Just as school is set to return, science teachers can revamp their teaching plans, there’s now one less planet to worry about on that science test.
Planet Pluto got the punt today, after the International Astronomical Union spent the last two days at their convention in Prague debating the merits of the ninth former planet, and when it came time to do the counting, the dealers won.
The farthest away hunk of space rock that once held planetary title has now been relegated to the status of a dwarf planet, complete with two fellow travelers in the dwarf planet sphere.
It was a heated and emotional debate according to reports, with many scientists quite upset that Pluto was stripped of its title and turned into nothing more than a mass of floating rock with no discernible character.
Two other space bodies, Ceres and Xena which up until today were floating towards planetary status themselves, now find their status significantly downsized as well, lumped in with the newly demoted Pluto into the dwarf planet world.
To give students the world over a heads up on a possible new question in your mid-term science class, here’s the IAU’s new definition of what makes up a planet: “a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”
Planets affiliated with Disney characters need not apply!
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