Aaaaaaah …. The news this week is as depressing as ever. That is why I have taken up an interest in cosmology, the universe outside of this planet. Maybe, just maybe there is some order out there … well, I know there is, because the starry nights show well the hand of God. There just must be a God behind it all … So, what about Pluto, a planet of not, that is the question?
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-pluto-reclassified-planet.html
https://www.space.com/41769-pluto-planet-definition-debate-rages-on.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103518303063
“The reason Pluto lost its planet status is not valid, according to new research from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union, a global group of astronomy experts, established a definition of a planet that required it to "clear" its orbit, or in other words, be the largest gravitational force in its orbit. Since Neptune's gravity influences its neighboring planet Pluto, and Pluto shares its orbit with frozen gases and objects in the Kuiper belt, that meant Pluto was out of planet status.However, in a new study published online Wednesday in the journal Icarus, UCF planetary scientist Philip Metzger, who is with the university's Florida Space Institute, reported that this standard for classifying planets is not supported in the research literature. Metzger, who is lead author on the study, reviewed scientific literature from the past 200 years and found only one publication—from 1802—that used the clearing-orbit requirement to classify planets, and it was based on since-disproven reasoning. He said moons such as Saturn's Titan and Jupiter's Europa have been routinely called planets by planetary scientists since the time of Galileo.
"The IAU definition would say that the fundamental object of planetary science, the planet, is supposed to be a defined on the basis of a concept that nobody uses in their research," Metzger said. "And it would leave out the second-most complex, interesting planet in our solar system.""We now have a list of well over 100 recent examples of planetary scientists using the word planet in a way that violates the IAU definition, but they are doing it because it's functionally useful," he said."It's a sloppy definition," Metzger said of the IAU's definition. "They didn't say what they meant by clearing their orbit. If you take that literally, then there are no planets, because no planet clears its orbit."
The planetary scientist said that the literature review showed that the real division between planets and other celestial bodies, such as asteroids, occurred in the early 1950s when Gerard Kuiper published a paper that made the distinction based on how they were formed.”
This seems convincing to me, and I always like the idea of Pluto being a planet. Wasn’t the cartoon dog, Pluto, Mickey Mouse’s dog?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_(Disney)
Cosmologists would be wise to recognise the achievements of this great cartoon animal, by continuing to have the status of the extraterrestrial object Pluto, as a planet. Who knows, when humans destroy Earth, then Mars, then all of the moons of the other planets, such as Europa, Pluto will be the last stop to the stars (unless there is another planet beyond it):
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/astronomers-say-neptune-sized-planet-lurks-beyond-pluto