Pluto Is A Planet. So Why Was It Called Not a Planet?

Pluto is a planet: it’s round, it has many satellites, including a huge one (Charon), a complicated geography with mountain ranges and plains, and probable plate tectonic (thus Pluto is alive, geologically alive). Moreover, Pluto has a blue atmosphere, and plenty of water ice. It’s a world… and a wanderer (planet in Greek).

The announcement of Eris in 2005, an object 27% more massive than Pluto, created the impetus for an official definition of a planet. Considering Pluto a planet would have demanded that Eris be considered a planet as well. However, both Ganymede and Titan are larger than Mercury, and the former two are supposed to be “Moons”, not planets… 

A big deal was made that Pluto’s orbit intersects, or is somewhat entangled, with Neptune’s orbit: it has not “cleared its orbit”. The International Astronomical Union decided that when there is no clearance, there is no planet. That a world’s orbit intersects another should be irrelevant… because we know exoplanets have often migrated. Moreover Pluto’s orbit is transverse, with little intersection.
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So what’s a planet? A body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and has enough gravitation to be round due to hydrostatic equilibrium, with or without plate tectonic, regardless of its orbital parameters. That would exclude white dwarves. Haumea, a large Kuiper mostly rocky object is not round at all.

Such a definition of a planet incorporates many of the so-called “dwarf planets”, including Eris and Ceres (the largest asteroid; it has water). But it would semantically turn Earth’s Moon into a planet. Is it? Well, there is a possibility that one could set an atmosphere on the Moon. It would seem all we need would be a powerful source of energy to get oxygen and water out of the Moon’s surface rocks: they seem to have plenty of both. 

In the popular imagination, a “planet” is a large, round, potentially habitable world… Like the mythological Pandora rotating around a giant planet from the Proxima Centauri system in the movie Avatar. We already know that this Red-Yellow Dwarf star has a radius one sixth that of the Sun. It is capable of flares of 27 million degrees Kelvin, emitting plenty of hard radiation, as large as the star, and increasing its energy output by a factor of eight. Most of its energy is in the infrared, and it has at least one planet with a mass similar to Earth inside its habitable zone… Although “habitable zone” around a flare star has to be taken with a grain of salt… As I pointed out many planets may turn out to be habitable for transhumans with very high tech, but be otherwise unhospitable for indigenous animal life…

So why were some astronomers so insistent about Pluto not being a planet? Because then they could print t-shirts with “I have killed Pluto” emblazoned on it. People, especially children and those thoroughly immature, look for glory… thus showing that they feel they are not much, left to their own instruments… Demoting Pluto and making a big deal about it, claiming Pluto has been “killed”, is a perfect example of that.

Instead the important notion in planetary astronomy discovered in the last 20 years is probably that it seems there is much more water in the Solar System than anticipated… And this is very good news for space COLONIZATION (lack of water had been anticipated throughout the Solar System). Whether Pluto is a “Dwarf” or not, is a distraction for kindergarten… And we mention it here to show the folly affecting even scientists, trying to make themselves interesting, even with frivolous subjects.

Oh yes, and I mentioned “colonization”… I run with wild words I mount powerfully in my conquest of even wilder worlds. Colonization is assuredly not a politically correct word. Yet, colonization is Humanity’s main drive forcing its evolution… We all descend from colonizers. Considering the importance and nature of the concept of colonization in defining humanity, colonization has become assuredly the main reason to look out there… Now that colonization of the solar system becomes indeed possible.

Patrice Ayme

Here are 25 solar system planets and dwarves smaller than Earth… But there are others, roughly Pluto sized, like Eris, Makemake, and Haumea….

Tags: Planet, Pluto