Will Pluto have the last laugh? A group of NASA scientists hopes so.
A group of members of the New Horizons mission to Pluto are making the case to redefine what constitutes as a planet to be more inclusive. The proposed definition would reinstate Pluto as a planet, and grant planetary status to the Earth’s moon and more than 100 other celestial bodies in our solar system.
Kirby Runyon of Johns Hopkins University is reigniting the debate over Pluto’s planetary status at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston on Tuesday.
First discovered and classified as a planet in 1930, Pluto had its planetary status dragged out from under its cosmic feet in 2006 because there appeared to be other objects like Pluto beyond the eighth planet (Neptune). Pluto was thus demoted to a “dwarf planet.”
"[Pluto has] everything going on on its surface that you associate with a planet,” Runyon said in a statement. “... There's nothing non-planet about it."
Since Pluto’s demotion, debate over whether Pluto deserves to be classified as a planet or not has raged in the scientific community.
The demotion of the planet is quite simply “bulls***,” Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto, told Business Insider in 2015.
Last week on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Science Superstar Neil deGrasse Tyson said those who are pro-planetary status for Pluto need to “get over it.”
“Pluto had it coming from the beginning,” Tyson said. “Pluto’s orbit crosses that of another planet. That is no kind of behavior for another planet…. Stay in your lane.”
The team of researchers suggested a new definition of a planet in a February proposal, that is more in line with “scientific classification and peoples’ intuition'" should be adopted.
“In the mind of the public, the word 'planet' carries a significance lacking in other words used to describe planetary bodies,” the proposal states. “In the decade following the supposed 'demotion' of Pluto by the International Astronomical Union, many members of the public, in our experience, assume that alleged 'non-planets' cease to be interesting enough to warrant scientific exploration.”
Wait, what? Pluto a planet again?
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