Pluto The Dead Planet By Mark Maglione Pluto

Pluto, The Dead Planet By Mark Maglione

Pluto l The question that I received is why the planet Pluto is no longer a recognized planet in our soar system.

Question 1 l What percentage of astronomers made the decision to no longer consider Pluto a planet?

Question 2 l The second question that I wanted to know is when Pluto was declared a planet, when Pluto was taken off the list of planets, and how long this debate over whether it is a planet has been going on.

Question 3 l Why is Pluto no longer a planet? I wanted to know the exact reasoning here of why it was taken off of the list.

Relationship to the Standards l Question 3 relates to Standard 4: The Physical Setting, but more specifically Key 1: The earth and celestial phenomena can be described by principles of relative motion and perspective. This is directly related to this key because Pluto is in space and is associated with celestial phenomena.

Relationship to Standards cont. l Question 1 does not link to any standard exactly, but it does pose a few questions. The fact that so few astronomers voted on this, how the entire world and scientific community accepting this is a little hazy. Schools are changing curriculums based on scientific proof. With such a small percentage of scientists making the decision, what are schools supposed to follow?

Answers to the Questions l Question 1 - Only 424 astronomers voted on whether or not Pluto should be a planet. This is only 5% of the worlds astronomers.

Answers to the Questions cont. l Question 2 - Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh by luck. The debate over whether it should be considered a planet started in 2003 when Eris a body in space that was bigger than Pluto but farther away from the sun was discovered. Pluto was declared not a planet on August 24 th 2006.

Answers to the Questions cont. l Question 3 - Pluto is no longer considered a planet because at the International Astronomical Union in Prague, the criteria of a planet was changed. A full-fledged planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large enough to have become round due to the force of its own gravity. In addition, a planet has to dominate the neighborhood around its orbit. Its’ moon was half the size of Pluto and compared to the other 8 planets this moon was huge. So it was determined that Pluto did not ‘dominate’ its’ neighborhood.

Sources l BBC News. 24 August 2006. BBC News. http: //news. bbc. co. uk/2/hi/in_depth/5282440. stm [10 October 2007]. l Britt, Robert Roy. 24 August 2006. MSNBC. http: //www. msnbc. msn. com/id/14489259/ [10 October 2007]. l CBS/AP. 24 August 2006. CBS News. http: //www. cbsnews. com/stories/2006/08/24/tech/main 1931722. shtml [10 October 2007]. l Inman, Mason. 24 August 2006. National Geographic. http: //news. nationalgeographic. com/news/2006/08/060824 -plutoplanet. html [10 October 2007]. l Wikipedia. 10 October 2007. Wikipedia Foundation. http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Pluto[10 October 2007].