The solar system is a significant part of astronomical science. Still, a highly controversial question has been raised, again and again, Is Pluto a planet? Pluto has first discovered in the year 1930; many scientists thought that Neptune’s orbit was disturbed because of Pluto. Then scientists started to research Pluto.
After some time in 1978, an astronomer discovered Pluto, the minor planet in the solar system that is less massive and light-weighted. So, after all, they found that Pluto was not the reason behind the perturbations.
In 2015 Dr. Alan Stern, a planetary scientist, said that “I heart Pluto festival 2021”, they organized a virtual program where they discussed the observation of Pluto. Stern was against calling Pluto a dwarf planet and said, “It doesn’t make scientific sense.” Because in 2005 IAU had made more clear “definition of the planet” and according to that:
1: Planet has to orbit the sun
2: It must have mass
3: Planet must have cleared the neighborhood surrounding the orbits.
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Pluto has all the things except that last one because it was affected by the gravity of Neptune and shares its orbits with the other objects also. That’s why it was called a dwarf planet, All the above points were made by the astronomers who study galaxies, etc., and they made a blunder.They thought that there must be numerous planets behind Neptune’s orbit in Kuiper Belt. That’s why they made a blunder because they were afraid of this idea of hundreds of planets. Stern said they called it a dwarf planet because all the astronomers were scared of astronomical numbers.
That was nothing less than a shame because the Kuiper belt, the third zone in the solar system beyond Neptune’s orbit, has comets, planets like this. Stern also said the solar system is messed up with asteroids so that no astronomical body has “cleared the neighborhood.”
Planetary researche and IAU
Planetary researchers passed over the definition of Planet which IAU proposed and said about it:
1: It consists of mass and gravity around it
2: It doesn’t have enough mass to sustain nuclear fission
This is why Stern says that it is considered a planet, as do all dwarf planets.
However, Stern blamed the IAU for harming science. His narrative was that a scientist doesn’t need to memorize the things discovered in the Solar system like planetoids, stars, planets etc. This is called stamp collection. He added that science has been agnostic because there are plenty of stars planets available but who cares?
Stern also titled a keynote “ Why Pluto is a planet, the embarrassment of IAU and why they had it coming”?
So, it is now officially announced by NASA that Pluto is a planet. And now it is a part of the solar system as a planet, not a dwarf planet.