It was 13 years ago when Pluto was downgraded from the 9th planet to just a dwarf planet, but NASA expert Jim Bridenstine doesn’t want to accept the change.
He restarted the debate by saying Pluto should be a planet as it has organic compounds on its surface, own moons, and an ocean under its surface.
Bridenstine also said that if experts are going to follow the real definition of the planet, which states it has to clear its orbit around the sun, we “could really undercut all the planets.”
“I am here to tell you, as the NASA Administrator, I believe Pluto should be a planet,” said Bridenstine during a wide-ranging speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington D.C.
“Some people have argued that in order to be a planet, you need to clear your orbit around the sun.”
Bridenstine continued: “Well, what we now know is that if that’s the definition that we’re gonna use, you could really undercut all the planets’.
“They’re all dwarf planets because there isn’t a planet that clears its entire orbit around the sun.”
The NASA chief later replied to a question on his Pluto stance by mentioning its moons, multilayered atmosphere, buried ocean, and complex organic compounds.
It was in 2006 when the International Astronomical Union, a global group of astronomy experts, said that a planet must ‘clear’ its orbit or be the biggest gravitational force in its orbit.
The group used this to remove Pluto from its rank, reducing the number of planets to only eight.
Because Neptune’s gravity affects Pluto, and Pluto shares its orbit with objects and frozen gases in the Kuiper belt that meant it was removed from its planet status.
However, many experts didn’t accept it.
In August, Bridenstine said during a tour of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building that Pluto should get its planet status back.
“Just so you know, in my view, Pluto is a planet,” he expressed. “You can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I’m sticking by that, it’s the way I learnt it, and I’m committed to it.”
Research from the University of Central Florida claims that the reason Pluto was downgraded is ‘not valid.’ After reviewing scientific literature from the past 200 years, they only found one publication that used the clearing-orbit requirement to be classified as a planet, and it was according to a since-disproven reasoning.
UCF planetary scientist Philip Metzger said: “The IAU definition would say that the fundamental object of planetary science, the planet, is supposed to be a defined on the basis of a concept that nobody uses in their research.
“And it would leave out the second-most complex, interesting planet in our solar system.”
Metzger also said that moons such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Titan have been called planets by scientists since the time of Galileo. “We now have a list of well over 100 recent examples of planetary scientists using the word planet in a way that violates the IAU definition, but they are doing it because it’s functionally useful.
“’It’s a sloppy definition. They didn’t say what they meant by clearing their orbit. If you take that literally, then there are no planets, because no planet clears its orbit.”
Metzger also shared 9 reasons why Pluto is a planet.
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