…but Pluto is no longer a planet….
Officially, Pluto is no longer a planet.
“Pluto is dead,” said Caltech researcher Mike Brown, who spoke with reporters via a teleconference while monitoring the vote. The decision also means a Pluto-sized object that Brown discovered will not be called a planet.
“Pluto is not a planet,” Brown said. “There are finally, officially, eight planets in the solar system.”
The new official definition
The decision establishes three main categories of objects in our solar system.
I wonder though how long this will stand up. I have already seen one public interest petition to get it reinstated plus it seems that the astronomers themselves aren’t all in agreement
‘A farce’
Stern, in charge of the robotic probe on its way to Pluto, said the language of the resolution is flawed. It requires that a planet “has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.” But Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune all have asteroids as neighbors.
“It’s patently clear that Earth’s zone is not cleared,” Stern told SPACE.com. “Jupiter has 50,000 trojan asteroids,” which orbit in lockstep with the planet.
Stern called it “absurd” that only 424 astronomers were allowed to vote, out of some 10,000 professional astronomers around the globe.
“It won’t stand,” he said. “It’s a farce.”
Read more at
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060824_plane…
