The Pluto debate

I haven't followed the theories, but when I was a kid, they said they
thought it was mostly solid ice.
Knowing what we do now, that water most likely has to be present
for life to be there, makes me wonder if that "planet?" may be the one
that does have life of some kind on it.
 
life on pluto? doubtful. its just so far from the sun. and yeah its sort of anomolous when it comes to the other planetary bodies. Its small size. Its unusual orbital eccentricity and inclination. One could make an argument for it being something slightly different then a pure planet. But like that article says I think its merely a semantics game. Theres no need to make a big fuss over it. The real question is what the heck do we do with this new planetoid rock creature thing called SEDNA which doesnt really fit any known predictable pattern. Its further out then the Kuiper belt but its much to close to be part of the Oort cloud. And its way way too big to be just a random rock. So what is it? And how did it get there? Just read an interesting article about it this morning in fact. They have a few theories but they really arent very sure at all.
 
It's been following the same planentoidal orbit for 40+ years. Sounds like a planet to me. What do you think Goofy?
 
well i dont know how much stock you want to put in 40 years when yer talking about a solar system object gonz. :D the damn thing takes 248 years just to go around the sun once. wake me up in 50 million and lets see if something has happened.
 
What if Saturn, or Jupiter turned out to be nothing but a ball of gases?
Do you think they'd be reclassified?
 
Thulsa Doom said:
well i dont know how much stock you want to put in 40 years when yer talking about a solar system object gonz. :D the damn thing takes 248 years just to go around the sun once. wake me up in 50 million and lets see if something has happened.
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In the matter of time, I agree. However, that is one slow moving piece of space junk following a rather defined pattern.
 
Leslie said:
K. One of you smarty pants define planet.
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According to dictionary.com, it's a planet... :confused:

A nonluminous celestial body larger than an asteroid or comet, illuminated by light from a star, such as the sun, around which it revolves. In the solar system there are nine known planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
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I've heard of more detailed criteria... like a spherical shape which would suggest that at some point there would have been a magma core causing tectonic shifting, settling, and uphevals. A 'living' piece of architechture, per se, whereas your general debris is just dead lumps of material with varied shapes that never had a self evolving structure that could lead to things such as atmospheres, weather, or liquid water.
 
That definition outlines perfectly some of the members of this board: just dead lumps of material with varied shapes that never had a self evolving structure that could lead to things...
 
Winky said:
That definition outlines perfectly some of the members of this board: just dead lumps of material with varied shapes that never had a self evolving structure that could lead to things...
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Yeah ,but you and gonz are still welcome here.
 
Define "larger than an asteroid or comet"

Main Entry: 1as·ter·oid
Pronunciation: 'as-t&-"roid
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek asteroeidEs starlike, from aster-, astEr
1 : any of the small celestial bodies found especially between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
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Well, that certainly narrows things down :rolleyes:

This is somewhat better
Main Entry: com·et
Pronunciation: 'kä-m&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English comete, from Old English cometa, from Latin, from Greek komEtEs, literally, long-haired, from koman to wear long hair, from komE hair
: a celestial body that consists of a fuzzy head usually surrounding a bright nucleus, that has a usually highly eccentric orbit, and that often when in the part of its orbit near the sun develops a long tail which points away from the sun
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So, define bigger
 
Gonz said:
Define "larger than an asteroid or comet"



Well, that certainly narrows things down :rolleyes:

This is somewhat better


So, define bigger
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Hell I dunno. I just quoted dic.com. :lloyd:
Ask Clyde Tombaugh. He's the one that said it was a planet.
I guess it was the only thing he could see that far away, that was that big.

We know it's smaller than the moon, but the moon isn't considered a planet,
but then Pluto doesn't revolve around another planet, just the sun.
Also don't comets travel like way faster?
And asteroids/meteors as unc said, are more odd shaped. :shrug:
 
Tombaugh never got that good a look at it. The problem isn't wether Pluto is a planet ... but wether the two other large objects they've found beyond pluto are planets? And if they're not, does that mean that Pluto shouldn't be. And then, what the hell do you make of Charon?
 
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