Is Pluto a planet or not?

That's a good question. Unless I've lost count, in my 34 years on this planet, Pluto has been a planet, then it wasn't, then it was, then it wasn't. But I'm sure they're spot on with the whole universe naturally exploding into existence from nothing 13.8 billion years ago thing. You can bank on that part.

I think Pluto identified as Nibiru for a little while.
 
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It is a planet. Just a minor planet. I don't know the age of majority for planets, but it must a huge.
 
Ask Uranus...... but I've always found anything he says is full of sh.........
 
Pluto is definitely a planet. You can tell because it has profound astrological effects.:)
 
Unit74 said:
If one doesn't know what is funny and tries to pass it off as a joke.......
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It isn't a matter of funny, it's a matter of understanding "minor" and "age of majority".
 
Six miles up the road from KFLG, atop Mars Hill just west of downtown Flagstaff, is the Lowell Observatory. It is definitely worth a visit. It was there in 1930 that 24-year-old Clyde Tombaugh made and studied hundreds of photographic plates of the night sky, and happened to notice one tiny white dot moving amongst the field of thousands of stars. That tiny dot was the planet later named Pluto.

Here are the two tell-tale plates. The second was made on January 29, 1930, coincidentally the very day my father was born.

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Kenny Phillips said:
It is a planet. Just a minor planet. I don't know the age of majority for planets, but it must a huge.
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Age Of Majority Definition - "The age of majority is the age at which you are considered an adult and responsible for your actions in the legal sense. Up until the age of majority, you are considered a minor—a child."

Some astronomers categorize them as "Planets" or "Minor Planets" based solely on the size of the astronomical body in question. A "Planet" is larger then a "Minor Planet".
 
Someone oughta do something!
Pluto has long been a victim of size discrimination!
 
Serious question- so if it’s not a planet, then what is it. And whether it’s one or another, what difference does it make and to whom?

And if I don’t really give a ship what it is, why am I even posting here? That is the real question.
 
Technically no because it cannot clear its orbit of other objects.

However, if you asked it I bet you it would very much puff out its chest an exclaim "I'm a Planet!!"

455 Bravo Uniform said:
Serious question- so if it’s not a planet, then what is it. And whether it’s one or another, what difference does it make and to whom?

And if I don’t really give a ship what it is, why am I even posting here? That is the real question.
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It's classified as a Dwarf Planet due to the issue above.
 
I learned the names of the planets by learning to recite “Mother very earnestly made a jelly sandwich under no protest.”

The sentence makes no sense if you leave off the last word. Therefore Pluto must be a planet.
 
I’m guessing it makes a difference in property values for those who are speculating in Plutonium real estate...
 
Zeldman said:
They changed the name of Uranus to stop the jokes about it.


It is now called..... wait for it...


Urectum....
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A friend of mine lives at 69 Uranus Terrace here in San Francisco. He calls it the address that dares not speak its name.
This is not a joke.
 
Zeldman said:
They changed the name of Uranus to stop the jokes about it.


It is now called..... wait for it...


Urectum....
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URectum?....... hell, u damn near killed um! That's what I heard.
 
Half Fast said:
I learned the names of the planets by learning to recite “Mother very earnestly made a jelly sandwich under no protest.”

The sentence makes no sense if you leave off the last word. Therefore Pluto must be a planet.
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Sounds a bit like, “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit!”


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ARFlyer said:
Technically no because it cannot clear its orbit of other objects.

However, if you asked it I bet you it would very much puff out its chest an exclaim "I'm a Planet!!"



It's classified as a Dwarf Planet due to the issue above.
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So because it is way out and takes 250 years to circle around again, it isn’t given credit for keeping a clear orbit? Are scientists monitoring how many objects hit Pluto?

Sorry, that just seems random and I don’t get the logic for requiring that as a criteria. Take any area of space and look at it for 250 years. Something is going to drift there, especially if there is debris “near” the area.
 
The Pluto planet/non-planet debate is a touchy subject to the locals around Flagstaff, as you would expect. The tour guide at the Lowell Observatory (completely unbiased, of course) told us that if the new IAU criteria promulgated in 2006 were strictly followed, only Mercury and Saturn would still qualify as planets.

I do have a bit of a rooting interest in this story; I attended a class taught by Clyde Tombaugh at New Mexico State University in 1967.
 
The opposite of whatever celebrity “scientists” like degrasse Tyson say it is.
 
So if we were to call Pluto a planet, would you also want to call other Kuiper Belt objects planets as well?
 
I've been skeptical but find it must be a planet since ND Tyson is so against it and he has been wrong about so much
 
OkieFlyer said:
That's a good question. Unless I've lost count, in my 34 years on this planet, Pluto has been a planet, then it wasn't, then it was, then it wasn't. But I'm sure they're spot on with the whole universe naturally exploding into existence from nothing 13.8 billion years ago thing. You can bank on that part.

I think Pluto identified as Nibiru for a little while.
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I really enjoyed my astronomy class in college. I was taking it when Pluto was called a no-longer-a-planet, so that made for a very interesting and relevant topic. As far as Pluto being a planet or not itself, that more or less has to do with determining whether it adheres to the required criteria for making it a planet, which of course are defined by humans.

In general, though, I questioned a lot of what was said in terms of accuracy. The basic concepts, sure. Gravity - we know that works, we can observe it. But the various assumptions that go into figuring out a planet's mass, etc... I know those people are far, far smarter than I am, but I suspect there's some error. They might be off by a billion years or two about the big bang, but what's a billion years between friends?
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I really enjoyed my astronomy class in college. I was taking it when Pluto was called a no-longer-a-planet, so that made for a very interesting and relevant topic. As far as Pluto being a planet or not itself, that more or less has to do with determining whether it adheres to the required criteria for making it a planet, which of course are defined by humans.

In general, though, I questioned a lot of what was said in terms of accuracy. The basic concepts, sure. Gravity - we know that works, we can observe it. But the various assumptions that go into figuring out a planet's mass, etc... I know those people are far, far smarter than I am, but I suspect there's some error. They might be off by a billion years or two about the big bang, but what's a billion years between friends?
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Same here. Loved my astronomy course w/lab at university. However, mine was in '01/'02 and I think Pluto still held its planetary designation at that point, lol.
 
Pluto is a emancipated minor.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Same here. Loved my astronomy course w/lab at university. However, mine was in '01/'02 and I think Pluto still held its planetary designation at that point, lol.
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Pretty sure mine was somewhere in the 2004-2006 timeframe, I forget which semester exactly it would've been.
 
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