New Horizons, a spacecraft built and operated by APL (by many of the same team members of the MESSENGER mission), which launched in 2006 will finally reach it's destination of Pluto tomorrow morning with closest approach just before 8am.

https://www.nasa.gov...main/index.html

What does it take to get its planet status back again?

What does it take to get its planet status back again?

Pluto self identifies as a planet, so I think we should be considerate and comply with its wishes.

A change in its physical properties and orbit most likely.

I forget... what about it isn't a planet?

I forget... what about it isn't a planet?

Someone who has more knowledge on this can correct me, but I believe it has to do with A. its orbit around the sun being different than the other 8 planets (and that it is on a different plane) and B. the fact that there are hundreds of other similar bodies of mass that are like Pluto doing the same thing.

Someone who has more knowledge on this can correct me, but I believe it has to do with A. its orbit around the sun being different than the other 8 planets (and that it is on a different plane) and B. the fact that there are hundreds of other similar bodies of mass that are like Pluto doing the same thing.

Yes, there are many other dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt.  Additionally, Pluto is not gravitationally dominant in its region of space.  The center of mass between it and one of its moons (Charon) lies in empty space, which causes them to rotate about one another (in layman's terms).  The fact that it also crosses another planetary body's orbit (Neptune) also counts against its gravitational dominance.

http://news.discover...atus-110726.htm

Hoth!

Looks like a big Yetti foot print smack dab in the middle!

Pretty crazy there's a huge ass rock floating in space that took 11 years to reach.

Science is pretty wacky like that!

Pretty crazy there's a huge ass rock floating in space that took 11 years to reach.

 

Science is pretty wacky like that!

Space use to freak me out as a kid just trying to wrap my head around something that is endless.  It still has a weird effect of wonderment on me.

Pretty crazy there's a huge ass rock floating in space that took 11 years to reach.
 
Science is pretty wacky like that!

Space use to freak me out as a kid just trying to wrap my head around something that is endless.  It still has a weird effect of wonderment on me.

Space use to freak me out as a kid just trying to wrap my head around something that is endless.  It still has a weird effect of wonderment on me.

Yea I still can't figure out how the universe, or at least the space the universe is in, has been here forever.  It never started.  I mean -- how is that possible??!!

Space use to freak me out as a kid just trying to wrap my head around something that is endless.  It still has a weird effect of wonderment on me.

As one of our greatest astronomically-inclined minds once said:

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

--Douglas Adams

Yea I still can't figure out how the universe, or at least the space the universe is in, has been here forever.  It never started.  I mean -- how is that possible??!!

At the risk of getting philosophical, when you really think about it, nothing about the universe or just existence makes any sense.

At the risk of getting philosophical, when you really think about it, nothing about the universe or just existence makes any sense.

Which is why believing in the Baltimore Orioles makes as much sense as anything else...