Pluto: Planet X Kelly Carpenter Cece Pringle Lucie Gulick

Discovery Found on February 18, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh

Name Named after Greek god of the dead by an 11-year-old girl in Oxford, England.

Creation Theory Thought to have once been a piece of Neptune that broke off when the planets were forming

Distance from the Sun & Orbit 3,666 million miles from the sun Pluto’s the farthest planet from our sun One day on Pluto is hours long- the equivalent of 6 Earth days

Size Diameter of 2,445 km Mass of ^24 kg Smallest planet in the solar system

Makeup Dirty, desolate iceball of frozen gases with little rocky substance

Other Info Gravity: 0.58 Temperature: -230 degrees Celsius Atmosphere: Methane and Nitrogen 3 moons No rings

Pluto’s Moon; Charon Discovered in 1978 Named after the Greek god who carried souls to the underworld across the river Styx

Pluto’s Other Moons Pluto has 2 other moons called Nix and Hydra Nix is named for the Titan goddess of darkness Hydra is named after the sea monster defeated by the hero Peruses

Death On August 24, 2006 the IAU declared Pluto was no longer a true planet, but a dwarf planet.

Who are the IAU & Why They Hatin’ on Pluto? The IAU is the International Astronomical Union. They define a planet according to these 3 rules: 1) It needs to be in orbit around the Sun 2) It needs to have enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape 3) It needs to have “cleared the neighborhood” of its orbit Pluto doesn’t conform to the third rule.

What Does the 3 rd Rule Mean? As planets form and interact with other, smaller objects (like asteroids or meteors), they either consume them or sling them away with their gravity. Pluto is isn’t big enough to get rid of all the stuff floating around in its orbit like the rest of the planets.

WTF?!?! We know, we know. Now we have only 8 planets in our solar system. If you want to remember the order of the planets, you’ll have to say something other than ‘My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles”. We suggest you say your mother served you noodles.

So… What Does This Change? Nothing, really. It means we now have 8 planets instead of 9 now, but that’s not life changing for anybody. However, if you believe Pluto is still a planet, you can join a Facebook group to protest and try to bring it back. However, the chances are pretty good that in 100 years, nobody will remember that Pluto was a planet.

Works Cited “Earth Science” by Tarbuck & Lutgens