The History and Controversy of Pluto’s Reclassification as a Dwarf Planet

SPACE — Previously Pluto was considered the ninth planet in the solar system. However, in 2006, it was downgraded to dwarf planet status.

Pluto is the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system and was once considered the ninth and most distant planet from the sun.

This alien planet is located in the Kuiper Belt, a zone beyond Neptune’s orbit filled with hundreds of thousands of rocky and icy bodies, each larger than 100 kilometers and more than 1 trillion comets.

Pluto stopped being a planet in 2006 when it was reclassified as a dwarf planet. This reduction in status caused controversy and sparked debate among the scientific community and the general public.

The following are facts about Pluto:
1. American astronomer Percival Lowell was the one who first suggested the existence of Pluto in 1905 when he observed strange deviations in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. Lowell thought there must be another planet whose gravity was pulling on these ice giants, causing a mismatch in their orbits.

Lowell later predicted the location of this mysterious planet in 1915 but died 15 years before its discovery.

2. Pluto was finally discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory, based on predictions by Lowell and other astronomers.

3. Pluto got its name from Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old girl from Oxford, England, who suggested to her grandfather that this new world be named after a Roman god.

His grandfather later passed the name on to the Lowell Observatory. The name also honors Percival Lowell, whose initials were the first two letters of Pluto.

4. Why is Pluto no longer considered a planet?
For a long time, scientists thought Pluto was unique to the Kuiper Belt. But as astronomers discovered more and more about the Kuiper Belt (and the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter), scientists learned that there were many objects like Pluto.

Discovering all these new objects means astronomers need to be more specific about what we mean by the word “planet,” and figure out which category Pluto falls into.

5. Astronomers from the International Astronomical Union have 3 rules for an object to be called a planet. The object must orbit the sun.

Second, the object must be massive enough to be approximately spherical. Third, the object must clear its orbit of objects comparable to its own mass. This means that the object must be gravitationally dominant in its orbit).

Pluto meets two of these three criteria, but not the third. Even one of its own moons, Charon, is about half the size of Pluto. So, no longer a member of the planets, Pluto is now the “king” of the dwarf planet group!

2024-02-11 23:30:00
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