Pluto Before New Horizons
In a way, writing science-related posts is a mite frustrating. Things become outdated quickly due to new developments. It is also exciting to be able to learn and post about those new things that come along. In some ways, however, certain discoveries do not entirely negate previous knowledge. In this case, Pluto. It was kicked out of the Planets Club in 2006 and sent to the minor leagues as a dwarf planet, or Trans-Neptunian object. (I'm still not over that.) In July 2015, the New Horizons (not related to the Moody Blues song ) probe gave us pictures and collected data to study. It did not go well for the expectations of secular planetologists. Pluto from New Horizons . Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ / APL, Southwest Research Inst Over the years, the mass of Pluto was estimated several times, making it much smaller than originally projected. Supposedly it had and effect on the orbits of Uranus ("Father Sky") and Neptune, but its mass is far too small. Apparently