Pluto - Planet or Moon?

[BigCrickNan]

It's made out of frozen methane, it deserves to be a planet.

 

[ste_mc_efc]

i want to change my vote to neither

 

[edgarisapimp]

Some astrophysicist on public TV here in the states has a little 30 second segment disguised as a commercial (at least that's what I think). So anyways, one time he said that if you put Pluto the same distance away from the sun as the Earth, it would grow a tail and therefore shouldn't be considered a planet. I guess I never thought of it like that - but the definition of planet still needs to be refined. Let's just say that anything bigger than Mercury should be considered a planet. That'll save us all a lot of confusion .

 

[andrew_nixon]

Let's just say that anything bigger than Mercury should be considered a planet. That'll save us all a lot of confusion .

So you'd consider Ganymede and Titan (the largest moons of Jupiter and Saturn repsectively) to be planets then?

 

[usy]

I agree with the Logic behind Andrew's post,

Have to read abit more about it to vote.

 

[andrew_nixon]

The current proposal is as follows:

Any near-spherical object larger than 800 kilometres in diameter that orbits the sun, which is not a star, and has a mass no smaller than one-12000th of the earth.

Under this proposal, we will now have at least 12 planets.

The 8 biggest planets, plus a new category called Plutons, made of Pluto, Charon (now recognised as a twin planet, just as I said!) and 2003 UB313. The largest asteroid Ceres, would also be classed as a planet.

 

[nightprowler10]

2003 UB313, which is larger than Pluto, would probably join Pluto in that category, with a snazzier name of course.

I've read about 2003 UB313 already being referred to as Xena.

 

[andrew_nixon]

I've read about 2003 UB313 being referred to as Xena.

Yes, although that name was just a nickname by the discoverers, and was not submitted to the IAU.

 

[nightprowler10]

The current proposal is as follows:

Any near-spherical object larger than 800 kilometres in diameter that orbits the sun, which is not a star, and has a mass no smaller than one-12000th of the earth.

Under this proposal, we will now have at least 12 planets.

The 8 biggest planets, plus a new category called Plutons, made of Pluto, Charon (now recognised as a twin planet, just as I said!) and 2003 UB313. The largest asteroid Ceres, would also be classed as a planet.

I read an article pointing out that there are upwards of 40 objects in the Kuiper Belt that could be considered planets under this new definition. That'd be a bitch to memorize.

 

[andrew_nixon]

I read an article pointing out that there are upwards of 40 objects in the Kuiper Belt that could be considered planets under this new definition. That'd be a bitch to memorize.

That article is wrong. There are 12 candidates subject to closer examination though.

 

[andrew_nixon]

For those interested, the 12 "candidate planets" are the following:

2003 EL61 (A Kuiper belt object)
2005 FY9 (Kuiper belt)
Sedna (Kuiper belt/Oort Cloud)
Orcus (Kuiper belt)
Quaoar (Kuiper belt)
2002 TX300 (Kuiper belt)
2002 AW197 (Kuiper belt)
Varuna (Kuiper belt)
Ixion (Kuiper belt)
Vesta (2nd biggest asteroid)
Pallas (3rd biggest asteroid)
Hygiea (4th biggest asteroid)

I'm glad I'm not at school anymore, I'd never remember 24 names of planets!

 

[BlackCapForLife]

Too small to be a planet so is therefore a moon imo.

 

[Hamish]

Why would Pluto be a moon? A moon is a sattelite that orbits a planet, but the only thing Pluto orbits is the Sun.

 

[andrew_nixon]

Too small to be a planet so is therefore a moon imo.

How on earth could it possibly be a moon?

Besides, under the probable new official defintion of planet, it is a planet, as are two bodies smaller than it.

 

[Milo_LCCC]

i think pluto should be a planet because i spent alot of time memorizing the planets for an exam