Can you believe we have thirteen(13) planets in our solar system??

DALE 7/14/2018 02:07:00 pm ,Science

Can you believe we have thirteen (13) planets in our solar system??

The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, astrology, science, mythology, and religion. Several planets in the Solar System can be seen with the naked eye.

A planet is an astronomical body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.

If a little girl walk up to you and say "How many Planets do we have" ?
What would you say?
Nine? Eight? Ten?

When many of us grew up, there were nine planets in the Solar System. It was like a fixed point in our brains.
As kids, memorizing this list was an early right of passage of nerd pride: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto .
But then in 2005, Mike Brown discovered Eris, an icy object thought to be about the same size as Pluto, out beyond its orbit.
That would bring the total number of planets to ten. Right? There's no turning back, textbooks would need to be changed.
In order to settle the dispute, the International Astronomical Union met in 2006, and argued for, and against Pluto's planethood. Some astronomers advocated widening the number of planets to twelve, including Pluto, its moon Charon, the Asteroid Ceres, and the newly discovered Eris.
In the end, they changed the definition of what makes a planet, and sadly, Pluto doesn't make the cut:

Here are the new requirements of planethood status:
1. A planet has to orbit the Sun. Okay fine, Pluto does that.
2. A planet needs enough gravity to pull itself into a sphere. Okay, spherical. Pluto's fine there too.
3. A planet needs to have cleared out its orbit of other objects. Uh oh, Pluto hasn't done that.
For example, planet Earth accounts for a million times the rest of the material in its orbit, while Pluto is just a fraction of the icy objects in its realm.
The final decision was to demote Pluto from planet to dwarf planet.

We have eight planets in the solar system and five dwarf planets
1.Mercury
2. Venus
3. Earth
4. Mars
5. Jupiter
6. Saturn
7. Uranus
8. Neptune