. It is not a planet, they say, but rather a Kuiper Belt Object, a member of a swarm of comet-like objects beyond Neptune.
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Journos can't resist, can they ?

"toys and models of the solar system became instantly obsolete, forcing teachers and publishers to scramble to update textbooks and lessons used in classrooms for decades."

What absolute rubbish. Can you imagine our Cam and thousands of other teachers racing in to work on Monday to 'update textbooks' ?

For a start, models won't change at all. The tiny little sphere (smaller than our moon) will still be Pluto and it will still be in the same place in relation to the 8 planets.

[David]

lol good point Donny, although I guess the deal with the models is that there's no reason why Pluto should be there any more. So they probably will have to change it. I guess the question they would ask is, why is Pluto there and none of the other "dwarf planets" (of which there are dozens)?
Still, I'm sure teachers will have better things to do with their time

[Dr Alf Andrews]

And in latest breaking news, a meeting of dwarf scientists on the dwarf planet, Pluto, have reached unanimous agreement that there is no intelligent life on Earth.

[David]

Ah Alf, but if all human kind is lacking in intelligence, what yardstick of intelligence are you measuring us against?

ps I know you're joking but I feel like asking philosophical questions (damn you sherrife! )

[David]

[David]

you know that would be quite interesting, if you have any links to some of this stuff, especially as only 5 of the planets are visible to the naked eye so if ancient peoples realised that Uranus and Neptune existed, that is pretty fascinating.