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| The general definition of a planet is .................. |
arcura |
02/04/06 |
The general definition of a planet is if it is in orbit abound the sun and not in orbit around a plant and if it is of great enough mass to form into a round ball shape then it shall be classified as a plant. Therefore Pluto is a planet,
Since then it was discovered that Pluto had a moon.
Now some scientists want to reclassify Pluto.
Note that there has been discovers SEVERAL such round objects beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Here is the largest of them discovered so far.
Possible new planet is larger than Pluto: research
By Patricia Reaney Thu Feb 2, 12:34 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - A distant object discovered in space last year which could be the 10th planet in our solar system is around a third bigger than Pluto, German astrophysicists said on Wednesday.
They determined the diameter of the potential new planet, known as 2003 UB313, by measuring its thermal emission.
"We actually measured the size of UB313 which was not known prior to these observations," Professor Frank Bertoldi, of the University of Bonn and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany who headed the research team, said in an interview with Reuters.
According to their calculations it has a diameter of 3,000 km (1,864 miles), about 700 km (435 miles) bigger than Pluto, which would make it the largest solar system object found since the discovery of Neptune in 1846.
"Since UB313 is decidedly larger than Pluto, it is now increasingly hard to justify calling Pluto a planet if UB313 is not also given this status," Bertoldi added.
The International Astronomical Union will decide if UB313, found by Professor Mike Brown and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, is a planet. No date has been set for a decision.
Although the size of UB313 is known, what it is made of is not, a factor that is important in determining planet status.
No new planet has been designated since the discovery of Pluto in 1930.
Brown and his team discovered UB313 by looking for visible wavelengths in the skies. They determined the orbital shape and distance of the potential planet, which has been nicknamed Xena after the warrior princess of television fame, by its speed.
Last October, Brown and his team announced UB313 had a moon called Gabrielle.
The possible planet, the most distant object seen in the solar system, is an icy body in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune. The belt contains objects left over from the formation of our planetary system some 4.5 billion years ago.
Solar system objects are visible through the light they reflect from the sun. Bertoldi and his team used a 30-meter (100-ft) telescope in southern Spain and a very sensitive heat sensor to measure the heat radiation to determine the size.
UB313's orbit is elongated. It zooms as close as 5.6 billion km (3.5 billion miles) from the sun and moves out to as far as 14.5 billion km (9 billion miles) away.
Earth orbits consistently at 150 million km (93 million miles) from the sun. It takes the potential planet 560 Earth years to complete one trip around the Sun, compared to Pluto's 250 years.
(Additional reporting by Deborah Zabarenko in Washington)
What do you think, should UB 313 (Xena) and the other round ball shaped objects be called planets?
If not my what title should they be identified? |
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