Experts meet to decide Pluto fate, Finally we'll know what a 'planet' is... |
Experts meet to decide Pluto fate, Finally we'll know what a 'planet' is... |
Aug 14 2006, 06:06 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 295 Joined: 2-March 04 From: Central California Member No.: 45 |
-------------------- Eric P / MizarKey
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Aug 15 2006, 01:49 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
According to SpaceToday.net via NPR (National Public Radio):
A working group is expected to recommend to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that Pluto be retained as a planet, opening the door for other solar system objects to also be designated as planets. NPR reported this week that the group will likely report at an IAU meeting later this month in Prague that Pluto retain its designation as a planet, and that a new class of planets, perhaps called "dwarf planets", be created. That class of planets would include Pluto, possibly the largest asteroids, and a number of the new large objects discovered in the outer solar system. Pluto's classification as a planet has been questioned for the last several years as large icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt and beyond have been found. At least one of those objects, nicknamed Xena, is now believed to be larger that Pluto. http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3452 -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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