Famous astronomers Alan Stern and David Greenspoon called for
returning Pluto’s status as a full-fledged planet, based on the data on
its geology, which were extracted by the probe New Horizons.
“The decision to redefine the concept of the planet, as well as to
deprive Pluto of this title, was profoundly wrong – even the supporters
of such an action criticized it, it was taken by a small group of
astronomers at a meeting in Prague in 2006, when almost all of its
participants had already parted and included a lot of critical
shortcomings, “- write Stern and Greenspoon.
Prior to the beginning of this century, astronomers believed that
there are nine planets in the solar system, beginning with Mercury and
ending with Pluto. In the late 90s and early 21st century, they
discovered dozens of large dwarf planets behind the orbit of Pluto,
which made them doubt that it really is a planet. For example, as
scientists at that time believed, the dwarf planet Eris is beyond the
orbit of Pluto and outperforms it by its mass.
In this regard, the controversy that ended in August 2006 with the
victory of “plutonosceptics” broke out. With the filing of Michael
Brown, a famous astronomer from the California Institute of Technology
who discovered Eridu, the International Astronomical Union officially
“demoted” Pluto, moving it from the category of planets to the number of
dwarf planets.
In accordance with the definition of MAS, the planet has the right to
be called only that object that rotates around the Sun, has enough mass
to acquire a spherical shape, and at the same cleared its surroundings
of asteroids and other “garbage”. For Pluto, the last item is not
executed, so he lost this title.
Such a decision caused a sharp rejection among many astronomers,
including Alan Stern, whose team just launched the probe New Horizon to
the already degraded planet. He publicly called this decision of the IAU
“complete nonsense” and promised to provide evidence of his rightness.
“Even if we just look at the solar system, this decision will be
perplexing.” It turns out that Earth was not a planet in the first 500
million years of its life, since its orbit was not cleared of large
asteroids and other “garbage.” Or, if today we, for example, move the
Earth or another world into the asteroid belt, they magically cease to
be planets, “- write astronomers.
In addition, as Stern notes, the discovery of several thousand
exoplanets, as well as the data collected by New Horizons during the
rapprochement with Pluto, point to the uselessness of such a formalistic
approach to determining the status of celestial bodies. The small moons
of Saturn, considered to be planets, actually have more in common with
asteroids than with Pluto and his “degraded” cousins.
“In fact, astronomers” violate “this ruling of the IAU every time
they call any world discovered outside the solar system, a planet, and
discuss geology and other properties of the dwarf world.” On the other
hand, journalists and supporters of this idea continue to distort the
image of Pluto in minds of the townsfolk, schoolchildren and students,
equating it in status to ordinary asteroids, “the scientists continue.
A year ago the scientific team of New Horizons had already proposed a
new definition for the planet, more related to its geological
properties, rather than to the orbit, and sent it to the IAU for
consideration. As Stern and Greenspoon hope, the governing bodies of the
IAU will agree with their idea in the near future and return to Pluto
the status of the planet.
“The word planet itself appeared much earlier than science and
astronomy, it is impossible to drive common sense into any linguistic
framework.The meaning of words is determined by culture, not by voting,
and the same applies to scientific paradigms,” scientists conclude.
Tags
Space
