Planets sorted out

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As a result of scientific study, the IAU has now decided that instead of 9 planets, our solar system contains at least 12. So time to change your solar system map and re-remember the new planets.

The new definition of a planet is:

A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.

Robin

 razor@edgarbv.com  https://www.edgarbv.com

4 thoughts on “Planets sorted out”

  1. Euhm, nobody is happy with this definition, because they say eg. the moon will become a planet when it loses gravitational pull with the Earth in a few hundred million years or whenever, so they’ve now voted to strip us of Pluto and make it a dwarf planet.

    “It also must be large enough in mass for its own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape and have cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

    Pluto was disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.”

    http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=13284690&src=rss/topNews

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