Wednesday, October 29, 2008

formerly known as the "ninth planet"


Softening the blow of IAU's 2006 decision to strip Pluto of its planet status, an IAU committee, "has suggested that small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune should carry the "plutoid" tag", reported the BBC recently. Pluto is now a "dwarf planet", along with other solar system bodies like Ceres (who got promoted from asteroid), and recently discovered Eris, Haumea, and Makemake.
Many people are still fuming at IAU for Pluto's demotion and were not satisfied with the "plutoid" consolation. Among them is Alan Stern, the principal investigator of New Horizons, the NASA mission to Pluto, launched in 2006, and scheduled to arrive in 2015. Said, Alan Stern: "It's just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up," he told the Associated Press. "Plutoids or haemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant."

2 comments:

mahler76 said...

Ο Πλούτωνας θα είναι πάντα πλανήτης ότι κι αν λένε.

SK said...

It's an emotional issue for many people! Who would have thought...