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Article: Pluto hasn't changed.(Editorials)(Only our idea of it has)(Editorial)
- Article from:
- The Register Guard (Eugene, OR)
- Article date:
- August 27, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 The Register Guard. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: The Register-Guard
It feels a bit like a set-up. The International Astronomical Union, meeting in Prague, needed to decide upon the characteristics of a planet. It seems now that the skids were greased from the start to demote Pluto, leaving the solar system with just eight planets. None of the definitions that would have allowed Pluto to retain its planetary status was satisfactory.
No one could think of a way to leave the planetary count at nine. If Pluto is a planet, then so too must be a larger, even more distant object discovered last year, nicknamed Xena. Once the door was open to Pluto and Xena, Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid ...