(no subject)
"5) It's not the biggest object out there in the black
So, I was reading The Bad Astronomer.
For those unaware, The Bad Astronomer is an internet blog hosted by Phil Plait, astronomer, author, and president of the James Randi Educational Foundation.
In any case, today, Phil has a segment dedicated to things I might not know about Pluto. Point five, obviously, is "it's not the biggest object out there in the black."
And this is what I learned.
The reason Pluto is no longer considered a planet is not necessarily because of its size, but rather because of its size in relation to the shitload of other objects floating around there in the Kuiper Belt.
The Kuiper Belt, not to be confused with the asteroid belt between the inner and outer planets, is an area past the orbit of Neptune where chunks of ice and rock float around. Pluto, as it were, swings through here--and, for the longest time, Pluto -was- considered a planet, albiet a very small one. However, with the discovery of Hamuea, Makemake, and then Eris, all "planets" larger than Pluto, and all within the Kuiper Belt, -and- with the understanding there are most certainly more bodies-larger-than-Pluto within the Kuiper Belt, the international astronomical body found itself faced with a defining definition issue.
Do we brand all these larger-than-Pluto objects as planets based on size alone? Or do we try to find a clear and accurate definition of what a planet is?
So, rather, than have, say, fifty planets within our solar system, we instead dropped a planet, offered a solid definition of what a planet was, and relegated Pluto (poor son of a bitch) to the realm of the dwarf planets.
For those who made it down this far, a planet is now (1) a celestial body in orbit around the sun (2) that has sufficient mass for its own gravitational field to force its body into a sphere, (3) and has also cleared "the neighborhood" around its orbit.
So, I was reading The Bad Astronomer.
For those unaware, The Bad Astronomer is an internet blog hosted by Phil Plait, astronomer, author, and president of the James Randi Educational Foundation.
In any case, today, Phil has a segment dedicated to things I might not know about Pluto. Point five, obviously, is "it's not the biggest object out there in the black."
And this is what I learned.
The reason Pluto is no longer considered a planet is not necessarily because of its size, but rather because of its size in relation to the shitload of other objects floating around there in the Kuiper Belt.
The Kuiper Belt, not to be confused with the asteroid belt between the inner and outer planets, is an area past the orbit of Neptune where chunks of ice and rock float around. Pluto, as it were, swings through here--and, for the longest time, Pluto -was- considered a planet, albiet a very small one. However, with the discovery of Hamuea, Makemake, and then Eris, all "planets" larger than Pluto, and all within the Kuiper Belt, -and- with the understanding there are most certainly more bodies-larger-than-Pluto within the Kuiper Belt, the international astronomical body found itself faced with a defining definition issue.
Do we brand all these larger-than-Pluto objects as planets based on size alone? Or do we try to find a clear and accurate definition of what a planet is?
So, rather, than have, say, fifty planets within our solar system, we instead dropped a planet, offered a solid definition of what a planet was, and relegated Pluto (poor son of a bitch) to the realm of the dwarf planets.
For those who made it down this far, a planet is now (1) a celestial body in orbit around the sun (2) that has sufficient mass for its own gravitational field to force its body into a sphere, (3) and has also cleared "the neighborhood" around its orbit.