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Pluto's planetary status debate comes to Waynesboro
WAYNESBORO - Almost 10 years years after Pluto was demoted from its planet status the debate continues over whether it should be eligible to rejoin the ranks of the planetary solar system without the "dwarf" status.
In 2006 Pluto was dropped from the list of planets in the solar system to the classification of a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union after being labeled as a planet since its discovery in 1930. Now, 10 years later, there is new information that could reignite the fierce debate over Pluto's planet eligibility.
Gettysburg College physics professor Dr. Larry Marschall will be discussing that new information about Pluto during a program 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, at the Visitors Center at Renfrew Park, 1010 East Main St. The program is free and open to the public.
The new information was discovered last July when a NASA spacecraft known as "New Horizons" flew within 7,800 miles of Pluto's surface and took thousands of images and recorded other data from Pluto. The information revealed a few things, including that Pluto is larger than previously believed and has tall mountains made of frozen water and huge icebergs floating in oceans of frozen methane, according to Marschall.
Marschall went on to say that Pluto is just one of many "TransNeptunian" objects that are orbiting billions of miles from the sun. Those objects are remnants of the material that made up the earliest solar system and studying Pluto and its cousins helps scientists to understand how the earth and the solar system formed 4.7 billion years ago, according to Marschall. One of the key factors for the debate is that scientists can't agree on what is the definition of a planet.
According to a USAToday article from October 2014, associate director of the IAU's Minor Planet Center, Gareth Williams said that Pluto is not a planet, citing the official definition, which states that a planet is a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, is round or nearly round, has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit, meaning it is not surrounded by objects of similar size and characteristics. Williams said that Pluto failed the third criteria since it had several other dwarf planets near it and also overlaps Neptune's orbit at times.
However, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern is hopeful that the findings will tip the balance back in favor of calling Pluto a planet once more. In a USAToday article from July 2015, Stern told Popular Science, "I think that one of the things that will come out of the New Horizons mission is that the public will take a look, and they won't know what else to call Pluto but a planet, and a pretty exciting one."
Marschall will be giving background information on the history of the world's knowledge of Pluto and will also be showing pictures and videos from New Horizons' orbit. After the talk, there will be a question-and-answer segment and if the weather permits, the Tri-State Astronomers club will have telescopes set up for night sky viewing.
"Pluto is important because we are curious creatures and we want to know all we can about the world around us," Marschall said in an email.
David Barr, 717-262-4752