Sunday, October 09, 2005

Astronomers Find Santa and Easterbunny in Space

This is an old story, about the THREE planet-sized objects astronomers found in the Kuiper belt. Santa Claus, an odd, cigar-shaped object with its own moon, and Easterbunny, another frozen methane covered rock, and Xena, the real trouble-maker and the only one people seemed interested in at first. It actually sparked the old argument about whether Pluto is a planet, and whether or not some other oddly shaped rocks and Solar System detritus could also now be classified as planets.
As a kid it was hard enough to recite the order of the planets. Given enough debate tomorrows students could have fifty or more official planets to memorize. And that's just our system!
If you ask me, it's a stupid argument anyway. Some are rocks, asteroids, planetary bodies, moons-- whatever-- they are what they are on an individual basis.
Until we get there we have no idea what it is. If we are in orbit around one of these objects and see things that make a planet--some internal geological forces, an atmosphere, a moon, water, organic molecules--things that are interesting, then we can call it a planet and change the number of official planets in our Solar System. Until then, it's not and we don't. It's just something to make us look up at the sky and go....Wow.

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