Solar System Now Has 10 Planets, or 8

For a rock 2,600 kilometres across, the name “2003 UB313” is tolerable. But if it turns out to be a planet, it’s going to need something far grander to compete with the likes of Mars, Jupiter, and even the oft-mispronounced Uranus. Of course, if it’s a planet depends not on the universe, but on the ever-evolving taxonomy scientists use. Should the astronomers decide it is a planet, one hopes they acknowledge the greatness of Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which the 10th planet was named “Rupert.”

The trouble all started with Galileo. Until his telescope came along, the points of light in the night sky that seemed to move (“planet” comes from the Greek, meaning “wanderer”) ended at Saturn, the farthest planet visible with the naked eye. But technology enabled William Herschel to find Uranus in 1781. Its orbital irregularities led John Couch Adams and Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier to calculate the position of a new planet, and which German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle spotted based on those predictions in 1846 (even though Galileo saw Neptune, he didn’t know what it was). And then, Clyde Tombaugh spotted Pluto in 1930. As telescopes got stronger, mankind saw more primordial space stuff.

Which brings the discussion to Quaoar (named after the creation force of the Tongva tribe of the Los Angeles basin) at 1,250 kilometers in diameter and found in 2002 and to Sedna (Inuit Goddess of the Sea) around 1,600 kilometers across and detected in 2004. Astronomers decided these were not planets but rather planetoids, not big enough to be planets. And since it is their science, they can name things what they want; after all, physicists have quarks and gluons. Since Quaoar and Sedna are smaller than Pluto, they didn’t upset the apple cart. That isn’t the case with 2003 UB313, which is bigger than Pluto.

Fair enough, that makes 10 planets one would think. Not so fast, say astronomers whose future grant revenues are in need of some press to make for exciting arguments in the senior common rooms and observatory break rooms. It turns out some stargazers aren’t happy about Pluto being counted as a planet. David Rabinowitz of Yale University noted, “There are other Plutos, just farther out in the Solar System where they are a little harder to find.” In the Outer Kuiper Belt (sort of a junk pile of leftovers from the creation of the solar system), the figure could run to the thousands or tens of thousands – an inconvenient quantity of planets to be sure.

So, there is a case for demoting Pluto from planet to planetoid. Meaning that Mercury, as the smallest planet, becomes the arbiter of planetdom – anything smaller is a planetoid, anything bigger is a planet. One wonders what effect this will all have on the horoscopes in tomorrow’s newspaper – after all, the astrologers should have seen this coming.



© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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