Energy

Scientists Want To Call The Moon A Planet

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Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
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Planetary scientists want the Moon and Pluto to be considered planets.

Scientists need to change their criteria for determining what constitutes a planet, according to a new study. Researchers argue the geophysics of a orbiting body should determine whether it is a planet, not just whether or not it orbits the sun.

The study claims that current definitions of what constitutes a planet are technically flawed as they only say that planets orbiting stars “count.” That ignores numerous  “rogue planets.” Researchers also said the current definition would unfairly exclude a hypothetical Earth-sized object in the outer solar system’s Kuiper Belt.

“A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape adequately described by a triaxial ellipsoid regardless of its orbital parameters,” Kirby Runyon, a doctoral student from Johns Hopkins University involved in the research, said in a press statement.

“Having a definition of the word planet that expresses what we think a planet ought to be, is concordant with this desire to bring order out of chaos and understand the universe,” Runyon said.

This new definition would be tailored to planetary scientists, not astronomers. Earth’s Moon was considered to be a planet by ancient astronomers, and has several unusual features which set it apart from other moons in the solar system. It is very large relative to the body it orbits and isn’t in the equatorial plane of its parent planet.

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