Should there be a tenth planet?

Question

I heard that a new rock has been discovered and it might be the tenth planet..or that pluto was going to be taken out. Anyone know anything about it

Answer 1

I have always denied Pluto's existence as a planet. "It's a chunk of ice!" I thought. "And what kind of planet has an elongated orbit?"

But the discovery of 2003 UB313 or "Xena" has forced me to reconsider:

What do have as a criteria for establishing even the definition of a "planet" anyway? The answer - so far - is, of course, NONE.

I am now considering a re-classification of the celestial bodies we term planets. A fair and accurate system is already in effect for classifying stars; all we need to do is apply that to planets.

For example: Jupiter would be a "gas-giant-planet" and Pluto and Zena would be "ice-dwarf-planets".

Or maybe we could just go back to the idea of only 8 planets in this solar system. I could swing either way at this point.

Answer 2

Personally I don't think there should be a tenth planet. There probably shouldn't even be nine planets, but for the sake of history and tradition that will probably never change. It might though. The IAU (International Astronomical Union) is bringing the topic of "What is a planet?" next month at their yearly meeting. They are the official word on names of planets and what gets considered a planet. Whether they'll make Xena a planet or not isn't know yet and there is some speculation that they actually may remove Pluto's status as a planet (that would be my personal preference). The problem is that it is highly likely that as telescopes and methods improve, we're going to find a lot more of these larger objects, like Xena, that could be considered planets, but are so far removed from the rest of the solar system that we're not sure what to classify them as. Hopefully the IAU will set a precedent next month that can be used to resolve this issue when it arises.

Answer 3

Why not a 10th planet? Y'know, scientists are just loving this. Any decision that they make regarding the definition of a planet must surely include planets that are in other solar systems. And the possibilities, combinations and variations are endless. The scientists currently seem to be leaning towards defining a planet as any object over 2000km in diameter, which would qualify both Pluto and 2003 UB 313 as planets. However, if we use to 2000km method to define a planet, what would happen when we discover a little star out there that has only one very tiny "planet" revolving closely around it, and the "planet" was less than 2000 km in diameter? Like I said, scientists are loving this.

Answer 4

General question. What makes a planet a planet? Is it the mass? Diameter? Orbit? Distance from the sun?

I would say that the following are minimum characteristics of planets.

1 & 2 below are arbitrary, you may prefer other variables.

1. Minimum Mass. 10^20 Kg. (about 1/100th the mass of Pluto).
2. Minimum Diameter. 1,500 Km (about 900 miles)
3. Orbit. Must be in orbit around a sun, and not a planet (therefore, Luna is not a planet, even though it's larger than Pluto).
4. Distance from sun. Not relevant, as long as it is clearly in orbit around the sun. Therefore, a massive sun may have planets dozen's of light-years away.
5. Is not itself a sun. That would be a binary or higher system.
6. Must not be in interstellar space, not associated with a sun or suns.
7. Not in a field of other bodies with the same approximate orbit. That would leave out anything in the Asteroid Belt and Oort Cloud.


Now, how about "Xena" (aka, 2003 UB313)? To Hades (Greek God of the underworld) with conventions for naming planets. Xena is perfect. And Gabrielle for the moon.

Answer 5

scientists are making an exact definition for planet and if Pluto isn't a planet then the tenth planet isn't either. Or if Pluto is a planet then so is the tenth planet.

Answer 6

There is a strong debate going on in the astronomical community as to what size a body in our solar system should be called a planet.Many of the recent discoveries are bigger than Pluto(Our MOON is bigger than Pluto and it's only somewhere in the region of being the 4th or 5th largest at that,as Moons go).Who knows,maybe the international astronomy people out there will get their acts together and name a whole list of new planets!.(Just waiting to see what happens).

Answer 7

Yes the planet 2003 UB 313 was discovered reacently and titled a 'planet'. Now if in the debate pluto is titled planet then there will be 10, if not, back to nine.

Answer 8

yes...there is some debate on whether to take Pluto out or leave it in...but there is a planet that was found further than pluto. Planet X (aka Xena ((no joke))) is past Pluto and is believed to be bigger and have it's own moon....i remember reading about Xena in a Yahoo science article a while back.

Answer 9

enable's make one factor sparkling: it rather is not appropriate what non secular texts say with regard to the existence of this planet. It would not remember what somebody interprets historical writings to indicate. It would not remember what every person says on the information superhighway. What *does* remember is this meant planet has in no way been seen. If it replaced into certainly going to bypass Earth in 3 years' time it may be truthfully seen to even the main rank newbie astronomer. as that's, no-one looks to correctly known the place this factor is or the place we'd desire to continuously additionally be finding to be sure it. people who do declare to correctly known the place that's demonstrate considerable lack of know-how, such by using fact the thought it could in basic terms be seen from Antarctica (regardless of Earth being a sphere, and as a result having an outstanding line of sight to any factor interior the sky from a minimum of 50% of its floor at any time), or that the south pole telescope captured pictures of it in January one 12 months (regardless of January interior the south pole having 24 hours of image voltaic an afternoon). i've got even seen human beings declare they have taken video of it, yet continuously its with the aid of a window and it looks superb suited next to the solar, and that they in no way seem to think of that somebody else could in simple terms have observed such an obtrusive merchandise interior the sky. No planet will bypass with the aid of Earth in 2012. If it replaced into going to we could have seen it, and observed its gravitational outcomes on the outer planets a protracted time in the past.

Answer 10

Yes there is a 10th planet, it's known as the planet "Wormwood" ,apparently, and it is supposedly inhabited with reptilian like beings. Something to do with the fact that they're coming to rape the earth of it's gold because they use it as a fuel or something. Don't laugh, I've heard that theory from a lot of people and read about it on a lot of sites.