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Pluto loses status as a planet (BBC)
I'm feeling a bit Plutonian myself just now.
Of course, I've got nothing on the folks from the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT). The name is startlingly self-explanatory, but like some of the medieval heresies, it is a movement that contains the seeds of its own destruction. If the folks at VHEMT practice what they preach, they'll be gone within 70 years or so.
Not unlike Pluto's status as a planet.
Amid dramatic scenes which saw astronomers waving yellow ballot papers in the air, the IAU meeting voted in criteria that define the exact nature of a "planet".So that's it then. Before we can find Planet X, we have to find a planet IX.
They agreed that to qualify, a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It also must be large enough in mass "for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit."
Pluto was automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.
I'm feeling a bit Plutonian myself just now.
Of course, I've got nothing on the folks from the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT). The name is startlingly self-explanatory, but like some of the medieval heresies, it is a movement that contains the seeds of its own destruction. If the folks at VHEMT practice what they preach, they'll be gone within 70 years or so.
Not unlike Pluto's status as a planet.
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