|
A Free Membership
Celtic Druids Newsletter
B Homestudy Course
Celtic Druids Ritual Ceremony
C Celtic Handfasting
Pagan Weddings for all
D Healing Seminars
Truth reshapes your reality
E Geostress Balancing
Home and Office
F Spirit Release
(Ghost Busting)
G Druidschool Lectures
Self-healing empowerment
H Psychic Readings
Tarot and Geomancy
I Healing (One on One)
Healing and Counselling
J Astro Natal Chart
Incarnational Potential
K Astro Transit Chart
Current Energy Flow
L Astro Love Charts
Compatibility for Couples
M Donations
You can help us in our work
N Druid's Calendar
Landscape Temple Map
O Five Roads to Tara
Gold Road identified
|
LIBRARY >>
STORIES
Pluto stripped of its planet status
- 15:00 24 August 2006
- NewScientist.com news service
- New Scientist Space and AF
Pluto has lost its seven-decade status as the ninth and outermost planet of
the solar system, the world's top astrononomical body has decided.
The decision was made at an assembly of the International Astronomical Union
(IAU).
"The eight planets are Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus
and Neptune," said the IAU resolution, passed in a raised-hands vote after
what, by the discreet standards of the astronomical community, was a stormy
debate.
Pluto's status had been contested for many years by astronomers who said
that its tiny size and highly eccentric orbit precluded it from joining the
other acknowledged planets.
The call for an official definition of the word "planet" gained ground after
the discovery of a distant object beyond Pluto's orbit called 2003 UB313,
nicknamed Xena. It is slightly bigger than Pluto and thus could lay claim to
being a planet.
Pluto was discovered on 18 February 1930 by US astronomer Clyde Tombaugh,
who was then 24 years old.
Named after the god of the underworld in classical mythology, it orbits the
Sun at an average distance of 5,906,380,000 kilometres (3,670,050,000
miles), taking 247.9 Earth years to complete a single orbit
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9836-pluto-stripped-of-its-planet-status.html
|