Pluto, Eris, and the Dwarf Planets of the Outer Solar System

Full Video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHNO079G1i8

Pluto, Eris, and the Dwarf Planets of the Outer Solar System
Exploring Space Lecture webcast live on Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Speaker: Mike Brown

Mike Brown is Professor of Astronomy at Caltech and the discoverer, along with colleagues, of Eris (formerly known as 2003 UB313), Sedna, Quaoar, and other TNO's (Trans-Neptunian Objects). We now have the capability of detecting Kuiper Belt Objects, at least the larger ones, directly, using Earth-based telescopes. Speaker Brown and colleagues have discovered several of them, including Sedna, Quaoar, and Eris. Pluto has lots of company! But are these really "planets," or was Pluto merely the first discovery of an entirely new class of objects? In 2006, the International Astronomical Union, the gatekeepers of astronomical nomenclature, re-defined the term "planet" to reflect our much-increased knowledge about our Solar System and, in the process, Pluto lost its planetary status. It's not a matter of discrimination; our knowledge growth merely exceeded the limitations of existing terminology.

Full Video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHNO079G1i8

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Si
• Smithsonian
• Space
• Pluto
• Dwarf
• Planets
• Eris
• Mike
• Brown
• Kuiper
• Belt

[bandet888]

I was dissapointed too. I do agree however that Pluto is more like the trans neptune objects. Pluto is more like the dwarf planets than like Jupiter and Earth. Personaly I think Earth is just as much different from Jupiter as Pluto is different from Earth. I also think a gas giant is more like a brown dwarf than it is like a TERASTREAL planet. I guess if we consider Pluto a full planet we would have to consider hundreds of more objects as planets. Pluto didn't go anywhere.

[ocerg1111]

@KurdstanPlanetarium nonsense. this was a study done just as exhaustively. Times change, data gets updated and refined.

[LitBolt64]

Great little presentation. It's accurate in all details, as far as I can tell, and adequately sums up why Pluto's status came into question. The guy giving the presentation is also one of the discoverers of Eris, the larger-than-Pluto object that brought the debate to a head. Eris is in large part responsible for the IAU's decision to define the word planet.

[KurdstanPlanetarium]

@ocerg1111 for the start Pluto did not came out of the blue, but just as Neptune was predicted by Mathematical Caulculations, and a search was conducted to look for it, it took many cold,tiring & sleepless nights for Clyde Tobmbaugh to search the night sky continously till he succeeded in finding it, and was left to an 11 years child to name it Pluto the Roman God of the underworld.

then a Neil Tyson came along, could not dicover anything, he shamelesly decided to undo the work of the others

[ocerg1111]

@KurdstanPlanetarium well how do you feel about the generation prior who were taugh there were only 8 and then someone came out of the blue and said there was a 9th? Someone always "comes out of the blue" with new information and this time the information says pluto is a kuiper belt object along with tons of others. Big deal. We've learned far more than we've lost.

[TREFIVE]

i would have believed him if he had said the dots on the far left just between the two big galaxies. there is an obvious change in that area

[keyrabuns69]

@KurdstanPlanetarium because it makes sense. Who cares if it was taught for two generations lol. Shit gets taught that is wrong all the time. That's what happens as we advance. Remember the earth WAS flat and WAS the center of the solar system at one time to...........yea wrong.

[KurdstanPlanetarium]

@Buzzlybonk why do you think it was the right one?...havent we all grew up to learn that our solar system has 9 Planets (in mater of fact 2 generations), and then someone comes out of blue and decides otherwise...that someone who could not do something of significant in Astronomy but could do a shameful one just to make a name for itself..how shame!

[Buzzlybonk]

Unwatchable video due to poor quality

[Buzzlybonk]

@KurdstanPlanetarium .-it was the right decision.