Why Pluto is no longer a planet (or is it?)

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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.

Pluto's planetary days are fondly remembered – for decades it was remarkable for being the smallest and furthest planet in our solar system. This is only half the width of the United States and lies in a region far removed from the solar system called the Kuiper Belt, which requires a telescope.

The dwarf planet was also famous for being the only planet to be discovered in the United States.

In Space - July 14: In this paper provided by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), a close-up image of a region located near Pluto's Equator shows a mountain range in the United States. Up to 3,500 meters) taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft when it passed 7,800 feet from the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015. The probe the size of a piano, weighing 1,050 pounds, was launched on 19 January 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral. , Florida, closed by the planet yesterday. (Photo of NASA / APL / SwRI via Getty Images)

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.

This was suggested by an 11 year old girl in England, who was interested in Roman legends and who thought that naming the icy planet after the god of hell was intriguing. His grandfather forwarded the idea to a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of the United Kingdom, who then suggested it to his American counterparts at the Lowell Observatory. They eventually agreed on Pluto's name – perhaps because PL paid tribute to Percival Lowell.

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

Things went bad for Pluto in 2006, when the IAU redefined what it means to be a planet, stating that a planet must be a celestial body that revolves around the sun, is round or nearly, and " cleans the neighborhood "around its orbit. Pluto failed on the third count because its orbit overlaps that of Neptune.

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.

In 2003, Mike Brown, professor at the California Institute of Technology, discovered Eris, a dwarf planet whose mass is slightly higher than that of Pluto. Astronomers began to suspect that more of these potential planets were floating around.
Now, Brown is nicknamed "The man who killed Pluto" because rather than giving Eris and each celestial body a larger body than Pluto's planet status, the IAU decided to knock down Pluto on the ground.

New Horizons revives an old debate

But the debate about Pluto's status is raging.

In 2015, NASA's New Horizons flew over Pluto to take close-up photos and measurements of the dwarf planet, revealing that Pluto is larger than scientists originally thought.

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.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - In a blue sky scattered in the clouds, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft roars from the launch pad aboard an Atlas V rocket spewing out flames and smoke. Takeoff was at 1400 EST from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida. It was the third launch attempt in as many days after the scrubs for weather reasons. This compact piano-sized probe will benefit from a solid-propulsion propulsion engine on its journey to Pluto. New Horizons will be the fastest spacecraft ever launched, reaching lunar orbit distance in just nine hours and surpassing Jupiter 13 months later. The New Horizons science payload, developed under the direction of the Southwest Research Institute, includes infrared and ultraviolet imaging spectrometers, a multi-color camera, a long-range telescopic camera, two particle spectrometers, a space-borne dust detector, and an imaging experiment. radio science. The dust meter was designed and built by students from the University of Colorado at Boulder. This launch allows New Horizons to fly over Jupiter in early 2007 and use the gravity of the planet as a sling towards Pluto. The Jupiter flyover reduces the trip to Pluto by five years and provides the ability to test spacecraft instruments and capabilities on the Jupiter system. New horizons could reach the Pluto system as early as mid-2015, leading a five-month study possible only from the close-up vision of a spacecraft.

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.

In addition, a new study was released last year by the Space Institute of the University of Central Florida, which argued that the Pluto demotion by the IAU was " not valid".

"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.

Pluto has an ice shell, dunes made of solid methane ice and mountain tops covered with methane snow (but the snow is red instead of a fluffy white). It is also home to the largest glacier known to the solar system.

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 undeniable coolness of Pluto may explain why people are still intrigued by its categorization 13 years later.

"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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