Was I dreaming or did any of you hear about Pluto not being considered a planet any longer?

Answer 1

But Uranus is still protected.

Answer 2

Its True that u heard Pluto is no longer a planet!!! I thinks its coz pluto's too small to be considered as a planet.

""Whoa! Pluto's dead," said astronomer Mike Brown, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, as he watched a Webcast of the vote. "There are finally, officially, eight planets in the solar system."

In a move that's already generating controversy and will force textbooks to be rewritten, Pluto will now be dubbed a dwarf planet.

But it's no longer part of an exclusive club, since there are more than 40 of these dwarfs, including the large asteroid Ceres and 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena—a distant object slightly larger than Pluto discovered by Brown last year.

"We know of 44" dwarf planets so far, Brown said. "We will find hundreds. It's a very huge category."

A clear majority of researchers voted for the new definition at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague, in the Czech Republic. The IAU decides the official names of all celestial bodies.

The tough decision comes after a multiyear search for a scientific definition of the word "planet." The term never had an official meaning before.

What Is a Planet Today?

According to the new definition, a full-fledged planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large enough to have become round due to the force of its own gravity. In addition, a planet has to dominate the neighborhood around its orbit.

Pluto has been demoted because it does not dominate its neighborhood. Charon, its large "moon," is only about half the size of Pluto, while all the true planets are far larger than their moons.

In addition, bodies that dominate their neighborhoods, "sweep up" asteroids, comets, and other debris, clearing a path along their orbits. By contrast, Pluto's orbit is somewhat untidy. "

Who knows maybe some day they'll say there is no such thing as PLANETS!!!( of course i know that might not happen!)

Answer 3

Yup the brains behind this decided if Pluto was planet than three other "bodies" out there would also have to classified as planets as well so they all got together and determined what the definition of a planet should and should not be and in the end Pluto got the boot. So expect some changes in tons of school books around the world!

Answer 4

Check Yahoo news. Or read any of the literally hundreds of posts about it here yesterday. Astronomers have been debating this at a huge convention for the past week. Yesterday they passed a resolution making it official. Pluto is no longer a planet. If you do a search for "Pluto" on Yahoo Answers, you will find dozens of questions and hundreds of explanations why. I'm not going to repeat them all here. :)

Answer 5

Yes. The scientific community got together to decide the defintion of what makes a planet. Pluto no longer fits the new definition.

Answer 6

Yep, I was anxious to hear what standards they used to decide this...

Seems that Pluto crosses the orbital path of Neptune instead of keeping it's own orbit.

I thought to myself, if a unique feature keeps it from being a planet, then none of them are a planet and since that seemed so patently stupid to me, I decided that I would call Pluto a planet no matter what the inter-galactic counsel decreed.

Answer 7

After years of wrangling and a week of bitter debate, astronomers voted on a sweeping reclassification of the solar system. In what many of them described as a triumph of science over sentiment, Pluto was demoted to the status of a “dwarf planet.”

In the new solar system, there are eight

Answer 8

you are totaly right. pluto is not a planet now, The International Astronomical Union (IAU), said that.

they said this... "This means that the Solar System consists of eight "planets" Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. A new distinct class of objects called "dwarf planets" was also...."

chek it out in this link
http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0603/index.html

Answer 9

Actually, they officially made it not a planet. They found something just like it, and they were debating wether or not to call it a planet. Then they decided since it was dead, it wasn't one. And since Pluto is dead, it isn't a planet, either . There are eight planets in our solar system.

Answer 10

Yep- there was an article featured on the Yahoo home page yesterday. It's now considered a dwarf planet.

Answer 11

You weren't dreaming. The worst part of it is, Disney has also said Pluto is no longer a pup.