• Question: Do u think pluto is a planet / should b a planet & Why?? :L

    Asked by testtubelover to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 19 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by annabelsusan.
    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Personally I don’t really mind how it’s classified, – it’s there, it’s Pluto, does much else really matter? Well, apparently it does to some people who were really upset when it was decided it wasn’t a planet.

      In 2008 a group of expert scientists got together to thrash out the arguments and decide once and for all. Apparently there are 3 criteria (I only just looked this up…I’m not a planetary science expert):
      1) must be in orbit around the sun (tick)
      2) must have enough mass to be a sphere by its own gravitational force (tick)
      3) must have cleared the area around it’s orbit (uh-oh…)
      I think the 3rd criteria means that it needs to be big enough to have knocked all the other bits of stuff flying around out of the way. Pluto hasn’t really managed to do this, so they decided it wasn’t a planet.

      I don’t necessarily think that arguments like this are the best use of time and scientific expertise, there are much bigger fish to fry.

    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Exactly what Katherine said: don’t care what they call it! And with they’d spend their time thinking about something else more important!!!

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Nope. It is one of the larger rocks in an area called the Kuiper belt but not the largest that lives there. Pluto was a just political planet, as it was the only ‘planet’ to have been discovered by am American astronomer. All of the planets lie in the same flat plane around the Sun as they were formed from the swirling disk of rock and gas that was ejected are the Sun was born. Pluto does not lie in this plane, it cuts through it at quite large angles, which suggests it is not created in the same way as the other planets.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Its not a planet, given the new rules, which I think is fine, It will always be special as that “rock that used the be the planet Pluto” anyhow, so it still keeps some fame/notoriety.

    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 19 Nov 2011:

      Lord Rutherford said, all science is either physics or stamp collecting. This is definitely stamp collecting 😉

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