The NASA director decides Pluto's identity after more than a decade of discussions!

Most of us know that there are nine planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

But in 2006 textbooks had to be rewritten around the world after scientists voted to reclassify Pluto as a "dwarf planet".

The debates on Pluto's identity have been raging for over a decade and many astronomers have tried to bring Pluto back to the list of planets.

The 13-year-old debate on the identity of the space object was raised again after NASA's director, Jim Pridenstein, declared that he believed that Pluto should be classified as a planet.

In a recorded interview that was not broadcast, Pridenstein said his belief remained firm: Pluto should be officially classified as a planet.

He added: "You can write that the responsible" NASA "Pluto has announced a planet again, I do not care, it is the information that I have learned and I am committed to it. . "

Since its discovery in 1930 until 2006, Pluto appeared on the list of planets. However, it has always been considered a little strange because of its somewhat anomalous orbit.

In 1992, scientists began to discover objects in the Kuiper belt, many of which are small and cold, much like Pluto.

Then, in 2005, astronomers discovered Eris, the largest and second largest dwarf planet in the solar system, an object larger than Pluto, which raises the question of whether Eris was also a planet or not.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) was later tasked with identifying Pluto. After a year of discussions, it was decided to classify Pluto as a dwarf planet, based on new rules stating that planets should "clean the neighborhood of their orbit" and because Pluto's orbit is rectangular and interferes with its orbit. Neptune, he was excluded from his planetary classification.

Source: mirror

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