{"id":7239,"date":"2010-12-02T18:46:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T23:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/astrologicalmusings\/?p=7239"},"modified":"2010-12-02T18:46:06","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T23:46:06","slug":"fighting-for-plutos-right-to-be-a-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/astrologicalmusings\/blog\/fighting-for-plutos-right-to-be-a-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting for Pluto’s right to be a planet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Pluto<\/a>Astrologers chuckle when we hear people say that Pluto is no longer a planet. \u00a0Try telling that to someone going through a gnawingly agonizing Pluto transit! \u00a0 But ever since Pluto was reclassified (some say \u201cdemoted\u201d) a few years ago, a small but very vocal contingent of astronomers is fighting to classify Pluto as a planet once again.<\/p>\n

One of these astronomers is Alan Stern, who was interviewed by Space.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Just because Pluto orbits with many other dwarf planets doesn\u2019t change what it is, just as whether an object is a mountain or not doesn\u2019t depend on whether it\u2019s in a group or in isolation.<\/p>\n

What we see in the Kuiper Belt is a third class of planets, the dwarf planets, or DPs. Most, like Pluto and Eris, have primarily rocky compositions (like Earth), moons, and polar caps, atmospheres, seasons and other attributes like the larger planets. They\u2019re just somewhat smaller.<\/div>\n
Back before the Kuiper Belt was discovered, Pluto did look like a misfit that didn\u2019t belong with either the terrestrials or the giant planets. Turns out that was exactly right, but now we know why: Pluto looked like a misfit because our technology back then couldn\u2019t see that it was just the brightest and easiest to detect of a large new class of planets.<\/div>\n
In fact, that\u2019s why it\u2019s clear Ceres [the largest object in the asteroid belt] was a planet all along, but was misclassified for a time because we didn\u2019t have enough similar examples to recognize dwarf planets as their own category. Today, however, it\u2019s clear the DPs outnumber both of the other two planet classes we know of in our solar system \u2014 the giants and the terrestrials. Which types look to be the misfit now, versus the norm?<\/div>\n
Some people seem to be uncomfortable with that fact. I see it as just another step in the Copernican revolution that began by displacing the Earth from the center of the universe.<\/div>\n

What we see in the Kuiper Belt is a third class of planets, the dwarf planets, or DPs. Most, like Pluto and Eris, have primarily rocky compositions (like Earth), moons, and polar caps, atmospheres, seasons and other attributes like the larger planets. They\u2019re just somewhat smaller.\u00a0Back before the Kuiper Belt was discovered, Pluto did look like a misfit that didn\u2019t belong with either the terrestrials or the giant planets. Turns out that was exactly right, but now we know why: Pluto looked like a misfit because our technology back then couldn\u2019t see that it was just the brightest and easiest to detect of a large new class of planets.\u00a0In fact, that\u2019s why it\u2019s clear Ceres [the largest object in the asteroid belt] was a planet all along, but was misclassified for a time because we didn\u2019t have enough similar examples to recognize dwarf planets as their own category. Today, however, it\u2019s clear the DPs outnumber both of the other two planet classes we know of in our solar system \u2014 the giants and the terrestrials.<\/p>\n

Which types look to be the misfit now, versus the norm?\u00a0Some people seem to be uncomfortable with that fact. I see it as just another step in the Copernican revolution that began by displacing the Earth from the center of the universe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For another view, see \u201cHow I Killed Pluto<\/a> and Why it had it Coming\u201d about Mike Brown, the discoverer or Eris who tried to kick Pluto out of the solar system.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Astrologers chuckle when we hear people say that Pluto is no longer a planet. \u00a0Try telling that to someone going through a gnawingly agonizing Pluto transit! \u00a0 But ever since Pluto was reclassified (some say \u201cdemoted\u201d) a few years ago, a small but very vocal contingent of astronomers is fighting to classify Pluto as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":537,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[100,974,1373],"class_list":["post-7239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","tag-alan-stern","tag-is-pluto-a-planet","tag-mike-brown"],"yoast_head":"\nFighting for Pluto's right to be a planet - Astrological Musings<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Astrologers chuckle when we hear people say that Pluto is no longer a planet. \u00a0Try telling that to someone going through a gnawingly agonizing Pluto\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/astrologicalmusings\/blog\/fighting-for-plutos-right-to-be-a-planet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fighting for Pluto's right to be a planet - 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