Pluto is not a planet

CNN have just done a newsflash with the following on it :-

So what exactly is it then ?

All my school science lessons re astral matters have just been turned around.

So are they next gonna tell us that The Moon is made of cheese after all ?

Edit : Here's The Link

poor Pluto, where is it going to go? What's it going to do?

If I was Pluto I'd go and find myself a solar system where I was accepted as a planet.

Pluto Lives!

Its not so much that pluto isn't a planet, its the fact that if you accept Pluto as a planet then you may have to accept many many more objects out there as planets too, depending on your exact definition of what a planet is

But I guess you knew that

Well, the Bible clearly says that Pluto is a ... a ... uhm ... can any Creationists help me out here???

It will be a Dwarf Planet or Planetoid according to the Register

yep, 8 planets and 3 new plutoid class (or dwarf) planets. So a bit a compromise. Pluto remains a planet but is classed as a plutoid class planet.

shoot the dog and nuke the Planetoid...

Are there nukes with that kind of range?

Why can't they just, like, leave Pluto alone!

Why must they always pick on the little ones? Planetary mobbing, that's what it is!

Luckily for the dog and the LGM I don't always do what I'm told.

If they can send bloody mini-rovers to Mars why not a whole fleet of nukes to Pluto? Imagine the challenge for science...

The Moon IS made of cheese. Nobody ever listens to me!

Google "The Sorrows of Pluto" and then click Images to see a brilliant little comic strip that wouldn't fit in here.

As I understand it it has to do with the new exoplanets which have been discovered round other stars.

CNN made fun of it today but I understand it is scientifically necessary.

Pluto is not big enough to shift other heavenly bodies out of the way hence this is the reason for its loss of status.

Shame. After all its the only planet named after a Disney character.

btw I await IPJ's corrections on my statements here.

Other than Charon and two other, smaller moons.

woof.

Hell, I make fun too. These scientists should aim to keep giant space rocks from falling on our heads (statiscally unlikely, but doesn't mean it won't happen tommorow) rather than pedantic debates regarding the definition of a planet. If they saved us from something like a rock, then they would have something to crow about.

For those with an astronomical bent, here's the actual IAU press release.

In a nutshell:


We're just finding too many dwarfs, it seems - telecopes getting too good. Also, the 'exo'-planet count now stands at >200, though these are mostly Jupiter-sized.

Pluto vote 'hijacked' in revolt - BBC

damn, thats put paid to the rhyme we learnt at school to remember the order of the planets

Some
Men
Very
Easily
Make
Jam
Sandwiches
Using
Nasty
Plums

I've never heard that one - I like it!

"a fierce backlash" among astonomers!?!?

also, I think I now understand why so many men go into astronomy...

Well, not that I would know anything about science and planets and whatnot, but if they're going to start making distinctions between big lumps of rock and smaller lumps of rock, then shouldn't they also distinguish between lumps of rock like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and huge balls of gas like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune? But then I guess Earth wouldn't be in the top league of planets, and millions of people would get very upset.

Anyway, so what if we "lost" one planet? - Look at all the nice whopping great big extrasolar planets just waiting to be discovered out there.

Ah but Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are not lumps of rock. They are massive enough for their own gravity fields to form them (and any other matter that happens to get captured by or crash into them) into roughly spherical bodies. So there

Well, yes, they're spherical, but still solid lumps of rock, or so I would have thought? Or at least mostly rock with just a thin layer of atmosphere - very different from Jupiter et al.

Uranus is a huge ball of gas?

I still think Pluto should be considered a planet. Mercury could be ruled out as well for its size and eccentric orbit. That it's not orbiting along the same plane could be for the same reason that Uranus' axis has a 92° tilt (prob. smashed by some other body) or, just like Neptune's satellite Triton which is in retrograde orbit, was likely captured.

Pluto has three moons, and while the largest is so large in comparison to the planet as to cause a wobble rather than to have the center of orbit outside the physical mass of Pluto, it's clearly circling Pluto, not the Sun. those who claim that the rules which allow Pluto to be a planet are out of it because, again, the Moon orbits the Earth, not the Sun.

* Planets are large, spherical objects which orbit the Sun. I agree with the definition: "A planet has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium"
* Moons/satellites orbit planets and are smaller than them.
* Ceres and Vesta are "dwarf planets"; their orbits are around the Sun but their mass is smaller than all but five known planetary satellites.

Back in 1978 the discovery of Pluto's moon, Charon, was supposed to been the final word that Pluto was indeed a planet.

woof.

Quote from BBC report:
"Honk if Pluto is still a planet" bumper stickers
YEAH RIGHT Get a life you nerdy astronomers!!!

My "Honk if you love Palladium" is much cooler

PS: the Venusians have recently voted the Earth as a non planet as it contains carbon based life and has too much liquid water swishing (a venusian technical term) around it. The creatures of Xena are pissed off as Pluto got all the coverage on super biased CNN ("this pissing channel cannot even be balanced about planets" the president of Xena claimed "never mind Earths minor internal issues")

Personally I am glad that astronomers finally got rid of that impertinent interloper Pluto off the list of real planets. That stupid squirt that's been bugging me since about 1930 gets what it deserves at last!
I'm getting the wire cutters to my orrery right away!

Cut and paste on your bumper:

Get your T shirts, memorabilia, etc. here.

They do - "terrestrial planets" and "gas giants".

Is plutonium still an element though?

And is this change freaking out astrologers I wonder?

Yes and I hope so.

Astrologists plan to keep Pluto in the loop

It seems that astrologists are not planning to change much what they do with pluto. I read somewhere else that the important thing is that it is still a celestial body and its orbit is the same so nothing changes. I have no clue actually, but that's what I read.

Pendant mode = on

Not quite , I think you'll find that Earth is actually an Oblate spheroid

"Pluto is not a planet" - well, the good people of Aschheim - a little place just outside Munich - may have known it all along. While gazing at the street plan in an idle moment, as one does, I noticed that they have streets named after the sun, the moon, and all of the planets ... except Pluto. There are also a bunch of streets named after astronomers and physicists, and even an Orionweg, Sternstrasse and Kometenring, which is really scraping the barrel for astronomical names, so it's not like they ran out of streets to name before they got to Pluto. Anyone here from Aschheim?

EDIT: Just had a thought: Maybe the streets were built and named before Pluto was discovered. Anyone know?

Ahh - there is justice in the universe after all. Pluto has been reinstated in a class of its own. The International Astronomical Union, in its infinite wisdom, has now decreed that Pluto, and other objects of its ilk, shall henceforth be known as "Plutoids".

Plutoid chosen as name for Solar System objects like Pluto


So, how do you know whether your fave little planet is a proud Plutoid or just a poor humble dwarf? (Don't laugh now, this is serious stuff)


And finally, if you really want to impress your friends:

I thought that the smaller outer planets were known about years before they were discovered because they caused minor fluctuations in the orbit of the known plants. These planets were then systematically hunted down, was this not true for Pluto too?

True for Pluto and Neptune only.

Uranus was classed as a planet by telescope (and is visible to the naked eye anyway) without pre-calculation, Eris as the other plutoid was found accidentally.