My son who is Kindergarten 2 came home yesterday telling me that Pluto is dead. " We are left with 8 planets only ibu..Pluto dah mati dah..dah explode..!!" I was scpetical at first and asked what he meant by that? I told him there are 9 planets altogether and showed him the book. But curiousity gets to my head, cos maybe he is right. Maybe i was 'tertinggal ke belakang.." and was i right!
When i checked the internet, how true. Only Pluto did not explode like what my son said, but it just disappeared from sight cos it is too small to be called a planet.
So OFFICIALLY, Pluto is no longer a planet and OFFICIALLY there will only be eight planets in the solar system.
LETS LEARN ABOUT PLUTO:
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"Pluto is dead," said Mike Brown, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology who spoke with reporters via a teleconference while monitoring the vote. The decision also means a Pluto-sized object that Brown discovered will not be called a planet. The vote involved just 424 astronomers who remained for the last day of a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Prague. It was updated 10.35 pm August 24 2006. Hm...nampak sah me tak dgr loceng hahaha..lucky my son was attentive in class..
Anway, Alan Stern, leader of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute.ditukil sebagai berkata, "I'm embarrassed for astronomy. Less than 5 percent of the world's astronomers voted," he said."This definition stinks, for technical reasons," Stern told Space.com. He expects the astronomy community to overturn the decision. Other astronomers criticized the definition as ambiguous.
So the resolution will be as follows:
The decision establishes three main categories of objects in our solar system.
Pluto and its moon Charon, which would both have been planets now get demoted because they are part of a sea of other objects that occupy the same region of space. Earth and the other eight large planets have, on the other hand, cleared broad swaths of space of any other large objects.
So Pluto is now called a dwarf planet...but dwarf planets are not planets under the definition, however. So..Pluto is no longer a planet maa....
"There will be hundreds of dwarf planets," Brown predicted. He has already found dozens that fit the category.
Pluto, discovered in 1930 was at first thought to be larger than it is. Recent discoveries of other round, icy object in Pluto's realm have led most astronomers to agree that the diminutive world should never have been termed a planet. Kesian...
Tapi Stern called it "absurd" "It's a farce." sebab only 424 astronomers were allowed to vote, out of about 10,000 professional astronomers around the globe. So he said it won't stand. So some astronomers are already circulating a petition that would try to overturn the IAU decision.
Owen Gingerich, historian and astronomer emeritus at Harvard who led the committee that proposed the initial definition, called the new definition "confusing and unfortunate" and said he was "not at all pleased" with the language about clearing the neighborhood.
Gingerich also did not like the term "dwarf" planet.
"I thought that it made a curious linguistic contradiction," Gingerich said during a telephone interview from Boston (where he could not vote). "A dwarf planet is not a planet. I thought that was very awkward."
Gingerich added: "In the future, one would hope the IAU could do electronic balloting."
Years of debate
Astronomers have argued since the late 1990s on whether to demote Pluto. Public support for Pluto has weighed heavily on the debate.
Caltech's Mike Brown loses out in one sense. The Pluto-sized object his team found, called 2003 UB 313 will now be termed a dwarf planet. Thus as of today Brown no longer discovered a planet..huhuhu...But Brown called the result scientifically a good decision. He said. "The public is not going to be excited by the fact that Pluto has been kicked out.But it's the right thing to do."
Textbooks and classroom charts will, of course, have to be revised.
| Martin Kornmesser / IAU |
This lineup shows the 12 planets that were proposed last week, with a wedge of the sun at far left. Ceres, Pluto, Charon and 2003 UB313 are barely visible. Now Charon will continue to be considered Pluto's satellite, and the three other worlds will be dubbed "dwarf planets" rather than full-fledged planets. The planets are drawn to scale, but without correct relative distances.
Source from http://www.msnbc.msn.com
