Word: pluto
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Last week Astronomer Gerard Peter Kuiper (rhymes with piper) of the University of Chicago made another move toward demoting Pluto. Recent observations have proved that its period of rotation on its own axis is more than six days (TIME, Feb. 6). For a planet, says Scientist Kuiper, this is too slow...
Astronomers have always felt uncertain about Pluto, the outermost planet in the solar system. It is suspiciously small, with less than half of the earth's diameter, and its orbit is peculiar. Instead of revolving in a near-circle around the sun as the other planets do, Pluto follows an eccentric ellipse, cutting across the orbit of Neptune, its sunward neighbor (which is 39 times the size of the earth). These deviations suggest that Pluto may not be a real planet...
Kuiper has said in an interview, "The heavenly body we know as Pluto is in reality only one of Neptune's satellites that broke way untold millions of years...
Kuiper, one of the world's greatest astronomers, bases his theory on the observations that Pluto takes too long--six and a half days--to describe an orbit "too eccentric for a planet," and is much too small to deserve the title of planet...
...Applied Astronomy, said, "I must say, it sounds like rather a cute idea." Bok praised Kuiper as "the custodian of the Solar System. Whenever he says something, you'd better listen to him." Bok added, "Although Kuiper's theory makes a good deal of sense, I still consider Pluto as a genuine planet. It certainly is queer duck, though...