Quote:
On 2002-01-06 15:54, ljbrs wrote:
Perhaps we should leave it up to the astronomers to make these decisions and go along with them if they make good sense.
|
Well, so far, it appears that they've decided to not reclassify Pluto. Some of the links I read show that there is disagreement even amongst astronomers--but the bottom line is that the reclassification did not happen.
Pluto was once considered to have much more mass than it appears to have now. It hasn't shrunk, we just know more about it. If it had as much mass as it was once thought, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion--the orbit plane would not matter. Of course, the reason that it hasn't been reclassified is because it still has an order of magnitude more mass than the next closest object of the proposed type.