August 25, 200 – (Manila) – A week ago we talked about prospects on re-conditioning our concept of what is a planet and how many planets there are in the Sol system.
The regular conference of the International Astronomical Union or IAU, which is being held this week in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, finally made a vote on the issue on what makes a planet.
Instead of increasing the number of planets, astronomers have instead decided to reduce the number of planets by one and create a whole new sub section for formations in space that is not a planet but is not a moon or an asteroid --- the dwarf planets.
The resulting vote this Thursday demoted Pluto from a planet class to a dwarf planet class, joining the ranks of Ceres, the large asteroid between Mars & Jupiter; Pluto’s former moon Charon which behaves by rules of current physics as more of a planet than a moon; and 2003 UB313, a newly discovered object larger than Pluto, is farther than Pluto from the Sun and called by some as Planet X or “Xena.”
The shocking news of all was the demotion of Pluto, which was discovered in 1930 by American astronomer Claude Tombaugh and for many decades, a group of astronomers felt Pluto wasn’t “planet class” enough to join the ranks of the eight other planets.
Pluto is relatively small compared to neighbor Neptune and is no larger than the Earth’s Moon and a group of astronomers have always wanted Pluto stricken off from the list.
As better, bigger and more powerful telescopes from Earth can get to see far reaches of the Sol system, Pluto, then suspected to be nothing more than a huge ice rock has found a much larger companion beyond it, discovered only last 2003.
Astronomers owing to concerns of confusing the world by formally defining what planets are and opening other objects in space into the ranks of planets, the IAU narrowed down the criteria on what is a planet and created the new sub-class.
The IAU has mandated that, “To qualify as a planet, a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It must also be large enough that its gravity pulls it into a roughly spherical shape. In addition, the world must dominate its orbit, clearing away other objects. It's on this last point that Pluto fails: its highly elliptical orbit overlaps with that of the much bigger Neptune.
And so from the exclusive planet club, Pluto gets impeached. From the major league, Pluto including its sister Charon are now just members of the little league.
Some astronomers vowed to re-install Pluto in the next IAU conference while others are hopeful that a NASA probe that will be sent to Pluto by next year will help bring new light into the issue and show the science community that Pluto though not as enormous like the eight other planets, deserve to remain as the ninth planet of the Solar system.
And after several years of debate, Pluto who has gained a healthy legion of “keep-it-as-a-planet” supporters, it has been finally impeached and soon, the next batch of natural science textbooks will just call it the former planet, an impeached planet now more appropriately called, a dwarf planet.
Half away across the world, while Pluto was successfully impeached as a planet and designated as a “dwarf planet, in this certain place, a dwarf survived again attempts to impeach her as ruler of the kingdom of exportable worker drones.
The dwarf and her enfant teribles ogre consort will remain in power after a vote in the council of corruptible ewoks trashed the petitions of the noisy rabid gremlins who wanted to impeach the might morphin power dwarf.
The empress dwarf extended her hand to the noisy gremlims for friendship but they replied in chorus, “I’m sorry.”
Will the empire of the apes strike back?
Until next time …
The regular conference of the International Astronomical Union or IAU, which is being held this week in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, finally made a vote on the issue on what makes a planet.
Instead of increasing the number of planets, astronomers have instead decided to reduce the number of planets by one and create a whole new sub section for formations in space that is not a planet but is not a moon or an asteroid --- the dwarf planets.
The resulting vote this Thursday demoted Pluto from a planet class to a dwarf planet class, joining the ranks of Ceres, the large asteroid between Mars & Jupiter; Pluto’s former moon Charon which behaves by rules of current physics as more of a planet than a moon; and 2003 UB313, a newly discovered object larger than Pluto, is farther than Pluto from the Sun and called by some as Planet X or “Xena.”
The shocking news of all was the demotion of Pluto, which was discovered in 1930 by American astronomer Claude Tombaugh and for many decades, a group of astronomers felt Pluto wasn’t “planet class” enough to join the ranks of the eight other planets.
Pluto is relatively small compared to neighbor Neptune and is no larger than the Earth’s Moon and a group of astronomers have always wanted Pluto stricken off from the list.
As better, bigger and more powerful telescopes from Earth can get to see far reaches of the Sol system, Pluto, then suspected to be nothing more than a huge ice rock has found a much larger companion beyond it, discovered only last 2003.
Astronomers owing to concerns of confusing the world by formally defining what planets are and opening other objects in space into the ranks of planets, the IAU narrowed down the criteria on what is a planet and created the new sub-class.
The IAU has mandated that, “To qualify as a planet, a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It must also be large enough that its gravity pulls it into a roughly spherical shape. In addition, the world must dominate its orbit, clearing away other objects. It's on this last point that Pluto fails: its highly elliptical orbit overlaps with that of the much bigger Neptune.
And so from the exclusive planet club, Pluto gets impeached. From the major league, Pluto including its sister Charon are now just members of the little league.
Some astronomers vowed to re-install Pluto in the next IAU conference while others are hopeful that a NASA probe that will be sent to Pluto by next year will help bring new light into the issue and show the science community that Pluto though not as enormous like the eight other planets, deserve to remain as the ninth planet of the Solar system.
And after several years of debate, Pluto who has gained a healthy legion of “keep-it-as-a-planet” supporters, it has been finally impeached and soon, the next batch of natural science textbooks will just call it the former planet, an impeached planet now more appropriately called, a dwarf planet.
* * *
Half away across the world, while Pluto was successfully impeached as a planet and designated as a “dwarf planet, in this certain place, a dwarf survived again attempts to impeach her as ruler of the kingdom of exportable worker drones.
The dwarf and her enfant teribles ogre consort will remain in power after a vote in the council of corruptible ewoks trashed the petitions of the noisy rabid gremlins who wanted to impeach the might morphin power dwarf.
The empress dwarf extended her hand to the noisy gremlims for friendship but they replied in chorus, “I’m sorry.”
Will the empire of the apes strike back?
Until next time …
* * *
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