Thursday, May 29, 2014

Rethinking the firing of Pluto as a planet


The day will go down in infamy. 
Astronomers had two options:
Recognize 12 objects as planets
or
Fire Pluto.

They chose poorly.
and Pluto lost it's job.

We did get a new mnemonic to remember our planets.

Mayday! Very Educated Moronic Juiced Scientists Understand Nothing


But what makes a planet?
How about some moons?
  • Pluto has 5 moons that we know of now. (Expect more to come)
  • Pluto is the largest object beyond Neptune. (It officially kicked Eris' rocky butt in the last measurements.)
  • A single orbit around the sun takes 246 earth years. (Also known as 1 Pluto year)
  • Pluto is occasionally closer to the sun than Neptune. (They cross paths)
  • One of the moon, Charon, follows it around in rotation so they always face the same direction. 

Isn't that sweet?

  • This almost got it declared a binary system, only they decided to fire it instead. Proving Astronomers have no romantic inclinations.





It possesses water/ice on the planet.
It has an atmosphere of nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide.
and of course,
It circles the sun. 
Honestly, it's downfall was that it lives in the bad part of the solar system. (Near the Kuiper belt)
The new rules to be a planet are thus:
Orbit sun 


Nearly round shape

Has cleared its Yard of debris
FAILED

How do you clean away the debris when you live in the Kuiper green ghetto belt?
Debris is everywhere!
This is just another case of prejudice against the poor. If Pluto lived closer to Earth, then it might be allowed to claim planethood. However, it would need to do so quickly since the hotter temps would evaporate the ice and water away, and in short order it would most be reclassified as a comet.

So maybe it would be best to leave Pluto in the ghetto and just do flybys on occasion, like next year.


Maybe Not

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