Pluto's Status: A Decision Between Science and Culture

by Jezreel Icaranom

Pluto, the tiniest orbiting celestial body around the Solar System – our solar system – which has a status on the brink if scientists and the masses should call it a planet, a dwarf planet, or be completely delisted from the Solar System and remain as a barren mass of ice and rock -- ever be forgotten by the succeeding generations that Pluto was a part of the Sun’s family.

The 9th member of the Solar System is surprisingly tiny: It is only around 2 370 kilometers according to NASA’s New Horizons -- the project that aims to go to space beyond our solar system that launched several months back. To put it simply, it’s one-fifth the diameter of Earth and two-thirds the diameter of our Moon. Also, according to photos and infrared recordings of New Horizons, the member seemed to feature comparable physical landscapes, with mountains arising to around three-and-a-half kilometers in height. The surface of Pluto is icy – not water ice – but the icy surface mostly comprises of methane and nitrogen, with some traces of other elements and compounds, which also includes water. Scientists speculate that underneath Pluto’s surface is a large mass of bedrock water ice. Going deeper into this petite wonder, is an even smaller rocky core, which has a magnetic field so weak that it can’t clear any objects in its way, so no wonder why Pluto shares a similar orbit with its fellows: Charon and Eris. However, since Pluto has a weaker gravity, the gas escapes more from the surface and into outer space. Actually, because of this, Pluto’s atmosphere encompasses a larger area in proportion to its size than Earth.

Pluto is destined more than 39 Astronomical Units away from the Sun. Just for common knowledge, Astronomical Unit (AU) is the distance of Earth from the Sun, which is 93 million miles or 149 million kilometers in a region called the Kuiper Belt – a region in our solar system where a large collection of space debris is found -- where all of his neighboring tiny frozen masses are also homed. If on Earth, it’s all warm and fuzzy, the contrary goes for Pluto. Every second in Pluto is a freezing death, and its coldest temperatures have been recorded to be minus 225 degrees Celsius, which is one of the coldest in the Solar System.

Now what does it take to be a planet, really? According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), planets have three defining characteristics that differentiate them from other objects in the system. First, it must be in orbit around a home star; second, it should have a spherical shape; and third, it should have cleared all neighboring space debris from its orbit. Pluto failed to check the third condition, so it automatically does not satisfy the conditions. However, conservatives and culturally-inclined people around the world still define Pluto as a planet, because ever since it was discovered on February 18, 1930, people have been attached to this frozen mass and somehow have made a cultural bond with them. Even in the fields within science, scientists are also fighting whether to enlist Pluto as a planet again, remain it as a dwarf planet (Pluto was announced a dwarf planet in 2005, by the way) or completely delist it from the Solar System. The third choice is already out of context, and the other two are still of heated debate.

Some weeks back, NASA unofficially announce that Pluto is a planet again, but in recent days, the topic is still under fire, so NASA just kind of went back to the safe title and reverted it back to being a dwarf planet. Until now, Pluto’s status is still on the tops, but whatever decisions the scientists may have, we all know that in our hearts, Pluto – may it be a planet or a planet no longer – will always be our favorite tiny neighbor.

Sources:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/24/pluto_planet_nasa/…http://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8420813/pluto-not-a-planethttp://www.space.com/43-pluto-the-ninth-planet-that-was-a-d…https://www.nasa.gov/…/sto…/nasa-knows/what-is-pluto-k4.html