OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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August 17th, 2006, 01:01 PM

capnq

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Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

Quote:

Suicide Junkie said:
If Pluto AND Charon are planets, then Luna should surely be a planet too.

Not by the proposed standard, which involves where the objects' barycenter is. If the point the objects orbit around is inside one of them (Earth-Luna), the other is a moon. If the barycenter is outside (Pluto-Charon), both are planets (if they're both round).

One of the objections to this new definition is that the number of planets in our solar system could be as high as 53. I'm not sure why that upsets some people, though.

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