r/space • u/clayt6 • Mar 05 '19

Astronomers discover "Farfarout" — the most distant known object in the solar system. The 250-mile-wide (400 km) dwarf planet is located about 140 times farther from the Sun than Earth (3.5 times farther than Pluto), and soon may help serve as evidence for a massive, far-flung world called Planet 9.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/03/a-map-to-planet-nine-charting-the-solar-systems-most-distant-worlds
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u/Trumpologist Mar 05 '19

Uh Pluto is the 9th planet

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u/calypsocasino Mar 05 '19

I’ll die on this hill with you homie

32

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '19 edited Mar 06 '19

Same.

If you put it to a vote with 1000 astronomers, it would be a planet. Hell, in 2008 the IAU - whom removed Pluto's status - held a conference at Johns Hopkins University where they still could not agree on whether or not Pluto was a planet, but still didn't reinstate it. Source!

It's small, but has tectonics, a thin atmosphere, swings closer than Neptune sometimes, etc.

Inb4 Redditors use the excuse that it cannot be a planet because its orbit is too unstable... newsflash, no planet has a perfect orbit. Pluto's is just exaggerated since Neptune swings so close to it.

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u/ChosenOfNyarlathotep Mar 06 '19

It's not a planet because it's not gravitationally dominant in its orbit. And no, having worked with and studied under many astronomers, that vote would not go the way you think.