Chris May

This is really cool.

I did a project just like this in 7th grade, but I only did it for the (then) 9 planets.

solarsystembodies.jpg (1.02 MB)

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14489259/

I wish I coudl take credit for that line, but it was from Colbert.

So now Pluto is going to be a Drawf Planet, along with UB313 (Xena) and Ceres.

To see the full image you might need to expand your window or use the scrollbar at the bottom of this article.

UB313 is larger than Pluto, and farther out in orbit.

I kinda liked the idea of calling Pluto and Charon a "dual planet," as Charon is so large that it was somewhat unfair to say that it orbits Pluto, but they aren't going to do that.

Ceres is the largest asteroid in the Asteroid Belt but because it hasn't swept the area clear of other asteroids (and I guess it never will b/c of its close proximity to Jupiter) it will never meet the new definition of a planet:

“a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”

Some guys have created a real world force field. It uses plasma (highly charged particles), held in place by a magnetic field, to seal off a vaccum. That means that the field has to resist at least 14.6956 pounds per square inch. Check it out here.