Why Isn't Pluto a Planet Any More?

Dr. Robert Hurt explains why Pluto got... well... plutoed.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Pluto
• astronomy
• animation
• ask
• astronomer
• planet
• planets
• Ceres
• Eris
• Juno
• Pallas
• Quaoar
• Sedna
• asteroids

[Sowff]

Hurt fails to mention that only 424 members of the IAU voted, leaving over 9,500 members voiceless, and the IAU has not admitted that the vote was problematic. There will be a debate soon about Pluto on teevy. Stay tuned. This debate is far from over.

[SpitzerJim]

The entire IAU was invited. Only a few hundred attended. It's not like the community was deliberately shut out.

[GuruGulu]

What would happen to pluto when our sun reaches the red giant phase? Will it melt since it's practically ice? And what about jupiter, saturn, uranus and neptune.

[SpitzerJim]

Out where Pluto is, it will still be pretty cold. But it will be somewhat warmer, so Pluto (and all the outer planets) will most likely go through some changes. But since we still know so little about Pluto and its atmosphere, I wouldn't be confident making a prediction. Jupiter, however, may find itself in the habitable zone briefly, and it's possible that its moons could support some forms of primitive life for a brief period of time.

[Chairmaneoin]

How brief? a couple million years or a few decades? Me and my mate think in the future we should go to Titan and brn the methane to make water and fuel, and with the reduced gravity we can fly ornithopters. Is that possible?

[SpitzerJim]

It's not my area of expertise, but the estimate I see most often is "a few million years."

But since Titan is so small, it would have a hard time maintaining an atmosphere that would be thick enough for humans to breathe once it warms up that much. Other forms of life *could* evolve there, but in evolutionary terms, a few million years is a blink of an eye, and such life probably wouldn't get past the very simple, early stages of evolution before the Sun collapsed.

[xj2yzz]

pluto is a planet to me.

[maklash85]

Maybe science don't consider Pluto as a 9th planet. But for God Pluto still represented 1 of the highest individual in heaven one of the 9 archangel of God. That represented by two statue angels and seven candle stick in the holy tent. anything except the 9 archangels are all just a servant angel of the 9 archangel.

The One who has the largest satellite represent the 9th archangel of God and that is pluto.

[maklash85]

Maybe science don't consider Pluto as a 9th planet. But for God Pluto still represented 1 of the highest individual in heaven one of the 9 archangel of God. That represented by two statue angels and seven candle stick in the holy tent.

[ZucchiniMusic156]

well pluto isn't a giant gas planet like jupiter...

[Omid45]

Having a moon is not that unlikely. All a moon is, is a piece of object caught by the gravity of a bigger object. Now, how many objects are there in the universe moving around all the time?

[FLAME4564]

um lol probbly cuz since jupiter also has the biggest magnetic field in the whole solar system XD and yet it was only belived that it was a faild star cuz it was not big enough or even hot enough. Yet if Jupiter was bigger and hotter THEN we would be living in a double star system XD.