Thursday, September 21, 2006

They aren't planets, okay?

` I have long pondered when people were going to just admit that Pluto is a Kuiper Belt object and if Pluto was to be classified as a planet, then more of them would have to be as well. Consistency is important with classification - unfortunately, since planets didn't evolve from one another, classifying characteristics tend to be arbitrary.
` Thankfully, for now it has finally been decided by various cosmologists that these spheroid objects - Eris, Pluto, 2005 FY9, 2003 EL61, Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, and Varuna - are said to be, not planets, but 'dwarf planets', which are round like planets, but significantly smaller.


` I hope that this new classification shuts everyone up for a while. Thank you for your time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I think everyone has heard.

Spoony Quine said...

` Okay, so I'm not on top of things....