Reduced to a dwarf planet, Pluto wants to return to stardom – The World

Pluto was demoted in 2006 to the rank of “dwarf planet” in a debate that turned the scientific world and that eight years later he returned to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in the United States, with a discussion between experts of planetary science.

“We wanted people to talk about it again,” said public relations specialist institution, Christine Pulliam, when asked why one of the leading centers of astrophysics again discuss the output of the Solar System, its former ninth planet.

Eight years ago, in 2006, more than 2,500 experts from 75 countries They met in Prague at the International Astronomical Union (IAU, for its acronym in English), and established a new universal definition of what a planet is considered.

This definition distinguishes between eight “classical” planets revolving in orbits around the sun and bodies left out “dwarf” as Pluto, which was the same level as the 50 round bodies that revolve around the Sun in the Kuiper belt.

But, Defenders of the “ugly duckling” of the solar system did not give up and even marched in demonstrations, asked scientists to return to admit Pluto in the big club, crying over and over again: “size does not matter” <. / p>

So, eight years later and when less than a year to be held in Honolulu (Hawaii, USA) General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU, for their acronym in English), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center reopened the debate.

by the institution invited three experts with different opinions. The scientific historian Owen Gingerich, who chaired the committee defining IAU planets defended the status of Pluto as a planet from a historical point of view, arguing that “a planet is a word that culturally defined changes over time. “

How could the International Astronomical Union said that Pluto was a dwarf planet and then deny the position of the planet? What was then, only a dwarf? Gingerich believes that the IAU did an “abuse of language” in trying to define the word planet and, therefore, should not have expelled Pluto.

The contrary view defended the associate director Minor Planet Center, Gareth Williams , who supported the expulsion of Pluto and defined the planets as “spherical bodies that orbit the sun and have cleared their way”, ie, to have cleared its orbit other stars.

Meanwhile, the director of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard, Dimitar Sasselov , established that a planet is “smaller mass ball of matter formed around stars or stellar remnants, “which, in his opinion, Pluto returns to the planetary club.

At the end of the presentations, an audience of all ages remembered his old books Text and voted with yellow cards for the return of the former ninth planet.

In fact, since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto has been subject of disputes , especially due to its size, much smaller than the Earth, and even the Moon.

The claim is made and the controversy could reawaken during the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in 2015, the same year in which it is anticipated that got Pluto probe “New Horizons”, sent by NASA in 2006.