Haha aw, poor Pluto, the odd little reject 'dwarf planet' sitting in an irregular, fluctuating orbit out on the edges of our solar system.
Technically, I believe it's a Kuiper Belt Object.. And the only reason it ever became a planet is because when it was first discovered, scientists widely over-exaggerated its dimensions. Technically, if we were to consider Pluto a real 'planet', then we would also have to consider several other objects within our Solar System as 'planets' too - in particular, Eris, which is located further away than Pluto.. But outsizes it by quite a large margin.
I believe that for a planet to be called a 'planet', it must:
- Be in orbit around the Sun
- Have sufficient mass such that its self-gravity has placed it in a state of equilibrium, creating an almost round shape
- Have cleared the area around its orbit
Pluto fails on account of its orbit intersecting that of Neptune.. Although I imagine the fact that one of its moons, Charon, is almost the same size as it doesn't really help, too (although this is an interesting fact in itself, for reasons I'll mention in a minute
).
As such, it's been down-graded into being a 'dwarf planet', which follows essentially the same definition as a planet, except a dwarf has:
- Not cleared the area around its orbit, and
- Is not a satellite
As such, Pluto now takes its place amongst Ceres (in the asteroid belt), and Eris as a dwarf planet.. Although, several others may yet be added to this new classification, following further research. These include Pluto's largest moon, Charon, since it can be debated that Pluto and Charon are part of a binary planetary system, as opposed to Charon orbiting Pluto.. Since the point around which it orbits is not located within Pluto, rather, it is located at a common point between them.
Either way it would appear that, unfortunate as it may be for die-hard Pluto lovers, Pluto can no longer be considered to be a celestial body in the same sense as our 'major' planets. Sure, scientists are 'rewriting history' by changing its classification.. But, really, what does it matter? It's still there, and the fact that its classification has changed isn't suddenly going to throw a bunch of schoolchildren insane just because they learnt only last year that it
was a planet
.
*shrug* Things change as our understanding of the world / solar system / Universe around us evolve. We just gotta change with it, and realise that ultimately.. It doesn't really matter whether it's one or the other, eh? At the end of the day, it affects 99% of us in no way at all.. Unless you're an Astrophysicist haha.
Elem
.