Today astronomers from all over the world at the International Astronomers Union gathering in Prague finally nixed Pluto from the 9 (now 8) planets of our solar system. Pluto, named after the Roman God of the Underworld, just didn't make the cut after much discussion on a final definition for "planet". Last week a secret group of astronomers that had been appointed to define the word basically came out with a definition that a planet would be something with enough self gravity to make it round, but that didn't hold up since that would have brought in many other things to qualify as planets. So they scrapped that definition and came up with the following:
"To qualify [as a planet], a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It must also be large enough in mass for it's self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a...nearly round shape, and has cleared its neighborhood around its orbit." *
So no more Pluto. All of those elementary school teachers will have to come up with new mnemonics to teach their kids the planets without including Pluto. All new models of the eight planets will have to be built. Think of the impact!
I just hope Disney won't change the name of Mickey's dog to Uranus.
* source:
BBC News
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