Gené and Tonic Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 clicky Pluto loses status as a planet Pluto's status has been contested for many years Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet. About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly. Astronomers rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club. Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh. The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks. The decision was made at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague. The astronomers voted by raising their yellow ballot papers for a count. "The eight planets are Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune," said the IAU resolution, which was passed following a week of stormy debate. PLUTO - A 'DEMOTED PLANET' Named after underworld god Average of 5.9bn km to Sun Orbits Sun every 248 years Diameter of 2,360km Has at least three moons Rotates every 6.8 days Gravity about 6% of Earth's Surface temperature -233C Nasa probe visits in 2015 The IAU's proposal to raise the number of planets in the Solar System to 12, adding the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's "moon" Charon and the distant object known as 2003 UB313, met with opposition. Robin Catchpole, of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, told the BBC News website: "My own personal opinion was to leave things as they were; I met Clyde Tombaugh and thought how nice it was to shake hands with someone who had discovered a planet. "But since the IAU brought out the proposal for new planets I had been against it - it was going to be very confusing. The best of the alternatives was to leave the major planets as they are and then demote Pluto. So I think this is a far superior situation." Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society in California commented: "The classification doesn't matter. Pluto - and all Solar System objects - are mysterious and exciting new worlds that need to be explored and better understood." Dwarf planet Pluto's status has been contested for many years as it is further away and considerably smaller than the eight other planets in our Solar System. Since the early 1990s, astronomers have found several other objects of comparable size to Pluto in an outer region of the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt. Some astronomers have long argued that Pluto belongs with this population of small, icy "dwarf planets", not with the objects we call planets. Allowances were once made for Pluto on account of its size. At just 2,360km (1,467 miles) across, Pluto is significantly smaller than the other planets. But until recently, it was still the biggest known object in the Kuiper Belt. That changed with the discovery of 2003 UB313 by Professor Mike Brown and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). After being measured with the Hubble Space Telescope, it was shown to be some 3,000km (1,864 miles) in diameter, making it larger than the ninth planet. Named after the god of the underworld in Roman mythology, it orbits the Sun at an average distance of 5.9 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) taking 247.9 Earth years to complete a single circuit of the Sun. An unmanned US spacecraft, New Horizons, is due to fly by Pluto and the Kuiper Belt in 2015.
City_4_Life Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 What a disgrace!!! Only because it is smaller then the others.
davieG Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 What a disgrace!!! Only because it is smaller then the others. Sizeist
stez Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 i'm absolutely gutted for the lad, does that make levi porter a dwarf footballer?
cisono Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 Technically, it is still a planet, albeit a smaller one
cisono Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 i'm absolutely gutted for the lad, does that make levi porter a dwarf footballer? perhaps but still a pretty good one!
billabob Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 Technically, it is still a planet, albeit a smaller one oui, its a "dwarf planet" now! kinda messes up the rhyme though, my very easy method just speeds up naming ..................
billabob Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 Is it wrong to be glad to see the back of pluto? well it didnt really do much though did it, no storms or red eye or life or anything, bit of a bore really!
oundlefox Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 At least they didn't give Uranus a good kicking
billabob Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 At least they didn't downgrade Uranus Im glad they didnt kick Ur anus, its a lovly place, o wait, you ment Uranus
DaveyJ Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 Still it's a slippery slope, first they get rid of Pluto. Who next Mercury? Mars? or even Earth???
oundlefox Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 Sounds like a case for Mulder and Scully to me.
Bluefoxtim Posted 24 August 2006 Posted 24 August 2006 Eh? wasn't there a new planet a few years ago? Sedna http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:x_8Ut...t=clnk&cd=2
Guest Posted 25 August 2006 Posted 25 August 2006 Harsh But fair. He had a chance at the big time, but at the end of the day didn't quite have the quality to shine through.
Jay Posted 25 August 2006 Posted 25 August 2006 accoring to the BBC site there is a bit of a revolt NASA want him back!!! and if the Americans want him back they will have him back!!!!! with the use of force if necessary.... be warned!!!
Guest Posted 25 August 2006 Posted 25 August 2006 accoring to the BBC site there is a bit of a revolt NASA want him back!!! and if the Americans want him back they will have him back!!!!! with the use of force if necessary.... be warned!!! Honest Tone has already said he agrees. We'll be sending our best experts over to help. We have the best eqipped space programme.
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