The Man Called “Pluto Killer” May Get His Revenge
There is an American professor who goes by the username “Pluto Killer” on social media. And for good reason. Now, what many consider an injustice may finally be corrected.
The new head of NASA has made no secret of his desire to have Pluto reinstated as a planet. He has now begun working to make it happen.
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– We want Clyde Tombaugh to get the credit he deserves
“I have drafted some documents and am submitting them through the scientific system. The goal is for Clyde Tombaugh to once again receive the honor of having discovered a planet,” Jared Isaacman, the new NASA administrator, told the U.S. Congress on April 28.
It was the American astronomer Tombaugh who, in 1930, became forever linked to Pluto. With that discovery, he became the only American ever to have found a planet.
The Astronomers Decide – Not NASA or Trump
It was the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that voted in 2006 to strip Pluto of its planetary status. Isaacman – or Donald Trump, for that matter – cannot overturn that decision.
“Only the IAU can make such a ruling,” confirms Vegard Lundby Rekaa, an astronomer.
The next IAU congress is scheduled for August 2027. It remains uncertain whether the documents Isaacman is working on will result in a formal proposal by then.
The “Pluto Killer” and the Object That Changed Everything
The professor who goes by the X-username “Pluto Killer” is Michael E. Brown. He is an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. In 2003, he discovered an object that would later be named Eris – after the goddess of chaos, strife, and discord. And the astronomical object Eris certainly brought all of that.
Eris is a trans-Neptunian object – meaning it spends most of its time beyond the orbit of Neptune, the current outermost planet. Pluto was the very first trans-Neptunian object ever discovered.
– There Could Be Thousands More
Eris was the dagger that ultimately ended Pluto’s planetary status – for several reasons. Eris turned out to be roughly the same size as Pluto.
But perhaps the most significant issue was that there could be several thousand similar objects lurking out there in the deep, dark void.
“If all of them were to be called planets, then what makes a planet special?” was the natural question that arose. The answer from a large faction of astronomers was a clear “no.” The uniqueness of planets would simply disappear.
The Prague Congress – A Masterpiece of Compromise
Three years after the discovery of Eris, numerous other similar objects had been found. The time had come for the IAU congress.
“It was nothing short of a masterpiece that the IAU managed to achieve,” says astronomer Lundby Rekaa.
“They came up with a definition that both preserves the other eight planets in our solar system and clearly explains why we perceive them as planets, while also making it clear that Pluto is a dwarf planet.”
Facts About Pluto: Mountains, Ice, and an Atmosphere
Pluto is a world of mountains, ice, and even an atmosphere. It is much smaller than initially believed when it was discovered.
- Diameter: Approximately 2,377 kilometers (about two-thirds the size of Earth’s moon)
- Surface temperature: Around -230°C
- Moons: Five, including the large moon Charon
- Orbit: Highly elliptical and tilted compared to the other planets
- Atmosphere: Thin, composed mainly of nitrogen, with traces of methane and carbon monoxide
Three Requirements – And Why Pluto Failed
What the IAU did was to define what actually constitutes a planet. They established three clear requirements – and the third one disqualified Pluto:
- The object must orbit the Sun
- The object must have enough mass to form a spherical shape
- The object must have “cleared its orbit” of other debris
“Because of its modest size, Pluto does not dominate its orbital zone, as it is not the clearly heaviest object in its region,” explains Lundby Rekaa. “It cannot, through its own gravity, keep order among the other objects around it.”
In short: Pluto fails the third requirement – and that is why it was demoted from planet to dwarf planet nearly 20 years ago. Whether the new NASA chief can change that remains to be seen.
