Geology Fun Fact - Dwarf Planets

Geology Fun Fact

Topic: Dwarf Planets

When Pluto was demoted from a planet, there was a new category created called “Dwarf Planet”. Unlike a planet, a dwarf planet does not need to clear its orbital neighborhood. In addition to Pluto there were four other dwarf planets identified within about two years. One is Ceres, the largest asteroid in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. The others are in the Kuiper Belt or beyond, which is out beyond the orbit of Pluto. These are Eris, which is larger than Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake.

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Geology Fun Fact - Pluto

Geology Fun Fact

Myth: Pluto was stripped of planethood because people didn’t like it. 

In reality, the reason Pluto got demoted is because the definition of a planet was not set until the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined it in August 2006. In short, they stated that a planet:

1. Orbits the Sun
2. Is relatively round
3. Has cleared its orbital neighborhood

#3 is the reason Pluto was demoted. Pluto’s moon, Charon is about half the size of Pluto and does not orbit Pluto. Essentially, they orbit the same point in space making it more of a binary system and not a lone planet. So, by definition Pluto is not a lone object orbiting the sun and therefore is not a planet.

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Geology Through Literature - Paradise Lost

The next up on my Geology Through Literature thread is Paradise Lost by John Milton published in 1667. You can get my complete thoughts on the book/story over at my other blog - The Remnant, but for here I will just go into the geological or basic scientific aspects that are brought up in the story.

The geological content in the story is rather sparse but I did note one thing that I wanted to mention.

Book V

"Moon, that now meet'st the orient sun, now fly'st,With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies; And ye five other wandering fires, that move In mystic dance not without song, resound His praise, who out of darkness called up light."

I highlighted this paragraph because the "five other wandering fires" refers to the five planets of the Solar System. That got me wondering, when were the planets discovered. If five planets (not including our own) were known by 1667, when did we know about them?

1st Planet Discovered - Earth. Year....duh.

2nd-6th Planets Discovered - Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn can all be seen by the naked eye. So it is impossible to determine exactly when they were discovered but they were known since at least the 2nd century BC (Sachs, 1974).

7th Planet Discovered - Uranus - March 13, 1781. Discovered by William Hershel who realized that it was moving with respect to the stars (meaning that it did not move with the stars. It was doing it's own thing).

8th Planet Discovered - Neptune - September 18, 1846. Discovered by Johann Galle and Heinrich Louis d'Arrest based on predictions by Urbain Le Verrier. Le Verrier predicted there must be another planet further out due to the eccentric orbit of Uranus.

9th Planet Discovered - Pluto - February 18, 1930. Discovered by Clyde Tombaugh who used eccentricities in Neptune's orbit to predict the presence and location of Pluto. It is now known that the "eccentricities" were actually just measurement errors and Tombaugh got lucky.

9th Planet Rescinded - Pluto - August 24, 2006
    - Due to the redefinition of what a planet actually is, Pluto's planetary status was revoked. You can read more about it here: Space.com

Through most of history our reliance on the stars for navigation and even for light during the evenings had provided us with the knowledge of 6 of the planets in our Solar System. Only two (based on the current definition of a planet) remained to be discovered.

References
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/56-our-solar-system/planets-and-dwarf-planets/general-questions/222-who-discovered-each-planet-intermediate
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Neptune_and_Pluto.html
http://www.space.com/43-pluto-the-ninth-planet-that-was-a-dwarf.html
http://www.jstor.org/stable/74273?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

In the News - Oh Pluto...

In the News

So recently I came across this article describing how Pluto has yet again been screwed by the scientific community: As Science Evolves, So Does Pluto. And I thought it pertinent to reminisce about my old friend, the planet, I mean dwarf planet, I mean planetoid, I mean plutoid, what?!?!?.

1930 - 2006 - Pluto was discovered and deemed the 9th planet in the solar system. Essentially completing the popular acronym MVEMJSUNP.

2006 - The IAU (International Astronomical Union) destroyed the ever loving acronym (what the hell is a MVEMJSUN?) by reclassifying Pluto as a "Dwarf Planet". This classification includes Ceres - the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt and some other objects large enough beyond Pluto's orbit in the Kuiper Belt (Like Eris). They determined this because they felt that Pluto did not "clear" its orbit (I think because its moon Charon is roughly the same size).

2008 - And they go and do it again. Pluto is now referred to as a "Plutoid". Why? I don't think there is any good reason other than their definition of a "dwarf planet" sucked so they came up with a less controversial definition and needed a new name with it. Now Plutoids are big objects outside of Neptune's orbit. Abandoning Ceres to be the only "dwarf planet".

And in 2009 the debate continues with the article previously mentioned. As Science Evolves, So Does Pluto.

My take on it is that it is all basically semantics. Nothing has changed since 1930. Pluto is still the same size. It still has the same orbit. And as far as I am aware will be like that for a long long time (until it flies into Neptune). They discovered Charon in 1979 and that didn't change anything. I say put it back to being a planet. It is different enough from the other stuff in the Kuiper Belt and it has a fairly long history as a planet. Just leave it be.

A rose by any other name...

In the News - Bring Pluto Back!!!!

The IAU (International Astronomical Union) has officially demoted Pluto to a new class: the Dwarf Planet. This means that under the classical definition of planet ratified at the meeting there are only 8 classical planets.

I am at odds about this. I say we start a petition to bring Pluto back. Anyone with me, comment on this blog and we will get this overruled. Come on people Pluto was not just any planet for most of you. It was your inner rouge.

This is not the usual planet, like Mars or Jupiter, that could go in any old elliptical orbit like all the others, but this was an eccentric planet. Willing to take risks. To think outside the box. To become the 8th planet at times and not always the 9th. What other planet can boast that. NONE I tell you, none. What planet could live in the realm of gaseous planets and still not be considered one of them, none other than our beloved Pluto. And now they go and try to take that away from us.

From this moment on, I am on strike of the planetary system set up by the world. Strike I tell you. STRIKE!!!!

Article Here

And note: The definition of a dwarf planet states that the dwarf planet "has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and is not a satellite."