• Question: How many planets are in the solar system ?

    Asked by jimmy to Stephen, Lauren, Joseph, Eoin, Colm on 12 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Eoin O Colgain

      Eoin O Colgain answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      Pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet, so now we have 8. A certain generation who learned there was 9 acutely feel the loss of Pluto.

      When you first learned about the planets, how many were you told existed?

    • Photo: colm bracken

      colm bracken answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      It all depends on your definition of a planet. If you consider Pluto a planet then you should really consider the newly found objects that are similar to Pluto as planets. The trouble is that we do not know how many Pluto-like objects there are, so we therefore would not know how many planets there are. So for me I would say 9 planets, and an unknown number of icy-dwarfs like Pluto!

    • Photo: Stephen Scully

      Stephen Scully answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      8

    • Photo: Joseph Roche

      Joseph Roche answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      RIP Pluto.

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