Out Beyond Pluto, Astronomers Find Something New

Reuters ^ | October 07, 2002 | Deborah Zabarenko

[ArneFufkin]

Pluto's no planet.

The fact that it has another piece of matter revolving around its gravitational pull doesn't make it a planet.

If Kate Moss was hovering in Space outside the distance of Pluto, she could have a very fattening keylme pie revolving around her but she'd still be moving around the Sun and I wouldn't call her a planet.

She's not a planet. She's a STAR, yes ...

Pluto is midget wrestling. Interesting, but nobody at NASA is aiming any missions that direction.

Planet needs to have a singular influence in size, interest and solar system fun ... ness ... to warrant our care.

The outer gas giants annoy us enough. OK Neptune ... you are a coagulation of ammonia and sulferous and nitrous oxide .... We're not going to make a movie about you housing a tribe of beautiful women wearing swimsuit uniforms and sporting perfectly cone shaped breasts.

[ArneFufkin]

I don't think the import of NASA catapaulting Arsenio Hall into deep deep space in 1994 is appreciated enough.

[ArneFufkin]

Orbits the sun, is big and round.

You are confusing a "planet" with Louie Anderson.

Unless that planet has an alcoholic father too ...

[RonF]

Well, "big and round and orbits the sun" used to work, before the discovery of the Kuiper belt. Now, though, it turns out that there's a huge number of objects that are in the Kuiper belt. So far, Pluto (and it's companion, Charon) is the largest Kuiper belt found, and it a lot more reflective than most. And it was discovered back in the '30's. The day that a Kuiper belt object that's larger than Pluto is discovered, the astronomers will have to decide whether to declare it a 10th planet, or to downgrade Pluto.

[RonF]

"It is quite difficult to argue that Pluto isn't a planet when Pluto has it's own moon Charon ..."

There are asteroids that have smaller asteroids orbiting them, but that doesn't make them (major) planets.

And you can argue that Charon isn't a satellite of Pluto. Turns out that the center of Charon's orbit is outside Pluto's surface: in other words, both Pluto and Charon orbit each other around a common point that's between them. So Pluto and Charon are more like a binary planet than planet and satellite.

Also: there's only one moon in the solar system, and that's the Moon. All other bodies orbiting planets are satellites, whether they are natural or artificial.

[RonF]

"Interesting, but nobody at NASA is aiming any missions that direction."

That will likely change. Funding for this is proceeding, after having been cancelled once and then brought back to life.