Debates about Pluto

Taking music, camera lights and audience applause as a backdrop, two debators and a mediator walked into the auditorium.

One side is Neil deGrasse Tyson. They will argue that Pluto is considered a planet or a plutoid (celestial body orbiting the sun).

Tyson is the director of Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of American Natural History in New York. He supported the demise of Pluto. On the opposite side is Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tuscon, Arizona. He disagreed with the recent decision to remove Pluto from the ranks of the planets.

The debate about whether Pluto should be considered a planet is in the 'Great Planet Debate: Science as Process' conference at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory.

Before the debate began, the mediator Ira Flatow of Science Friday made the stipulation: 'Don't throw missiles of any kind on the stage'.

The image of Pluto looks from the surface of Nix or Hydra, two of Pluto's moons were discovered in 2005. The distance from Nix and Hydra to Pluto is 2 to 3 times greater than the distance from Pluto to its big moon Charon (to the right of Pluto) was discovered in 1978. (Photo: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScI).

In fact, the debate received a lot of applause, laughter as well as somewhat mean comments, but in general it was also a friendly battle. None of Tyson and Sykes gave their specific view of Pluto as well as the definition of a planet.

How many planets?

In general, Tyson said astronauts need to have a completely new dictionary to group planets and planet-like objects together. He also said Pluto does not look like the other 8 major planets of the solar system, which is in fact consistent with the Kuiper Belt - a large area of ​​objects outside the orbit of Neptune.

Tyson said: 'I'm sure Pluto is better suited there.'

Sykes argued that if an object other than stars is big enough and orbits a star, the object should be considered a planet. By this definition, the solar system should have 13 planets, although some planets outside Pluto's orbit may be discovered in the future. In addition to Pluto and 8 other major planets, there will be Ceres, Charon - the recently discovered Pluto, Eris and Makemake moons.

In response to the desire to call all the objects mentioned above as Sykes 'planet, Tyson countered: ' I want to use that word. I would like to say how you want to define and then you will realize how unnecessary it is. At that time, look for another term to group objects that have similar properties more useful for planetary scientists'.

Tyson does not like to sum up planets but wants to group objects with the same properties, although that means there will be very few planets in existence.

The story of Pluto

This debate marks another chapter in Pluto's novel school. It started when Pluto was discovered in 1930, it looked weird compared to solar system peers due to eccentric orbits, small sizes and small volumes (even lighter than the moon. Earth).

At that time some people came up with the idea that Pluto is not the same as the rest of the solar system. The story was further elaborated in 2004 when it was discovered that Sedna - an object about the size of 3/4 Pluto and lying three times away from the sun. If Pluto meets the standards of a planet, so will Sedna.

The distant picture of Sedna with the tiny sun is only slightly bigger than the star.(Photo: NASA / STScI / A. Schaller)

Caltech Mike Brown wrote a new development for the story in 2005 when he announced the discovery of 2003 UB313 - the 10th most promising planet in our solar system. It has a round shape, orbits the sun and is bigger than our 9th planet, the Pluto.In 2006, UB313 was officially named Eris.

Jack Lissauer of NASA Ames Research Center in California said: 'The argument about Pluto is boiling when Eris appears, because we can't leave everything as it is. Actually, we had to distort everything to see Pluto as a planet and Eris not. Everything was really disturbing. '

Since then the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named Pluto the 'dwarf planet', then the name 'plutoid'. Many planetary scientists disagree with the IAU's decision in 2006. According to them , this decision only received 424 astronauts' votes among 10,000 professional astronauts as well as houses. Other planetary science research around the globe.

The publication published the discovery of Pluto by Lowell Observatory a few weeks after observing and analyzing Pluto.(Photo: Lowell Observatory)

David Morrison of NASA Ames told SPACE.com about IAU's 2006 vote: 'A group of long beards gathered together and issued a formal definition is not a good idea'.

Illusion or debate?

Hal Weaver of the Applied Physics Laboratory at JHU calls this debate 'a real scientific conference that addresses all issues and discusses them'.

But Lissauer points out that even this conference has shortcomings. In a group discussion, Lissauer said: 'This conference is not representative of planetary scientists. There is a very different distribution there. '

After the debate ended, Pluto followed what many known astronauts kept in their limbo position.

At the end of the debate, Sykes said: 'I have a feeling that Neil is on the right side.'

Tyson replied: 'Illusions will continue.'