Pluto Gets Reclassified Again

No longer a planet, Pluto is now the namesake of its own class of objects: plutoids

By Matt Ransford Posted 06.16.2008 at 2:10 pm 4 Comments

Pluto NASA

Pluto took a big hit in the eyes of schoolchildren and amateur astronomers two years ago when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) knocked it out of the rank of planets. Deemed too small and irregularly shaped, and with its orbit in the path of another planet, Pluto was relegated to a new class of "dwarf planets." The reclassification came about as the result of discoveries of bodies beyond Pluto's orbit that are the same size or larger than the icy world. And so Pluto was grouped with those far-out solar-system denizens, along with asteroids close to Pluto's size. Last week, however, in a nod to Pluto's past and to the clarification that comes from further narrowing of classification, Pluto once again joined a new rank: the plutoids.

Plutoids are a new class of bodies defined as those which maintain a near-spherical shape and have orbits which may intersect with others beyond the orbit of Neptune. That for now puts Pluto and Eris (a body beyond Pluto at nearly Pluto's size) as the only objects in the category, but astronomers are certain that many more plutoids will be discovered as telescope technology improves. It does not include asteroids like Ceres, which were previously grouped with Pluto as dwarf planets, because they live within the solar system's interior. The Kuiper Belt—a belt of asteroids beyond Neptune—is thought to harbor many plutoids.

[Via BBC]

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4 Comments

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ghost

06/16/08 at 6:45 pm

dang and i thought i had it rough, still Pluto, to me, will always be that last planet in the solar system that nobody seemed to pay attention to.

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jofreeland

07/07/08 at 8:31 am

This is plain stupid. Pluto will always be a planet in my heart

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cloud2299

11/01/08 at 1:03 pm

stupid scientists. yall made me look bad. booga booga booga! says pluto. why don't these idiots do something useful(like send a man to pluto)instead of destroying our childhood illusions of how the solar system is set up. i mean come on. how many science fair projects do we have to trash now because of this? does this mean that we have to go back and give all those kids "F"'s for putting too many planets on their solar system models? how many college kids are gonna get kicked out of school for getting an "F" when they were younger because of this? i ought to sue these scientists for emotional distress. not only for me, but on behalf of all the folks my age that now realize we were lied to consistently by our teachers. that kind of stuff can really screw with a guy's head. a bit of advice for planetoligists...MAKE UP YOUR FRICKING MINDS. don't tell us for 50 odd years that something is a planet and then out of the blue say "oh my bad. it's just a fricking rock floating around out there." and then "no wait. our bad again. it's now to be called a "plutoid"." i mean, come on. it's either a planet or it's not. are they so fricking stupid that they don't know or else can't tell the difference between a fricking rock and a planet anymore? i'm sorry (stupid scientists). Pluto is a planet, always was a planet, always will be a planet ( until humans get there and blow it up with our rampant stupidy) as far as i'm concerned. but that's just what i think.

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dontbother

07/31/09 at 9:54 am

I love how everyone is still whining like a little girl saying "Stupid IAU! What do they know? Pluto is a planet!"
Guess what? I would take the specialists' words over any nostalgia-driven idiot any day of the week.
Science should accept its mistakes and correct them. Just because you grew up considering Pluto to be a planet, it doesn't mean that it should have the special right to escape the official established definitions. Pluto simply doesn't deserve to be considered a planet. GET OVER IT NOSTALGIA FAGS.