As told by the kids who write letters to the scientist running NASA’s current Pluto mission.
The International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of its planet status in 2006, because it only meets two of the three criteria in their new definition of a planet:
A celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and © has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
Pluto hasn't cleared its neighborhood, so it could no longer be called a planet. ?
But Stern doesn't agree with the astronomers' decision.
ESO / L. Calçada / Via commons.wikimedia.org
"If you put Earth out beyond Neptune, you wouldn't be able to call it a planet because it couldn't clear its zone," Stern told BuzzFeed. "When you produce these awkward definitions, you get these weird consequences."
"As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide" he says. "A miniature poodle is not not a dog, just because it's miniature."
Stern says he's received "dozens" of letters from kids who agree with him, without ever having asked for them.
This particular set of letters come via Janet Ivey, space science educator and founder of Janet's Planet, who is working on outreach for the New Horizon's mission and spoke to classes at an elementary school in Nashville, TN, earlier this month. When she went back the next week, the third grade teacher handed her an envelope full of letters addressed to "Mr Alan".
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