Pluto - No longer a planet
In an interesting move, a large body of astronomers collected under the aegis of IAU (International Astronomers Union) decided to demote the status of Pluto to a dwarf planet, instead of regular planet. It means our solar system has only 8 planets and not 9, as we studied till now.
The declassification seems to have been done in view of a majority's concerns of Pluto being a largely frozen surface and dissimiliar in composition to the other 8 planets, and 3 other bodies in the solar system - Charon 3, a satellite of Pluto, 2003 UB313, and a huge asteroid between Mars and Jupiter qualify to become a planets, if Pluto (with relaxed admission norms) continues to be accepted as a planet.
Lots of rewriting of school textbooks needs to be done, around the world :)
How do you feel, having to lose one interesting planet from our system?
References:
World mourns poor Pluto's plight
Pluto Loses Designation, Sues IAU
3 comments:
hey
2 days back king 5 news reported addition of 3 more planets !!
check this:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2318597
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208644,00.html
ofcourse your references are recent :)
There's another significant distinction between Pluto and our eight planets - it has not swept out its orbit around the Sun.
Also, it has a very oblique orbit compared to the remaining eight planets, but I don't know if this was part of their decision.
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