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Why Pluto Ceased to be a Planet 17 Years Ago

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Pluto was discovered in 1930 and was considered the ninth planet of the Solar System for more than 70 years.

However,
in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided to change
the definition of a planet and demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet. What was
the reason behind this controversial decision?

The IAU is the
organization that is responsible for naming and classifying celestial
objects, such as stars, planets, asteroids and comets. In 2006, the IAU
held a general assembly in Prague, where they voted on a resolution that
defined a planet as a celestial body that:

– is in orbit around the Sun,
– has sufficient mass to assume a nearly round shape,
– and has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

According
to this definition, Pluto did not qualify as a planet because it shares
its orbital neighbourhood with other icy objects in the Kuiper Belt, a
region beyond Neptune that contains thousands of small, frozen bodies.

Pluto
is also smaller than some of these objects, such as Eris, which was
discovered in 2005 and sparked the debate about Pluto’s status.

The
IAU’s decision was not universally accepted by astronomers and the
public, who felt that Pluto deserved to keep its planetary status for
historical and sentimental reasons.

Some
argued that the IAU’s definition was too narrow and arbitrary, and that
there could be other criteria to classify planets, such as their
geology, atmosphere or potential for life.

However, the IAU’s
decision also reflected the advances in technology and knowledge that
have revealed the diversity and complexity of the Solar System.

By
recognizing Pluto as a dwarf planet, along with four other similar
objects (Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake), the IAU acknowledged that
there are different types of worlds that deserve to be studied and
appreciated for their own characteristics.

A closer look on the majestic mountains and frozen plains of Pluto as captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons
mission flew by Pluto and captured stunning images of its surface
features, such as mountains, glaciers and a giant heart-shaped plain.
The mission also revealed that Pluto has five moons, including Charon,
which is almost half its size.

Pluto
may have stopped being a planet 17 years ago, but it has not stopped
being an important and beloved member of the Solar System family.

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Former US Air Force fighter pilot: UFOs use Star Trek-style warp drive

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A former US Air Force fighter pilot asserts that he has deciphered
the method behind the extraordinary maneuvers of UFOs, reports dailystar.co.uk.

Over
the past two decades, numerous military encounters with these enigmatic
crafts have been reported, prompting a significant investigation by the
Pentagon.

One of the most renowned sightings occurred during the
USS Nimitz encounter, where fighter pilots witnessed a UFO descending
from 28,000 feet to just above sea level in less than a second.

This
astonishing movement would imply that the craft reached a staggering
speed of 19,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would be fatal to any
human pilot.

According
to Chris Lehto, a former USAF pilot, the craft exhibits two key
characteristics: it moves without inertia, essentially lacking weight,
and it accelerates at an incredibly rapid pace without affecting its
surroundings.

Image: NATO Allied Air Command/Facebook

Chris
believes that the explanation lies within a technology that seems
straight out of science fiction. He proposes that the answer to the UFO
enigma lies in the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical interstellar engine
conceptualized by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.

The
Alcubierre Drive employs a form of “space warp” technology, reminiscent
of what has been depicted in episodes of Star Trek. By bending space, a
craft inside a “warp bubble” could potentially travel at or even
surpass the speed of light without violating the known laws of physics.

While
the Alcubierre Drive remains a hypothetical concept with challenges to
overcome, Chris notes that the required energy is no longer believed to
be unattainably large.

Patents
filed with the US patent office outline the potential workings of the
drive, as well as another groundbreaking technology theorized by
American aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais.

Pais suggests that
high-powered rotating magnets could theoretically eliminate an object’s
inertia, and he has filed a patent for a starship based on this
principle.

However, Chris maintains skepticism regarding Pais’
theory. He explains that while Pais’s patent applications for the US
Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-related
applications, doubts have been raised about their feasibility. There is
speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation
intended to mislead adversaries of the United States.

Alternatively,
rival theories propose that the “Tic Tac” UFO is a classified Pentagon
project testing similar advanced technologies discussed by Chris.

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A Mysterious Earth-Like Planet Has Just Appeared in Our Solar System, Scientists Say

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Scientists say they have found evidence of a new Earth-like
planet that has suddenly appeared in our Solar System and is orbiting
the Sun.

Physicists, including those from the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan, said the planet is likely to be the mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
that was hypothesised to exist in the far outer edges of the Solar
System.

Several studies in the past have suggested there is likely an
undiscovered planet beyond the Kuiper Belt – a stellar disk of materials
such as asteroids, space rocks, comets around the Sun in the outer
Solar System past the orbit of Neptune.

Independent.co.uk reports: In the new research, published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists
found that some of the objects in the Kuiper Belt behave in a way
indicative of the presence of a small planet among them.

One such object, they said, is about 500 astronomical units (AU) from
the Sun, where 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

In comparison Neptune is at a distance of 30 AUs from the Sun.

Some of these were also found to have “odd” orbits suggesting they
are being pull by the gravity of a cosmic entity larger than those that
typically influence such objects.

Computer simulations run by the scientists indicate that the most
likely explanation for the observations was another hidden planet in the
Kuiper Belt.

“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet,” researchers wrote in the study.

“It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in
the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), as many such
bodies existed in the early solar system,” they added.

If such a planet exists, researchers say it would have a mass about
1.5 to 3 times that of Earth with an inclination of about 30 degrees.

They say the theorised planet’s orbit would likely place it between 250 and 500 AU from the Sun.

Researchers say the discovery of such a planet close to the Kuiper
Belt can unravel new constraints on planet formation and evolution.

“In conclusion, the results of the KBP scenario support the existence
of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system,” scientists
noted.

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