How many planets are there in the solar system? Detailed answer

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How many planets are there in the solar system? Detailed answer

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How many planets are there in the solar system?

Nine is the wrong answer.

There are either eight or ten, or maybe twenty-one. There are even those who will say: a couple of million. Surely we will not answer this question anyway - until the International Astronomical Union finally comes to some solution with a long overdue definition of "planet".

Nobody considers Pluto the ninth planet anymore. Even the most conservative astronomers have admitted that this planet is more for "cultural" than scientific reasons (in fact, this means that they will not lower its status, so as not to upset the people).

The discoverers of Pluto in 1930 were themselves not quite sure about this issue - why, in fact, they called it a "trans-Neptunian object", or TNO, a kind of something in the outskirts of the solar system, somewhere out there, beyond Neptune.

Pluto is much smaller than the other eight planets; it is even smaller than their seven moons. And not much larger than its own primary moon, Charon (two smaller ones were discovered in 2005). Pluto's orbit is eccentric and lies in a plane different from the rest of the planets of the solar system, plus Pluto has a completely different chemical composition.

The four planets closest to the Sun are of medium size and rocky; the remaining four are gas giants. Pluto is a tiny ball of ice, one of 60 small comet-like objects that at least form the Kuiper belt at the very edge of the solar system.

All of these planetoid objects (including asteroids, TNOs, and a host of other sub-classifications) are collectively known as "minor planets". To date, 330 such celestial bodies have been officially registered, and another 795 new ones are discovered every month. According to astronomers, there may be something like two million such objects with a diameter of more than a kilometer. Most of them are too small to be called planets, but twelve would give Pluto a hundred points ahead.

One of these "minor planets", discovered in 2005 and given the charming name 2003 UB313, is actually even larger than Pluto. Not far from him, the rest, like Sedna, Orcus and Quaor, also left.

It may well happen that you and I end up with two systems: the eight-planet solar system and the Kuiper belt system, which includes Pluto and all the other new planets.

Such a precedent, by the way, has already been. Ceres, the largest of the asteroids, was considered the tenth planet in the solar system from its discovery in 1801 until the 1850s, when it was downgraded to an asteroid.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

During which war was the United States the only power friendly to Russia?

During the Crimean War of 1853-1856, the only influential power remaining friendly to Russia was the United States. American volunteers, including surgeons, helped the Russian troops. When the British and French, after the fall of Sevastopol, held a banquet in San Francisco, not one of the invited Americans came there, and the banquet hall itself was smashed by the crowd.

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