Why is Pluto no long a planet, but instead reclassified as a dwarf planet?
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answers:
vic say: It shouldn’t have to do with size, I still consider it a planet despite what some asshole astronomers have ruled
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Manuel say: Because a committee decided it to be so.
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Fred say: It may be a dwarf planet, but in our hearts Pluto will always be a planet. F in the chat for Pluto.
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F say: It's always a planet as far as I concerned.
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JASON say: Because of its size and eccentric orbit
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Ronald 7 say: Back in 2006 the International Astronomical Union decided on a Criteria for to Reclassify Planets
Three Critera were ruled
A Planet had to Gravitationally Intact, ie. Globular
Pluto Is
Steady in its Orbit, Pluto is in a way
It even Has Moons
Planets also need to have cleared their own orbit
It was ruled that since Pluto is deep in the Kuiper Belt and even comes in within the Orbit of Neptune for part of its orbit
And other Kuiper Object were found at the time, it wasn't on its own
This fact means the Pluto was deemed a failure in this Criteria
Still a Planet, although a small one Pluto got redesignated a Minor Planet
Before that, I always learnt that we had nine Planets in our Solar System
Also in 2006 the New Horizons Probe was Launched
Just before the AUI made its fateful decision
Beautiful pictures came back of Pluto and Charon in 2015, showing Worlds of Frozen Nitrogen covered by Water Ice Mountains
On New Years Day 2019 we also got photos of Ultima Thule
The first direct view of a proper Kuiper Belt Object
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gregory_dittman say: Because it's smaller than our moon and the estimated size of a death star from Star Wars.
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John say: Clyde Tombaugh died, God rest his soul.
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quantumclaustrophobe say: With the discovery of a few more objects as big or bigger than Pluto in the Kuiper Belt, the IAU came up with 3 criteria to classify an object as a planet... Pluto failed in that regard, so it was re-classified as a dwarf planet.
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megalomaniac say: Apparently there are many Pluto size objects out there in the Kuiper belt, and the majority of astronomers prefer to call them "dwarf planets". The real question is why does Pluto deserve special status just because we have known about it longer? There is actually a movement by people who think it does have special status, to have it re-instated as a "planet". Personally I don't really care either way.
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james say: It ran out of gas before it reached a planet.
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Joseph hola say: its too small and it's orbit is too weird
i mean its big enough to be spheroid, but so is Ceres and that is like 600 miles in diameter.
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poldi2 say: It fit the 2006 IAU criteria for dwarf planet.
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Lôn say: It was considered too small to be a planet...mercury just about managed to remain classified as a planet.
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OneDrop say: It is a planet.
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NONAME say: Its a planet to me
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MysteryGuy say: It's to do with it's behaviour whilst it's orbit around the centre of the solar system.
It has moons but it doesn't behave like a planet.
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Morningfox say: Pluto is only about 7% of all the stuff in it's neighborhood. Astronomers decided that in order to be part of the "big boy" planet club, an object needs to be more than half of all the stuff, or preferably 90%.
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