Yes Virginia, Pluto Really is a Planet

Posted by Guy Pirro | 09/12/2018 12:33AM | 6 Comments

What is a planet? For generations the answer was easy -- A big ball of rock or gas that orbited the Sun... And there were nine of them in our Solar System. But then astronomers started finding more Pluto-sized objects orbiting beyond Neptune. Then they found Jupiter-sized objects circling distant stars -- First by the handful and then by the hundreds. Suddenly the answer wasn't so easy. Were all these newly found things planets? The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organization that is in charge of naming newly discovered worlds, tackled the question at their 2006 meeting. They tried to come up with a definition of a planet that everyone could agree on. But the astronomers couldn't agree, so they voted and picked a definition that they thought would work. The results have been mixed. In the end, the IAU did accomplish one thing -- They figured out a way to turn something simple into something complex. Now, a recent study by the University of Central Florida concludes that the reason Pluto lost its status as a planet is not valid and that a proper definition of a planet should be based on its intrinsic properties rather than ones that can change, such as the dynamics of a planet’s orbit -- the rationale that was used by the IAU to strip Pluto of its planetary status.