woodchurch science

astronomers have decided to call what was originally xena or snappily 2003 ub313, ‘eris’. in greek mythology, eris caused a quarrel among goddesses sparking one of the trojan wars. in astronomy circles, eris has also caused strife, forcing scientists to produce a strict definition of the term planet - and has led to pluto losing its planet status that it had held since its discovery in 1930. both eris and pluto (together with the largest asteroid, ceres) are now classified as ‘dwarf planets.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 5:56 pm and is filed under astronomy, ks3, ks4, news, physics, warren. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.