Pluto Could Lose Planet Status

PhysOrg.com ^ | 21 June 2006 | Staff

[Erasmus]

And RAM. And disk. And GHz. And bandwidth. And Pixels.

[DustyMoment]

Pluto Could Lose Planet Status

Should we take up a collection to help Pluto maintain its status?? Is there a license or something that has to be renewed?

[SW6906]

Sheesh! You're right, but there's a character limit on the tagline! ;o)

[lexington minuteman 1775]

Can we throw Kerry out of the Solar System?

[Erasmus]

What do we call a planet that's not orbiting a star? Is it still a planet?

From the origin of the word, even more so.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Some small stars orbit a larger star or stars, and yet they are stars rather than planets. The currently closest star which isn't the Sun to Earth, Proxima is a small star orbiting two larger stars who have a sort of insular binary system between them.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

in English, at least American English, Earth's moon is the Moon. Also, the Solar System is the Solar System (not the Sol system) and the Sun is the Sun (not Sol).

[Tanniker Smith]

I always thought that "Planet X" was a cool name, particularly before they found the thing. They knew it had to be there from the gravitational effects, which is also why they used to think that Pluto was much bigger than it really is.

"Planet X" has it all: mystery, science and it's the Roman numeral for 10, and planets all have Roman names anyway.

Of course, according to ALF, the universe already named it Dave. Or it might've been Alvin.

TS

[Disambiguator]

This means I have to get a new moonbat non-sequitur bumper sticker: "US out of solar system".

[<1/1,000,000th%]

According to the 1966 episode, "cybermen were from Earth’s twin planet, Mondas, which evolved along similar lines to our world but drifted away from us and into deep space millennia ago."

[<1/1,000,000th%]

"Planet X" has it all: mystery, science and it's the Roman numeral for 10, and planets all have Roman names anyway.

Only because we don't use the Greek names in English. Then they'd be; Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Zeus, Cronos, Ouranos, Poseidon and Hades.

[xp38]

What!?

[Tanniker Smith]

Right, and that would just be silly. We'd have Hermes astronuats and Cronos V rockets. And then we'd have to call it Planet Chi or something.

TS
(And then instead of all the clip art of Pluto(tm), we'd have clip are of Chia Pets.)

[Tanniker Smith]

And the Intergalactic Union of Planets will be meeting to decide whether or not to move Earth from its Official Listing of Planent Dominated by Intelligent Lifeforms to its Official Listing of Planent Inhabited by Intelligent Lifeforms (if only for the dolphins, of course).

[Lou L]

When I was a boy, I remember dinosaurs called "Brontosauruses." Palentologists apparently got bored and renamed them, as I recall. You don't hear so much about brontosauruses any more. Pluto must be undergoing the same wrath. It's job security for astronomers, I suppose.

[Mr. Lucky]

Uranus is gaseous?

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Pluto's an undocumented planet. Just doing the rotating around the Sun that our Solar System other planets won't do.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

How'd they explain how the people didn't freeze as they drifted away from the Sun in the storyline?

[OB1kNOb]

Hey, Pluto! Don't let the door hit Uranus on the way out!