Stephanie Epstein

Astronomy 1040

Pluto Isnt A Planet

I decided to write my conversational paper on how Pluto got

demoted from being a planet. I choose this topic since the people I
requested to be in my conversation were my parents and grandparents.
All five of us grew up on the notion that Pluto was in fact the ninth planet
of our solar system. We all sat down to dinner at my grandparents to
have our conversation. The conversation went on for about two hours
with my grandfather who has a PHD in chemistry and my father with a
minor in geology in heated terms about this topic.
I gave my family three different websites with one video to learn
about the topic. The first website was nasa.gov which gave you the
information about Pluto and some background story. Clyde Tombaugh an
astronomer from the United States discovered Pluto in 1930. Pluto is
considered a dwarf planet which is about half the size of the United
States and significantly smaller than our moon. In 2015 the New Horizons
spacecraft flew by Pluto and its moons after ten years of traveling. The
spacecraft took pictures and received information that helped scientists
determine Pluto is 2/3 rocks and 1/3 ice.

After they read over the

information from today, I aspired them to look over several different

perspectives about Pluto so our conversation had a two-sided debate.
The next website was an article by Jorge Salazar called This date
of science: Pluto gets a demotion This was posted in August 2015 on
earthsky.org.

Salazar goes into detail about the reasons behind the

International Astronomical Union demoting Pluto to a dwarf planet.

Salazar interviewed Alan Stern who was the scientist mission leader to
Pluto. Stern states that Pluto is still a planet but not of our solar system.
Pluto is considered to be part of the Kuiper Belt. In the early 2000s
scientist decided that there are eight planets in the Kuiper Belt. They
decided they were all dwarf planets and would not consider them to be in
our eight-planet solar system. This is still up for debate between many
people, because Pluto is still on considered a planet so why not be of our
solar system?
Once everyone in my group had read over all the information I had
provided we started into our discussion. Everyone was pretty upset that
they had demoted Pluto but understood the logic behind it. My
grandfather was the first to really ask, If they demoted it and changed
the textbooks. What does the new text book say about what is considered
a planet? This is a great question which Paul Rincon stated in his article,
Why is Pluto no longer a planet? On the website bbc.com. Rincon quotes
a new text book which has a multiple choice question about the planets.
1) A planet is a celestial body that- A) is in orbit around the sun B) has

sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it
assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape C) has cleared
the neighborhood around its orbit The answer for a planet of our solar
system is all three. Pluto only has the first two criteria, which means it
doesnt clear the neighborhood because it orbits the Kuiper Belt Objects.
This is the main reason Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet.

After

answering this question my grandfather understood why and clearly was

on the side of the scientists.
My family discussed that topic for about an hour or two going into
detail about what they learned about Pluto. We also looked at the
pictures that were taken last year from the New Horizon mission that flew
by Pluto after ten years of travel. My parents were skeptical at first but
came around to believe that Pluto isnt our nine planet anymore.
Science is becoming more advanced and improving everyday. For
someone to be so close-minded to believe that one day something can be
proven wrong is ridiculous. We have confirmed that many times in the
last hundred years.

My family was very open to the idea and now is

curious about other advancements in our technology today. The more I

read about this topic, the more curious I became as well. Pluto is a very
interesting and I am excited to possibly learn about more planets out side
of our universe down the road.