/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/64/7a/647a5063-e4fa-4058-8a5d-cc1bfd83e1f3/pluto_charon.jpg)
This composite image features Pluto and its largest moon Charon in enhanced color. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)
Posted on 09/10/2018 6:35:05 AM PDT by ETL
-snip-
The researchers found that the real division between planets and other celestial bodies, such as asteroids, occurred in the early 1950s when Gerard Kuiper published a paper that made the distinction based on how they were formed.
However, this reason is no longer considered a factor that determines if a celestial body is a planet.
“The IAU’s definition was erroneous since the literature review showed that clearing orbit is not a standard that is used for distinguishing asteroids from planets, as the IAU claimed when crafting the 2006 definition of planets,” said Dr. Kirby Runyon, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
“We showed that this is a false historical claim. It is therefore fallacious to apply the same reasoning to Pluto.”
According to the team, the definition of a planet should be based on its intrinsic properties, rather than ones that can change, such as the dynamics of a planet’s orbit.
“Dynamics are not constant, they are constantly changing. So, they are not the fundamental description of a body, they are just the occupation of a body at a current era,” Dr. Metzger said.
“We recommend classifying a planet based on if it is large enough that its gravity allows it to become spherical in shape.”
“And that’s not just an arbitrary definition. It turns out this is an important milestone in the evolution of a planetary body, because apparently when it happens, it initiates active geology in the body.”
“Pluto, for instance, has an underground ocean, a multilayer atmosphere, organic compounds, evidence of ancient lakes and multiple moons,” he added.
“It’s more dynamic and alive than Mars. The only planet that has more complex geology is the Earth.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sci-news.com ...
[ Researchers Say the Reason Pluto Lost Its Planet Status is Not Valid ]
What if we got Serena Williams to argue the case?
(sorry too easy)
They can’t change Pluto! It was on all the models of the solar system in 8th grade! You know, the one with the light bulb inside the Sun.
Nice photo.
Are we sure that’s a moon and not a spa.....
The IAU denied Pluto its planet designation because it was discovered by an American using an American telescope and modern calculations. `Now, that was back when Bush was president - it was really a protest against the Iraq Wars - but today, they will come up with some other excuse.
The thing is more of a planet than Mercury. Has bigger moons than Mars.
So Pluto gets all the respect and Goofy gets none. Nevermind that Pluto is incapable of speech. This is clearly a case of name discrimination.Goofy cannot help it he was named “goofy”.
“According to the team, the definition of a planet should be based on its intrinsic properties, rather than ones that can change, such as the dynamics of a planet’s orbit.”
This is especially true in the case of “rouge planets”. Planets that form in a solar system but then somehow get kicked out, possibly by the gravitational pull of a passing star.
They are ALL PLANETS!......................
Such objects have been ejected from the planetary system in which they formed or have never been gravitationally bound to any star or brown dwarf.[1][2][3]
The Milky Way alone may have billions of rogue planets.[4]
Some planetary-mass objects may have formed in a similar way to stars, and the International Astronomical Union has proposed that those objects be called sub-brown dwarfs.[5]
A possible example is Cha 110913-773444, which might have been ejected and become a rogue planet, or otherwise formed on its own to become a sub-brown dwarf.[6]
Astronomers have used the Herschel Space Observatory and the Very Large Telescope to observe a very young free-floating planetary-mass object, OTS 44, and demonstrate that the processes characterizing the canonical star-like mode of formation apply to isolated objects down to a few Jupiter masses.
Herschel far-infrared observations have shown that OTS 44 is surrounded by a disk of at least 10 Earth masses and thus could eventually form a mini planetary system.[7]
Spectroscopic observations of OTS 44 with the SINFONI spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope have revealed that the disk is actively accreting matter, in a similar way to young stars.[7]
In December 2013, a candidate exomoon of a rogue planet was announced.[8]
Observation:
Astrophysicist Takahiro Sumi of Osaka University in Japan and colleagues, who form the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment collaborations, published their study of microlensing in 2011.
They observed 50 million stars in the Milky Way using the 1.8-meter MOA-II telescope at New Zealand’s Mount John Observatory and the 1.3-meter University of Warsaw telescope at Chile’s Las Campanas Observatory.
They found 474 incidents of microlensing, ten of which were brief enough to be planets of around Jupiter’s size with no associated star in the immediate vicinity.
The researchers estimated from their observations that there are nearly two Jupiter-mass rogue planets for every star in the Milky Way.[9][10][11]
Other estimates suggest a much larger number, up to 100,000 times more rogue planets than stars in the Milky Way.[12]
A 2017 study by Przemek Mroz of Warsaw University Observatory and colleagues, with six times larger statistics than the 2011 study, indicates an upper limit on Jupiter-mass free-floating or wide-orbit planets of 0.25 planets per main-sequence star in the Milky Way.[13]
Nearby rogue planet candidates include WISE [....] at a distance of 7.27+/-0.13 light-years.[14]
Does this mean that Pluto is now a trans-planet?
So this whole ‘declaissification’ of Pluto was a SCAM by a bunch of dick-heads needing attention.
Why does that not surprise me.
OH - SO VERY GOOD! I think we have got a winner here!
I love this whole controversy as it reminds me of the 'settled science' meme. The de-classification of the planet Pluto into being a 'dwarf planet' / 'Kuiper belt object' came from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) effort to formally define the term "planet" in 2006. It will be interesting to see how long this controversial reclassification lasts.
I always figured that the people involved were getting kickbacks from the companies that print textbooks.
The spherical criterion strikes me as arbitrary...earth is not a perfect sphere; eccentricity is what, 1/300?
Is the fact that Pluto crosses Neptune’s orbit relevant?
LOL! Got that one! (the image came through)
An executive order could get Pluto back its planet status........
I always thought Pluto got a raw deal.
They appear for me when I go to the thread as well a in my comments section. I'm wondering if you're being sensored.
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