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Today, 13 years have passed since Pluto received a sharp drop in status – officially dubbed Pluto's Demotion Day.
Pluto was relegated in 2006 when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) created a new definition of planets and decided that Pluto did not fit the bill.
But that did not solve the problem for fans of distant Pluto.
The dwarf planet was also famous for being the only planet to be discovered in the United States.
It was spotted in 1930 by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory of Arizona (named after respected American astronomer Percival Lowell who thought the Martians had dug the discovered canals on the surface of this planet).
The story behind Pluto's name is also famous.
The newly discovered planet, orbiting more than 3 billion kilometers from the sun, will be known as the "King of the Kuiper Belt".
But how the powerful fell.
And then there were eight
IAU has reclassified it as a dwarf planet, also calling it a "Transneptunian object," which has caused outrage among schoolchildren, small planet enthusiasts and the world over. Internet in general.
For many space enthusiasts, Pluto's demotion was sudden. But in the academic world of astronomy, this process began only a few decades after the discovery of the dwarf planet.
In 1992, astronomers from the Hawaii University Observatory at Mauna Kea discovered a small, icy celestial body a little further away than the orbit of Neptune. Named QBI 1992 object of the Kuiper Belt, this object prompted speculation that Pluto was only one of many planet-like objects in the Kuiper Belt.
New Horizons revives an old debate
But the debate about Pluto's status is raging.
According to NASA, data collected by the New Horizons flyby "clearly indicated that Pluto and its satellites were much more complex than imagined", prompting space enthusiasts to to wonder if she would regain planet status.
Even the principal investigator of the space shuttle New Horizons, the global scientist Alan Stern, disagrees with the IAU and says that Pluto has been demoted simply because of its distance from the sun.
"In fact, if you place the Earth where Pluto is, it would be excluded!" Stern told CNN in 2015.
The previous year, the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center had also entered the debate. After an expert debate on the definition of the planet, they let the audience vote and, of course, the planet, backed by the crowd, Pluto.
"The definition of the IAU would indicate that the fundamental object of planetary science, the planet, is supposed to be defined on the basis of a concept that no one uses in their research", said Philip Metzger, specialist in planetary sciences of the UNC.
Metzger and his team have examined over 200 years of research and found a single study using the standard of orbit cleaning used by the IAU to downgrade Pluto.
"It's a sloppy definition," Metzger added. "They did not say what they meant by cleaning their orbit, if you take that literally, then there are no planets, because no planet cleans its orbit. "
Too cool for the school
When Pluto was demoted, this led to a wave of reprints of science textbooks to ensure that millennial students are informed that Pluto is a dwarf planet.
But it's probably the coolest planet (no) to learn, literally.
In fact, Pluto is so cold that its temperature is below zero (400 degrees Fahrenheit) and it gets colder and colder as it moves away from the sun. As a rule, Pluto is so far from the sun that the sunlight is as bright as a full moon on Earth. From the surface of Pluto, the sun simply looks like a bright star.
"The complexity of the Pluto system, from its geology to its satellite system and its atmosphere, is beyond our wildest imagination," Stern said in a NASA statement. "Wherever we turn are new mysteries."
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