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Article: Is Pluto a planet?
- Article from:
- The Evening Standard (London, England)
- Article date:
- April 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Carus Publishing Co. 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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Pluto is a small world, only 2,400 km in diameter. Ever since its discovery in 1930, it has been considered the ninth planet. Recently, however, its planetary status has been challenged. Should Pluto be considered a planet? To fully answer this question, we must examine what it even means to be a planet.
Until the 1990s, the subject of what it means to be a planet was not actively considered by scientists. Why? Because the only planets known were the ones in our solar system, and these nine bodies seemed sufficiently different from both smaller bodies (like asteroids and comets) and larger ones (like stars) that there really was no need for a formal definition to ...