Pluto's orbital period is 248 earth-years. That means from the time it was discovered (in 1930) until now, it hasn't accomplished even one revolution around the sun.
Two relevant thoughts from the Reddit thread:
"...assuming they have the same life span as humans, Plutonians would never celebrate their Plutonian birthday!"Image via Thinking Sci-Fi. Reposted from 2013.
"I wonder when Plutonians celebrate their New Year, and how much more awesome the parties must be if you have to wait that long."
I believe that Neptune just recently completed it's first full orbit since discovery.
ReplyDeleteI still consider Pluto a planet; why else would there be a Disney dog? Would they have named him for a less than planet?
ReplyDeleteDisney animator Ben Sharpsteen claimed they changed the name to Pluto because: "We thought the name [Rover] was too common, so we had to look for something else. ... We changed it to Pluto the Pup ... but I don't honestly remember why." Some Disney animators reportedly believed that Disney chose the name "Pluto" to capitalize on the then-newly-named ninth planet of Pluto.[16] However, animation historian John Canemaker states that Disney chose the name simply because he once had a dog named Pluto.
DeleteThanks! A intertwining tail of the dog and the quasi-planet.
DeleteJust something that blows my mind about the Solar System: Everything in that diagram (the planets) is within a few light-minutes of the Sun. But the Solar System, extending out to the Oort Belt and beyond, is at least two light-years across. The gravitational influence of the Sun tends to be thought of as acting on the planets, but the planets are like a few grains of sand on the pitchers mound of Dodger Stadium. One solar system among trillions. This always helps when trying to get some perspective on our galaxy and beyond. We are just about nothing.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia punts, calling Pluto a "dwarf planet."
>> "...assuming they have the same life span as humans, Plutonians would never celebrate their Plutonian birthday!"
ReplyDeleteAnd Pluto, itself, never celebrated a birthday as a planet. Pluto was a designated planet for less than one Plutonian year. As Humbaba suggests, Neptune was discovered in 1846 and completed its first orbit as a known planet in 2011 (164.8 Earth years later).