I'm so sick of reading about this theoretical NEW 9th planet...
We've known about 9 planets for thousands of years. If these so called astronomers have discovered anything at all, it's a 10th planet. Not a 9th.
And if you say Pluto doesn't count, because it's a "dwarf planet", I'm gonna slap you across your stupid mouth and ask you to repeat the last word in your sentence.
That doesn't explain why... It provides many details about Pluto that I did not know, and still don't understand. But at no point does that article explain why a group of astronomers decided to reclassify Pluto about a decade ago.
As far as I'm concerned, the reason is because they got sick of arguing over whether Neptune or Pluto was the eighth or ninth planet, so they reclassified it to end the debate.
My answer to that debate always has been, and always will be, that Neptune spends more time closer to the sun than Pluto, therefore Neptune is number 8, Pluto is number 9, and planet X is number 10, which makes sense, since the X is a fucking Roman numeral.
But I'm perfectly happy answering 9 to the question of how many planets are in our solar system until someone managed to photograph the 10th one.
The fact that Pluto's moon is 1/3 the size of Pluto, which is 2/3 the size of our moon, and therefore effects Pluto's orbit more than our moon effects ours, does not cancel out the fact that Pluto orbits the sun.
The phrase "dwarf planet" does not mean "non-planet". It means "small planet". So as far as I'm concerned, Pluto is still planet number 9, Charon is still one of it's moons, and NASA can eat a dick.
Pluto has not cleared the area of its orbit. It's located in the Kuiper belt. If we were to classify it as a planet, several hundreds of things would meet the criteria. Especially the other dwarf planets Ceres, Eris, Makemake, etc. The IAU changed the definition in 2006 because of this issue. My 8th grader's have no trouble understanding this when I teach them my space and solar system unit. No offense. But we were also taught that it was a planet as kids. Just goes to show you how hard it is to change someone's core ideals even when they are wrong.
Who really gives a rats ass about Pluto's status (excellent points Dark BTW ) what's important here is they believe there's a rather large planet out there further annnnnnnnd they just found another solar system with a large planet that's in a very distant orbit. They've been saying this for years but now they're saying they've found reliable data to support that theory. The orbits of other bodies in the outer solar system need another large object to explain their motions. More eyes will be watching for it now ! That's pretty cool I think and I look forward to them finding it, very interesting.
"Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!"
-General William T. Sherman
