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Reviewing the Planetary Status of Pluto

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April 06, 2017

What is the issue?

There has been a recent debate among the astronomical community to decide on whether the Pluto is a planet or not.

Why has the debate about Pluto being a planet been exhumed all over again?

  • The immediate provocation was a Johns Hopkins University scientist, Kirby Runyon, and his poster last month at a scientific conference.
  • His presentation argued that the definition of what constitutes a planet be changed.
  • Dr. Runyon and poster co-authors (including Alan Stern, a senior astronomer who’d vigorously opposed Pluto’s demotion a decade ago) were part of the science team on the New Horizons mission to Pluto, operated for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
  • In the summer of 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft became the first to fly by Pluto, passing within 8,000 miles and sending back the first close-up images ever of Pluto.
  • These factors combined to whet interest in the revivification of Pluto’s planetary status.

What’s Runyon’s argument and will that once again mean nine planets?

  • The International Astronomical Union, in 2006, laid down three criteria for a rocky body to be planet: it must orbit the sun, it must be round, the body and its satellites must “orbit in a clear path around the sun”.
  • It’s the last bit that buried Pluto, as many other asteroids and planets, some bigger than Pluto, were found in its orbital neighbourhood.
  • Dr. Runyon and co-authors proposed that the offending third clause be deleted. To be sure, there isn’t a novel scientific argument for Pluto’s case that hasn’t already been made.
  • Pluto being made a planet again, according to him, would mean that “the public would again fall in love with planetary exploration.”

What are the consequences of accepting the modified definition?

  • Along with Pluto being upgraded from its current “dwarf planet” status, nearly 100 other celestial bodies in the solar system could also become planets.
  • The celestial bodies include Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and our very own moon.
  • It also means that there will be nothing special about the existing eight planets and that, according to critics of Dr. Runyon, would offer a distorted picture of the solar system.

Can there be finality to this debate?

  • The International Astronomical Union arrived at their decision to demote Pluto after two years of debate and a proposal to a ‘Planet Definition’ sub-committee.
  • This was then put to a vote, with 237 astronomers voting for and 157 against.
  • There’s no report yet of the IAU moving to reconsider their position.
  • Dr. Stern has argued that most of these astronomers were not ‘planetary scientists.’ Those who are convinced, proceed with their science as if Pluto is the planet from pre-2006 textbooks.

 

Source: The Hindu

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