Sign the Pluto Petition

Dr. Tony Phillips (NASA, SpaceWeather.com) has generated a vote and sign the petition webpage at PlutoPetition.org

You can vote either pro-planet or pro-discrediting-American-astronomers-who-discover-planets. As of this writing, Pluto-the-planet is winning.

Dr. Phillips also observes:

IS NEPTUNE A PLANET?

Consider this: According to the IAU, for a world to be a planet, it must “clear the neighborhood around its orbit” of competing bodies. How does a planet go about cleaning up? Simple. It uses its gravity to gobble up or fling away anything in its vicinity.

This is a problem for Pluto. Pluto’s “neighborhood” is cluttered with innumerable icy asteroid-like bodies called “Kuiper Belt Objects.” Pluto’s gravity is not quite strong enough to get rid of them. Thus, according to the IAU, Pluto is not a planet.

But wait! This is a problem for Neptune, too. Pluto itself crosses the orbit of Neptune. So, Neptune has not yet cleaned up its own neighborhood. Does this mean that Neptune is not a planet? Think about it.

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