NASA scientists want to make Pluto a planet again

NASA’s scientists group has suggest a new definition of what shape a planet, nearly possible opening the door for Pluto (Pluto Planet) to return to its former status.

Pluto firstly discovered and classified as a planet and a part of our solar system in 1930, Pluto had its planetary status dragged out from under its cosmic feet in 2006, because its appeared to other objects like Pluto behind (8th) eighth planet Neptune. So Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet.” 

Read more: Astronomers find System of seven Earth-like planets where life can be possible

The demotion of planet is very simple “bulls***,” principal investigator Alan Stern, of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto told Business Insider in 2015. 

After two years, Stern and his colleagues are not back off from that belief, Gizmodo reports.  Proposal sent to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for approval, the team recommended that new definition of planet that is more in line with “scientific classification & peoples’ intuition.”

  

“In the mind of public, the word planet carries significance lacking, and in other words used to describe planetary bodies,” the proposal states. “In the decade following the supposed 'demotion' of Pluto by the (IAU) International Astronomical Union, many members of public, in our experience, presume that alleged 'non-planets' cease to be interesting and amazing enough to warrant scientific exploration.” 

The scientist’s advice that the planets should constitute as “round objects in space that are smaller than the Stars,” So excluding white dwarfs, Neutron stars, and black holes from the planetary status. 

"A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that never undertake nuclear fusion and that has sufficient self-gravitation to assume spheroidal shape sufficiently described by a triaxial ellipsoid anyway of its orbital parameters,” the proposal present, noting that Earth's moon would constitute as planet under the new definition.

  

Stern and his colleagues note that IAU’s (International Astronomical Union) definition of planet is too small and identify planets only as objects that our sun and orbit "requires zone clearing, which no planet in our solar system can meet the expectations since new small bodies are always injected into planet-crossing the orbits." 

While this is not first time that researchers have passed arguments against Pluto's demotion, the proposal forces International Astronomical Union to make decision. 

Stay tuned, again you may need to relearn that there are nine planets we have in our solar system.

 

Follow Mary Bowerman on Twitter: @MaryBowerman