Facts About Pluto - A Former Planet

 

Given its many strange characteristics, it’s little wonder that there are some very interesting facts about Pluto, despite its diminutive size and great distance from us. Since its discovery in 1930, we have been more or less content considering Pluto as our 9th and most distant planet. In recent years however, in a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), Pluto was downgraded to the status of a "dwarf planet", in other words, no longer really a member of the planetary club. Needless to say, the decision was met with howls of protest, and t-shirts were even printed with messages proclaiming that Pluto would always be a planet in our hearts. It was probably one of the more emotional IAU meetings ever.


Just Why Is Pluto No Longer A Planet? - Just what was it, when you consider the various facts about Pluto, that led to that decision? Like the other planets in our solar system, Pluto revolves around the sun, it is spherical in shape, and despite its small size, it even has three moons, Charon, Hydra , and Nix, though  the latter two are admittedly quite small. It is the moons which contributed in part to the reclassification of Pluto. One of the conditions set forth by the IAU is to be a planet, the object in question has to have cleared tits neighborhood of other objects or matter. Not completely cleared, but the planet in question must contain by far the largest amount of mass in that neighborhood.


One of the facts about Pluto in this regard is that it does not meet this last condition. There are a number of "neighbors" to Pluto besides its three moons. Pluto lies in what is called the Kuiper Belt, which is something like the asteroid belt found closer to the Earth. The objects in the Kuiper belt are for the most part made up of frozen gases, rather than rock and metal as is the case with the asteroids. Still, some of the residents of the Kuiper Belt are nearly as large as Pluto, and the combined mass of all of these objects greatly exceeds Pluto's mass. For that reason, Pluto lost its designation as a full-fledged planet. So Pluto in a sense is just another member of the Kuiper Belt, although it is a small planet, or more precisely, a dwarf planet. In spite of the size of our Moon, and in spite of the presence of asteroids in the vicinity of Earth, the mass of the Earth is much greater, by a factor of a couple of million, than the combined mass of all of its neighbors. So, we get to remain a planet. Since kicking Pluto out of the club happened with a great deal of disagreement and controversy, and perhaps we haven't heard the last on the subject, one might wonder what of reaction would be if Earth were downgraded to a “lower classification”. The residents of Pluto might give an icy cheer.

Who Came First, The Planet Or The Dog? - Just as famous as the distant member of our solar system, is a dog named Pluto, Mickey Mouse's dog to be exact. Pluto the dog came in to existence about the same time the planet was discovered. And as it turned out, Pluto the dog was named after Pluto the planet. Something else named after Pluto is the element plutonium. It's not unusual to name an element after a planet; after all, uranium was named after another planet, Uranus. In delving into the various facts about Pluto, the planet, the question arises, "What was Pluto named after?” There is in Greek mythology, a god of the underworld by the name of Pluto. The connection is uncertain unless the underworld is considered to be cold, remote and distant, which certainly applies to the planet. In truth, a number of names were proposed; Pluto made the short list and was eventually selected. The discovery of Pluto by the way was nearly an accident. Astronomers were looking for a “Planet X”, believed to account for some variations in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. To account for these variations, Planet X would have had to be fairly good sized. Instead of finding a Planet X, which probably doesn't exist, Pluto popped up. As it turns out, Pluto is way too small to account for the supposed variations, which were incorrectly calculated in the first place. It's one of the more unusual facts about Pluto that it was discovered when it was!