Are there nine planets in the solar...

Are there nine planets in the solar body -- as popularly believed -- or 12 or unruffled dozens more? An astronomy parley in Prague, Czech Republic, will suffrage Thursday on the definition of a planet. The leading proposal would accept anything with enough gravity to gather itself into a cylindricaled shape (and orbiting a star). nevertheless some astronomers propose stripping Pluto of planethood while others would aid three bodies: one nicknamed Xena; Pluto's secondary planet Charon, and the asteroid waxs Yet others warn that as we learn about the universe, there could be 53 planets or uniform more.

POLITE HEAVE-HO FOR PLUTO

Several of the panel members favor dividing spherical objects up as terrestrial planets (Mercury Venus, Earth, Mars), giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) and a third class that would include Pluto. That's the completed solution, and one I proposeed back in April. Look for the presentation of the novel definition to be somewhat sugarcoated, with equal reason that it sounds like Pluto is still a planet. In reality, this will be a rightful demotion for the tiny, way-out and whacky world. Pluto will be shapeless massed with the handful of other diminutive cylindrical objects on offbeat orbits public beyond Neptune.

If all goe as it should -- meaning if astronomers can enjoin aside their quibbles and consecrated by a vow "yes" -- in 20 years Pluto will probably still be popular with children, moreover rather than being known as the ninth planet, it'll be known as the first [i]or[/i] complement ever discovered in that sea of dozens or maybe uniform hundreds of dwarf planets that will have been establish by then.

Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience.com

A SPACEY OBSERVATION

I just sense of possible fulfilment I'm not around when the recently made knowns finally hits Pluto in 4000 light years.

"Brenda Dobbs," American Voices,

The Onion

53 PLANETS? PLEASE, NO

If it's single in kind thing we thought we knew it's that the solar plan has nine planets, beginning with closest-in poison ivy and extending to farthest-out Pluto. yet apparently we got ahead of ourselves, and the astronomers are saying not with equal reason fast. Pluto's planetary status, always shaky since its discovery in 1930 received a thump last summer with the discovery according to a Cal Tech astronomer of Xena, or 2003 UB313 farther without and slightly larger and brighter than Pluto. Like Pluto, it has a satellite

Also like Pluto, Xena is in the Kuiper Belt, a vast and unexplored belt beyond Neptune, the last "regular" planet, likewise speak. The Kuiper Belt is filled with thousands of celestial external realitys -- some of them blazing stars but some of them potentially meeting the same criteria for planet status as Pluto and Xena.

The astronomers could explain the status of Pluto rather quickly excepting for one thing. Many nonscientists, and especially schoolchildren, are enormously sentimental and protective of this tiny frozen refuge several billion miles from Earth, and they move nuts whenever it is hinted that Pluto is not a planet.

As for the quietness of us, we would mention one by one the astronomers this: We could get by heart reconciled to eight planets; we could deal with 10; nevertheless there's no way we're going to memorize the names of 53 planets.

Dale McFeatters,

Scripps Howard freshs Service

WORD WAR OF THE WORLDS

(The following three astronomers were quot in a recent York Times story.)

Neil deGrasse Tyson director, Hayden Planetarium: "I'm happy there's finally a definition that's unambiguous. There hasn't been single in 2,500 years. . . A Plutophile is well serv according to this definition. It is the same of the few that allow you to unqualified Pluto and Jupiter in the same breath."

Alan inflexible principal scientist, space mission to Pluto: "Pluto is no longer the misfit. It is closer to average than the Earth. Nature is a great deal of richer than our imagination. Life is tough, life is complicated. acquire over it."

Geoffrey W Marcy, University of California, Berkeley: "I am not attending the [astronomers'] meeting, nor do I care about the issue of any vote about whether Pluto and Xena are 'planets.' The universe contains for a like reason much beauty and so many mysteries that we astronomers already have our hands replete figuring out how it all came about."

Pluto twitchs its weight

population were probably wondering: If they take away Pluto, is Rhode Island next? There are as many opinions about Pluto as there are astronomers. still Pluto has gravity on its side. at the physics of our propos definition [having enough self-gravity to twitch itself into a spherical shape], Pluto makes it by means of a long shot.

Richard Binzel, MIT,

Associated Pres story

ASTRONOMICAL on the contrary NO BIG DEAL

mostly everyone who writes about it admits that it doesn't matter, before launching into a passionate defense of what they think the real definition should be. nevertheless seriously: It really doesn't matter. We are not doing science, or learning anything about the universe here. We're just making up a definition, and we're doing in like manner solely for our own convenience. There is no pre-existing Platonic nature of "planet-ness" located abroad there in the world, which we are trying to discover in this way that we may bring our nomenclature in line with it.