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Scientists against the demotion of objects like Pluto, Eris, Sedna, etc. to "dwarf planet" status have crafted a new definition:
It's no secret that Alan Stern and other scientists who led the New Horizons mission were extremely displeased by Pluto's demotion from planet status in 2006 during a general assembly of the International Astronomical Union. They felt the IAU decision undermined the scientific and public value of their dramatic flyby mission to the former ninth planet of the Solar System.
But now the positively peeved Pluto people have a plan. Stern and several colleagues have proposed a new definition for planethood. In technical terms, the proposal redefines planethood by saying, "A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape adequately described by a triaxial ellipsoid regardless of its orbital parameters." More simply, the definition can be stated as, "round objects in space that are smaller than stars."
From the proposal:
The eight planets recognized by the IAU are often modified by the adjectives "terrestrial," "giant," and "ice giant," yet no one would state that a giant planet is not a planet. Yet, the IAU does not consider dwarf planets to be planets. We eschew this inconsistency. Thus, dwarf planets and moon planets such as Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and Earth's Moon are "fullfledged" planets. This seems especially true in light of these planets' complex geology and geophysics. While the degree of internal differentiation of a given world is geologically interesting, we do not use it as a criterion for planethood in the spirit of having an expansive rather than a narrow definition.
Here's another article about the significance of the New Horizons mission. New Horizons will fly by 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:10PM
It wasn't named after a disney character
The name Pluto, after the god of the underworld, was proposed by Venetia Burney (1918–2009), a then eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England, who was interested in classical mythology.[35]
Pluto debuted in 1930, the same year as pluto the planet was discovered. Do you really think they named a planet after a brand new cartoon character?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:28PM
Read carefully, bruh:
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:42PM
I misread it then, although the sentence could have been cleared up some with better wording. Apologies.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:39PM
Fair enough. I was not caffeinated.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 22 2017, @11:07PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves