The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Space => Topic started by: Cripplecreek on April 01, 2017, 04:56:08 pm
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It turns out that Earth is not a planet. Asteroid 2016 H03, first spotted on April 27, 2016, by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, is a companion of Earth, too distant to be considered a true satellite.
“Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth,” said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Asteroid 2016 H03 is proof that Earth has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. Therefore, under the definition of a planet vigorously defended by the IAU since the adoption of Resolution 5A on August 24, 2006, Earth is a ‘dwarf planet’ because it has not cleared its orbit, which is the only criteria of their definition that Pluto fails. (I think we’ll eventually discover that very few of the ‘planets’ have cleared their orbits).
https://medium.com/@mtanne/turns-out-earth-isnt-a-planet-c06f5208d36e
Take that you planetary supremacist scumbags. :silly:
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I miss Pluto as a planet, I actually wrote a letter to the astronomer Mike Brown to tell him so.
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I miss Pluto as a planet, I actually wrote a letter to the astronomer Mike Brown to tell him so.
Ceres can be a planet too as far as I'm concerned. Some of the other Kuiper bet objects likely fit the criteria as well.