Stellar Discoveries
The controversially demoted celestial object formerly known as the planet Pluto won’t regain its A-list status anytime soon, but New Horizons images have brought the dwarf planet into greater focus. Pluto and similar-sized bodies are revealing illuminating information about the history of what’s out there, and California Institute of Technology astronomer Mike Brown, in a talk titled “
Tales From the Outer Solar System,” will share the new knowledge. Brown, who describes himself as the “man who killed Pluto,” and whose team discovered the dwarf planet Eris (more massive than the former ninth planet), won fame when Time named him one of its 100 most influential people of 2006. In his talk, he will discuss a decade of discoveries of dwarf planets and what they tell us about large collisions, stellar encounters, and other outer-limits occurrences. He will also present new evidence that a larger object may exist beyond Pluto and the other dwarf planets. That discovery would end all questions about Pluto’s downgrading, he says, and give the solar system a new ninth planet.
— Anita Katz
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