Hubble corrects size of solar system's tenth planet

[FLO]

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has resolved the "tenth planet," nicknamed "Xena" for the first time, and has found that it is only just a little larger than Pluto.

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0604/11xena/

[Naz]

This will reignite the "whats a planet" debate

naz

[lunator]

Naz

re-ignite? it's been happily blazing away.

[Naz]

It's been quiet on here

naz

[Mike Godfrey]

As a newbie I have never understood the 'is it or isn't it a planet' thing I guess there has to be an arbitrary line drawn in the cosmic sand somewhere, otherwise every rock will need to be named. But whats really illuminating is the way we humans (yes I class myself amongst that number ) are desperate to pigeon hole, label and catergorise everything.

We re all trainspotters at heart :shock:

Cheers Mike

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Was that a small earthquake in USA somewhere?

If the new "planetoid" is bigger than a "real" planet, then surely it deserves to be called a planet?

Captain Chaos

[radioactive]

Back to the same old debate I guess. The last I heard was They were considering calling the new found stuff Dwarf planet status which means that Pluto will be downgraded to that status

Not such a bad thing Canabis has been offically downgraded but its no less Potent so the beat goes on Man COOOOOOOOOOl!