Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly.

The scientists rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club.

Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh.

The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.

Man, everyone just keeps hatin' on Pluto.

PLANET PLUTO 1930--2006
I don't know what Percival Lowell would say about the decision.  I'll say this much:

MERCURY, VENUS, EARTH, MARS, JUPITER, SATURN, NEPTUNE, URANUS, PLUTO--
The demotion kills the mnominic device they tought us:
My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Showed
Us
Nine
Planets

Any ideas for the Big Eight?

They have to rewrite all the science book.  No prob.  They can just get rid of Pluto at the same time as Darwin.

This is gonna be tough on the real estate market.  Everybod wants a planet zip code. 
;D

Come on, does it really matter?  I hope instead of lowering the "status" of Pluto, schools will teach more about the other celestial bodies farther out in the solar system.  Kids should learn more about Charon, Ceres, Jupiter's moons, and the asteroid belts.  How do these orbits interact? What effect do they have on other celestial bodies and other orbits? What is their make up?  Kids love the planets like they love the dinosaurs.  The reduction of the number of planets eight presents opportunities to make the solar system more and not less interesting.  Didn't Europa become much more "interesting" than a crummy iceball like Pluto when scientists speculated on the possibility of life on one or more of Jupiter's moons?  (It doesn't look like there is, BTW)

When I was a kid they basically taught us, "Here's the solar system, you've got the sun, nine planets, some have moons, some don't, Earth is the only one with life, Jupiter is the heaviest, Mercury is the hottest, Mars is red, Saturn has big rings, you can make funny puns about Uranus, and Neptune and Pluto are like waaaay out there."  C'mon, we can do better than that!

It may be a bit premature to call the number of planets final, anyway.  Only one year ago, in the summer of 2005, they were ready to call 2003 UB313 ("Xena") the tenth planet!  So who knows?

Perspective on time:
Recognition of Pluto as a planet: 76 Earth years.
One revolution around the sun for Pluto: 248  Earth years.
:o

yeah, we were talking about it this morning.
http://www.inthe00s.com/index.php/topic,20596.msg1031734.html#msg1031734
its funny how important it is...i bet this is what brings the aliens down.
:o

i feel weird avbout being in a solar system with only 8 planets in it. i don't like this one bit. :-\\

PLANET PLUTO 1930--2006
I don't know what Percival Lowell would say about the decision.  I'll say this much:

MERCURY, VENUS, EARTH, MARS, JUPITER, SATURN, NEPTUNE, URANUS, PLUTO--
The demotion kills the mnominic device they tought us:
My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Showed
Us
Nine
Planets

Any ideas for the Big Eight?

They have to rewrite all the science book.  No prob.  They can just get rid of Pluto at the same time as Darwin.

This is gonna be tough on the real estate market.  Everybod wants a planet zip code. 
;D

Come on, does it really matter?  I hope instead of lowering the "status" of Pluto, schools will teach more about the other celestial bodies farther out in the solar system.  Kids should learn more about Charon, Ceres, Jupiter's moons, and the asteroid belts.  How do these orbits interact? What effect do they have on other celestial bodies and other orbits? What is their make up?  Kids love the planets like they love the dinosaurs.  The reduction of the number of planets eight presents opportunities to make the solar system more and not less interesting.  Didn't Europa become much more "interesting" than a crummy iceball like Pluto when scientists speculated on the possibility of life on one or more of Jupiter's moons?  (It doesn't look like there is, BTW)

When I was a kid they basically taught us, "Here's the solar system, you've got the sun, nine planets, some have moons, some don't, Earth is the only one with life, Jupiter is the heaviest, Mercury is the hottest, Mars is red, Saturn has big rings, you can make funny puns about Uranus, and Neptune and Pluto are like waaaay out there."  C'mon, we can do better than that!

It may be a bit premature to call the number of planets final, anyway.  Only one year ago, in the summer of 2005, they were ready to call 2003 UB313 ("Xena") the tenth planet!  So who knows?

Perspective on time:
Recognition of Pluto as a planet: 76 Earth years.
One revolution around the sun for Pluto: 248  Earth years.
:o

Things got more interesting when it wa ss dscovered that Jupiter and neptune had rings.

i feel weird avbout being in a solar system with only 8 planets in it. i don't like this one bit. :-\\


I already feel less gravity.

PLANET PLUTO 1930--2006
I don't know what Percival Lowell would say about the decision.  I'll say this much:

MERCURY, VENUS, EARTH, MARS, JUPITER, SATURN, NEPTUNE, URANUS, PLUTO--
The demotion kills the mnominic device they tought us:
My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Showed
Us
Nine
Planets

Any ideas for the Big Eight?







How about

My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Showed
Us
Nonsense


or


My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Showed
Us
Nothing


;) :D ;D ;D




Cat

Since Pluto's officially a "Dwarf Planet" now,
I move that it be re-named:
http://minas-morgul.one.pl/~witch-king/grafiki/rodonnil/images/gimli.jpg

How about

My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Showed
Us
Nonsense


or


My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Showed
Us
Nothing


;) :D ;D ;D




Cat
...or:

My
Very
Erudite
Mother
Just
Spoke
Utter
Nonsense

Many
Very
Educated
Media
Junkies
Stirring
Up
Nonsense

Many
Very
Educated
Media
Junkies
Stirring
Up
Nonsense


Love it Johnny!!! 8)

Love it Johnny!!! 8)

Ditto!

Man, everyone just keeps hatin' on Pluto.


Just be glad they didn't fool around with Uranus.

;D  ;D

Ahem, they prefer to be called "Little People Planets."
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/14/nono.gif

OK, a few thousand nerds gathered and made a decision that changes nothing in reality, but changes our ideas about reality.  
Nerds II: Now the philosophers step in.  

That's why I made the lame joke about the real estate market on Pluto!  OK, so there's this dirty iceball 2.66 billion miles away.  We used to call it a "planet," but the judges disqualified it, and now it is called a "dwarf planet."  It's still a dirty iceball 2.66 billion miles away.  

http://www.magicwd.com/stars/data/images/portraits/pluto.jpg





Cat

http://www.magicwd.com/stars/data/images/portraits/pluto.jpg

Cat

If it's a Dwarf planet now, why don't they rename it Sneezy, or Bashful, or Grumpy, huh?
Personally, though, I'd be flattered if it was christened DOC! ;D

But in reality, does the change matter at all? A dwarf planet is still a planet, and it's not like there's anyone living on Pluto to complain. It's just another paragraph about Pluto to write into future science books. And best of all, we don't even have to change from:
MY VERY ECCENTRIC MOTHER JUST SERVED US NINE PIZZAS!
See, it's no big deal.

Your Pal,
Doc
8)

On the CBS News tonight, Bob Schieffer was interviewing this old guy from England about the whole Pluto issue.

Bob could not stop laughing his azz off, because the Pluto expert was wearing a monacle

;D

Many
Very
Educated
Media
Junkies
Stirring
Up
Nonsense
...Punks!

Just be glad they didn't fool around with Uranus.

;D  ;D

I think it was 1987 when they started changing the pronounciation. 

That year it was all over the media, and radio guys were saying, "Hey, Bob, did you hear about the big satellite probe of Uranus? Ha ha ha!"

Of course, it was the source endless wisecracks before that!

you know pluto isn't even the smallest planet. mercury is.

  I suddenly feel all empty inside...

  Read something to do with Pluto being merely another piece of junk in the Kuiper Belt...

  Eight is enough...

  Eh groove ;) on...

whoa. i'm wrong, pluto's smaller than mercury. that's not what they told me when i was a kid!

well, screw it then. little punk pluto, get it outta here.

I"m going to start the Davey loses status as a planet and is now a dwarf planet thread

I think it was 1987 when they started changing the pronounciation. 

That year it was all over the media, and radio guys were saying, "Hey, Bob, did you hear about the big satellite probe of Uranus? Ha ha ha!"

Of course, it was the source endless wisecracks before that!




Yeah, like What do Star Trek and toilet paper have in common? They go around Uranus looking for klingons.  ::)





Cat

I"m going to start the Davey loses status as a planet and is now a dwarf planet thread
words can scarcely describe my disappointment when i learned he wasn't actually a fascist thug.

A fierce backlash has begun against the decision by astronomers to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

A fierce backlash has begun against the decision by astronomers to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.



A "fierce" backlash?  I didn't know people were this emotional about it.

Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.
The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.


this really makes me wanna cry  :\'(  . i feel bad for pluto. being striped of its former glory. i wonder how the plutonians will react to this  ::) .

A "fierce" backlash?  I didn't know people were this emotional about it.


Dr Alan Stern, who leads the US space agency's New Horizons mission to Pluto and did not vote in Prague, told BBC News: "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review - for two reasons.

"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It's as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like 'they tend to live in groups'.

"Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it's inconsistent."

this really makes me wanna cry  :\'(  . i feel bad for pluto. being striped of its former glory. i wonder how the plutonians will react to this  ::) .



They probably don't give a sh*t.

Dr Alan Stern, who leads the US space agency's New Horizons mission to Pluto and did not vote in Prague, told BBC News: "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review - for two reasons.

"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It's as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like 'they tend to live in groups'.

"Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it's inconsistent."



what traits allow an object to be a planet?

They probably don't give a sh*t.


it still makes me pretty sad though. i don't know why. i just feel kinda empty. pluto hasn't even been called a planet for ONE pluto year.

what traits allow an object to be a planet?



According to the definition recently adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a planet is a celestial body that :

    (a) is in orbit around the Sun;
    (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape;
    (c) is not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion of deuterium in its core; and,
    (d) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.


Under this definition, the solar system is considered to have eight planets. Bodies which fulfill the first three conditions but not the fourth (such as Pluto and 2003 UB313) are classified as dwarf planets, providing they are not also natural satellites of other planets.