That clears it up a bit for me

Like many of you I have been bothered a bit by certain criteria that have been established for the definition of a planet. These criteria have demoted Pluto and other Trans-Neptunian Objects, like Quaoar and Eris, to dwarf planet status. One of the criteria that really stuck in my craw was the one that stated that a planet (or uberplanet) has to have cleared its orbital zone. Well, Neptune has not done that with Pluto nor has Earth (with the near-Earth asteroids in its orbital zone) or Jupiter for that matter with the Trojan asteroids in its path. A clarification made this much more understandable to me:

A planet is deemed as such as long as it is the dominant mass in its vicinity. So, in the case of Earth, it is many times more massive than all of the near-Earth asteroids combined. This would also include Neptune because of its size in relation to Pluto and its moons Charon, Nix, and Hydra. This is the current understanding of what it means for one of the eight classical uberplanets to have cleared their neighborhood.

And it makes me feel much more at ease. I hope you feel the same way.

Comments

  1. I don't think I'll ever be at ease that they rescinded Pluto's planet status, no matter what the explanation. My elementary science education feels like a farce.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hear you, Melissa. Pluto was always very cool. For me, cooler still are the other TNOs out there that are even bigger. Just think - it is one less thing our kids will have to store in their brains. Or one more thing. Oh forget it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nothing will stand in the way of the Word

Where are the good machines?

tightvnc keyboard mapping problem in Ubuntu 9.04