Pluto Making a Comeback

anthemaniac writes "Space.com reports that the American Astronomical Unions Division of Planetary Scientists recognizes the IAU's authority to make a new planet defintion but expects it to be altered. Separately, 300 astronomers have signed a petition saying they won't use the definition. All this stems from the discontent over how only 424 astronomers voted on the proposal that demoted Pluto. Looks like this little dog is on the comeback trail."

Comments

Re:waiting

[cptgrudge]

Your post intrigued me, and after some quick research with the help of Google, I agree. You can fire up Celestia and actually see some of them, just make asteroid orbits and names visible. Pluto fits right in with them; it seems to be the largest of them.

For you unbelievers, here's a list. These objects are all out of the "normal" plane of orbits, just like Pluto.

Name, Radius
Pluto, 1,151km
Ixion, 600km
Quaoar, 625km
Orcus, 800km
Varuna, 450km

And these are just some "nicely named" ones. See "2003 EL61", "2005 FY9", etc for more examples. And you can add more as well. For those with computers that aren't slow, this page contains a Celestia ssc of 1007(!) TNOs. Doughnut shaped indeed.

Also, there is a class (like 20%-30%) of them called Plutinos which share Pluto's stable 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune. How did this come to be? There are theories, but nothing definitive yet.

The debate will continue, but if you look at that Celestia ssc of 1007 TNOs, it is pretty clear that Pluto is not a "major planet". If it is, then we've got dozens, possibly hundreds of them.

(Apologies if this has been covered before.)

Re:Consistent terminology is crucial to any field

[Twiek]

You do realize that Ceres was classified as a planet before the discovery of more asteroids, right?

What makes the Kuiper belt so different that its inhabitants get to be planets, and the asteroids don't?