Do you think Pluto should still be a planet even after all it was part of our solar system for so long?

Answer 1

I think it should be. I was sad for Pluto when it was demoted.

Answer 2

When Pluto was first discovered it was thought by some to be bigger than the Earth. Since then better measurements have shown it to be much, much smaller. Recently more objects about the same size have been found. They were really too small to be called planets but since they were around the same size as Pluto, either they had to be called planets or Pluto had to be demoted to be consistent. At the recent meeting of the International Astronomical Union the non-unanimous vote was that it was no longer to be called a planet.

It's orbit is highly inclined to that of other planets, it crosses the orbit of Neptune and it is very much smaller than the other planets, and about the same size as other objects outside Neptune's orbit.

Scientists reclassify things all the time as better information comes in. Usually they reclassify bacteria, plants or sometimes animals or rocks. This almost never makes the news even though it is more likely to be important to us because these things are here on Earth. Pluto is a very long way away and as recently as 1929 nobody even knew it was there. There is no reason why anyone should get their knickers in knots over this.

The only people who have a right to have an opinion on this are those with detailed knowledge of the solar system and astronomical classification schemes. What anybody else thinks actually does not count. Science is not a democracy.

Answer 3

Pluto is smaller than our moon.
Its orbit is on a different plane than all the other planets.
There are other objects in the solar system bigger than Pluto and they too are not planets.

Pluto has a very large moon, another dwarf planet too. and they together are in a binary orbit with each other.
The two combined made Pluto look bigger until the Hubble telescope could tell there were two objects.

For these reasons, Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet.
If not we would have to add all the known dwarfs and that would be over 30 planets in our solar system.

Answer 4

Pluto is still part of our solar system. It just isn't a planet. It is a dwarf planet like several other similar objects. Ultimately, it is simply a matter of classification: do we consider it to be a planet, but then have to admit up to 40 planets, or do we call it a dwarf planet and only have 8 planets? Since Pluto is so much like other Kuiper belt objects, it seems more reasonable to classify it as such (just like Ceres is an asteroid). It is still out there, orbiting the sun.

Answer 5

Ceres was called a planet about as long as Pluto's existence was known. No, I don't think Pluto should be called a planet. It doesn't meet the criteria. I have long been dissatisfied with Pluto's classification. I mean, if Pluto is a planet, so is Charon, so is Xena, and what about Varuna, Quaoar, and the other dozen dirty snowballs found so far that are almost as big?

Pluto is smaller than our moon. It doesn't really deserve to be called a planet. Mercury--we should think about it too. It meets the criteria, but it is pretty small.

Answer 6

What we label it really doesn't matter. Certainly not to Pluto or the rest of the solar system.
And we didn't even know it existed until 1930, so it's only been part of the solar system as we know it for less than a hundred years.
It's still there, it's still an enigma, and New Horizons is still on it's way (to rendezvous with Pluto, whatever we call it) in 2015.

Answer 7

No.

It never should have been designated as a "planet".
(One of the main reasons for calling it a planet is that the famous astronomer, Percival Lovell, predicted another planet and spent years searching for it. When a more-distant object was actually found, several years after Lowell's death, many people want to name it after him; in fact, the name Pluto was chosen to incorporate his initials.)

However, it was later found that Pluto was definitely not the object that Lowell was seeking, and it did NOT account for the the data on which he based his predictions. (The actual cause turned out to be incorrect mass figures for Uranus and Neptune.)

Earlier, the term "planet" had been applied to Ceres, Vesta, and a few other asteroids that were discovered between Mars and Jupiter. After a while, as more asteroids were found, the term was dropped, and they were no longer considered "planets". When Pluto was discovered (in 1930), it was called a planet for various reasons, but this was not justified.

If Pluto fits the definition of "planet" than it's twin, Charon, also does, and so do the 4 or 5 other object found to orbit even farther out (in the belt where comets originate). In fact, some of the other, new objects are even larger than Pluto!

Now that extra-solar planets are being discovered, we needed one
standard definition to apply uniformly. The "planet" definition chosen requires the object to be massive enough so that gravity makes it round (which Ceres and others are not), and also requires it to "sweep" its orbit clear of other objects (which Pluto certainly does not, given that both Charon and Vesta continue to exist!)

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Answer 8

No, because it is too small to be a real planet, but we didn't know that when it was discovered in 1930. At that time there was no telescope good enough to show it as anything but a point of light, with no apparent disk at all. It was estimated to be as large as Mars just based on its brightness. Since then we have built better telescopes and have found that it is smaller than Mercury. Just a few years ago it passed in front of a distant star, which is a very rare occurrence, and that allowed us to measure its size quite accurately. It turned out to be much smaller than our own Moon. That fact, combined with the discovery of other, even more distant objects almost as large, and one object even larger (informally called Xena for a while but now officially named Eris), prompted astronomers to demote it to dwarf planet. Some would argue that a dwarf planet is still a planet, which is, in my opinion, the reason they made up the new category of dwarf planet instead of just demoting it all the way to asteroid. The classification "dwarf planet" is ambiguous enough to allow people who really want it to remain a planet to consider it as one if they like.

Answer 9

Pluto is still part of our Milky Way galaxy. It is still part of the solar system. It is considered to be too small to be a planet.

Answer 10

If we change the criteria and it no longer meets criteria, then no. It shouldn't.

Do you think we should still consider the planet flat since they believed that for so long?

Answer 11

Pluto is there. It's the same as it always was. It wasn't offended, and it doesn't care what we call it.