Experts are saying that after careful consideration, both the moon and pluto should be declared
planets.
What is good, this is inform overload, I’m charlotte dobre.
If you need a place to get your news on youtube, hit that subscribe button and follow us on
instagram.
Before I get into this video tell me, What do you think, should the moon be considered
a planet?
Let me know down there in those comments.
A team of astronomers wrote in the Journal Icarus that they believe we should start considering
our natural satellite, the moon, to be a planet.
This is obviously a pretty crazy thing.
I mean, our moon is literally called the moon.
Are we going to have to start calling it the planet moon?
Cuz that is hella confusing.
The exact rules about what makes a planet a planet have been debated in the scientific
community for a long time.
The rules are actually pretty controversial, and not all scientists agree with them.
This constant debate is what resulted in pluto being stripped of its planet title back in
2006 after it was a textbook planet for 76 years.
In the scientific community, there’s this one governing body that makes decisions, its
called the international astronomical Union.
So what makes a planet a planet?
According to the International Astronomical Union, a planet must orbit the sun, be massive
enough to pull itself into a sphere shape under its own gravity, clear its neighbourhood
of debris and other celestial bodies, proving it has gravitational dominace in its own corner
of the solar system.
Experts with the IAU argued that pluto doesn’t fit this critera.
First of all, its in the Kuiper belt, which means its surrounded by a ton of debris and
its not gravitationally dominant.
So it was demoted to the status of Dwarf planet.
Which was honestly really depressing.
Pluto was one of my favourite planets.
I mean I didn’t know pluto personally but i grew up learning that pluto was a planet
and then all of a sudden, because these scientist guys said it wasn’t a planet, it wasn’t
a planet anymore.
But Phillip Metzger, planetary scientist at the university of central florida, doesn’t
agree with the rules the IAU have laid out for planet criteria.
He and his team argue that the third rule, the one about a planet needing to be gravitationally
dominant in its neigborhood, should be omitted because its not reflected in the consensus
of past research.
While looking at research papers that go back over 200 years to the 1800s, the reasearchers
that published this study found that while most writers agreed that planets should be
spheres and orbit the sun, the whole rule about planets having to be the most gravitationally
dominant in their system is only written in one paper from 1801.
So the fact that the IAU is using that as criteria is pretty silly and In fact, a lot
of scientists feel this way.
According to principal investigator of the New Horizons space craft, the definition the
IAU has set is sloppy science and it would never pass peer review.
So with that, there’s only two rules left.
The moon is definitely big enough to be spherical in shape, its almost a quarter the size of
our earth.
But that still leaves rule number 2, where a planet has to orbit around a star.
The moon orbits around the earth.
That being said, the moon is not going to stay the way it is forever.
The center of gravity between the earth and the moon is called the barycenter.
Its what causes the moon to orbit around the earth.
But the IAU says that theres been no official recognition that the location of the barycenter
is involved with the definition of a satellite.
Right now, the moon’s barycenter is inside the earths.
Over time, its going to move outside the earth because the moon is slowly leaving the earth’s
gravity at a rate of 3.8 centimeters or 1.5 inches per year.
This will eventually, after a long time, change the center of our systems mass.
This would then make our system, the system between the earth and the moon, a double planet.
The ancient greeks thought that the moon was a planet.
And so did Galileo.
when he observed the moons of Jupiter, he said that they were planets.
According to history, round worlds that orbit other round worlds should be considered planets
as well.
This study will be published in The February 2019 issue of Icarus.
Alright guys that’s all I have for you on that, its time to do some comment replies.
Rafael – how do you guys earn money.
Why, through advertising of course.
And also sponsorships.
Doug Van Der hoop – I love your potato queen channel.
what are your thoughts on mashed potatoes.
They are delicious, I had some for lunch.
Pierson Phan – needed this after a stressful day.
Well you are WELCOME.
Totras – do you have a speaking problem no hate.
I do not.
But in order to make these videos funny, I have to talk really fast.
We also don’t practice our scripts before we film so that would help me mess up less.
TREXNext – watching this during school/class.
This is more important than my classwork.
I feel like im gonna get some angry messages in my inbox from concerned teachers and parents.
That’s ok.
Welcome to the end screen, this means the video is over, don’t you worry, theres a
link to a playlist right over here so you can go on an IO binge.
And if you enjoyed your time here, like, subscribe and turn on notifications and I will see you
in a future IO video.