Status Of Pluto a Planet. Is Pluto a Planet?

Status Of Pluto as a Planet. Is Pluto a Planet?

Status Of Pluto as a Planet. Is Pluto a Planet?

You must have heard about this name Pluto when you were a kid. Pluto is one of the most controversial planet 😂 . It took around 12 years for researchers to identify the status of Pluto as a planet. Several researchers publish their paper to go against or in favor of Pluto a planet.

But after so long again a new research paper makes us think to restore the planetary status of Pluto a planet. Today in this post I will tell you all about Pluto and about a researcher who claims that Pluto is to be considered under the category of planets.

Status Of Pluto a Planet. Is Pluto a Planet?

👉Pluto a planet:

⚝ Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt.

⚝ Pluto was the first object to be discovered in Kuiper belt.

⚝ Although many researchers worked on this mysterious planet it was first discovered but Clyde W. Tombaugh.

⚝ It was discovered on February 18,1930.

⚝ Initially, after discovery, Pluto was considered to be the 9th planet from the Sun.

Status Of Pluto a Planet. Is Pluto a Planet?

⚝ But when many other objects of similar size after 1992 were discovered the question arises on the status of Pluto as a planet.

⚝ In 2005 when a new planet called Eris was discovered then this led International Astronomical Union(IAU) to redefine the term "planet".

⚝ In 26th General Assembly  IAU formally in 2006 define the term planet and due to this Pluto was excluded from the category of Planets and reclassified it as a dwarf planet.

⚝ Also, Pluto is the largest and the second most massive known dwarf planet in the solar system.

⚝ Pluto is formed from ice and rocks.

⚝ Pluto has five known moons till date: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra.

⚝ New Horizon was the first spacecraft sent in space to fly by Pluto.

⚝ It helped us to know the detailed measurement and observation of Pluto and its moons.

⚝ The most flabbergasting thing about Pluto is it takes 248 earth years to take a round of its orbit.

⚝ Pluto's rotation period, its day, is equal to 6.39 Earth days.

⚝ Pluto has currently five known natural satellites.

⚝ Pluto's distance from Earth makes its in-depth study and exploration difficult.

👉Is Pluto is a Planet?

⚝  The new researchers are now looking at a different picture. They are now not focusing on the characteristics and qualities of the celestial bodies rather they are looking deep in the past research papers.

⚝ Four researchers dug the 1802 published papers and the word planet used as defined by the controversial 2006 verdict from the (IAU) that reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet.

⚝ Pluto stood on 2 requirements needed to be called as a planet but the third requirement i.e. that planets "clear" their orbit, making the gravitational big shots in their neighborhoods.

⚝ Now planetary scientists are no more following the standard IAU definition but they are doing it because it's functionally useful.

⚝ The definition agreed upon at that IAU meeting requires that

 an object should meet three conditions to be called as a planet:

1. It must orbit the sun, 

2. It must be massive enough that its gravity pulls it more or less into a spherical shape,

3. It must clear the neighborhood around its orbit.

since Neptune's gravity influences its neighboring planet Pluto, and Pluto shares its orbit with frozen gases and objects in Kuiper belt, that meant that Pluto was out of planet status.

However, in a study published in the journal Icarus, researchers reported that this standard for classifying planets is not supported in the research literature.

They all reviewed scientific literature from the past 200 years and found only one publication- from 1802- that used the clearing orbit requirement to classify planets, and it is based on since-disproven reasoning.

The planetary scientist said that the literature review showed that real division between planets and other celestial bodies, such as asteroids, occurred in the early 1950s when Gerard Kuiper published a paper that made the distinction based on they were formed.

However, even this reason is no longer considered a factor that determines if a celestial body is a planet, said Metzger, a planetary scientist from the University of Central Florida in the US.

Metzger said that the definition of a planet should be based on its intrinsic properties, rather than ones that can change, such as the dynamics of a planet's orbit.

Instead, Metzger recommends classifying a planet based on if it is large enough that its gravity allows it to becomes spherical in shape. Pluto, from an instance, has an underground ocean, a multilayer, atmosphere, organic compounds, evidence of ancient lakes and multiple moons he said.

"It's more dynamic and alive than Mars. The only planet that has more complex geology is the Earth " said Metzger, PTI.