Pluto

Pluto, and its placement in the sky is used in astrology to describe the cycle of birth and death, revolution and regeneration. Because Pluto spends a varying (but fairly long) time each sign, the effects are generational rather than societal, or personal. Pluto symbolizes:

• Revolution
• Transformation
• Rebirth and renewal

The placement of this planet within the zodiac will give an indication as to the nature of the revolution or transformation. Currently, pluto is in sagittarius.

In astrological charts, pluto is symbolized as:

         _
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       `._.'
       __|__
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I can't find any documentation as to what this symbol is supposed to represent, /msg me if you know.

Pluto:

Mass..........................3.307 x 10²²lbm, 1.5000 x 10²²kg
Density.......................68.7lb/cubic foot
Mean Radius...................715 miles
Max Distance from Sun.........4,580,000,000
Min Distance from Sun...........2,765,000,000
Gravity relative to Earth ....0.07
Rotation Period.................6d, 9h, 17m, 32s
Revolution time around Sun....248 years (90,465d)
Orbital Velocity..............2.95 miles/second
Number of Moons.................1, Charon

Two additional Pluto related facts are these:

1. Due to the mass and proximity of Pluto's moon, Charon, the centre of mass for the pair is located between them and not inside either body.
2. Pluto only has an atmosphere for 20 to 30 years out of each 248 year orbit of the Sun. During the rest of that time the planet is further away from the Sun, making it colder, so the atmosphere freezes.

Lord of the Underworld.

Pluto is the Roman God of the underworld (Hades) and is the son of Saturn (Titan) and Rhea. In Greek he is Hades, son of Cronus and Rhea. He was the third brother of the Olympians. He was also known as God of Wealth, and precious metals hidden in the earth.

He was often translated into the name Dis meaning wealth, and he wore a helmet which made those who wore it invisible, and rarely left the underworld. Greeks also called him Thanatos the name of the god of death who was overshadowed by Pluto, and the Romans called him Orcus.

Pluto took Proserpina (Persephone) for a wife, from her mother Ceres (Demeter). A deal was formed to allow Pluto to keep Proserpina as Queen of the underworld for half of the year and for her to return to her father Jupiter and her mother Demeter in the other half. This explains the story of the seasons. When Proserpina is with her parents, it is spring and summer because she is happy. When it is winter and fall, it is cold and gloomy because Proserpina must leave her parents, and she becomes saddened.

Pluto *is* a planet

• Pluto, like the rest of the planets, has a thin atmosphere (probably methane).
• Pluto is theorized to have polar ice caps.
• Pluto is thorized to have its own core and mantle.
• Pluto is theorized to have an active surface and pronouced seasons.
• Pluto, like many planets, has its own moon.
• The ancient Greeks coined the word planet. It means "wanderer" describing the way the planets moved around the sky as opposed to the stars which stayed put as the Earth rotated. Pluto reflects lots of light, like other planets, while most other Kuiper Belt objects are dark.

Maybe Pluto needs to be the first of a new classification of planet. Currently there are gas giants and rocky inner planets. Perhaps we need to explore the makeup of *other* solar systems to more clearly be able to define our own. At the very least, Pluto can be our definition of the minimum requirements for a planet to be a planet in other solar systems.

This writeup is in response to Pluto isn't a planet

The song "Pluto," by Björk, melts your face. The first time I heard it, I thought to myself: "Björk + distortion = yuck." I think perhaps I just wasn't prepared for having my face melted in such an overtly meltalicious way. A few more listens convinced me that it was pretty rocking. A few more listens and I realized that it was a three-minute masterpiece of emotion sung to a backing track that could only have been acquired by a microphone in the midst of an industrial apocalypse, or perhaps by unmitigated genius.

Then I got to dance to it in a basement full of people, with a strobe light going. This experience may be illegal in several countries. We had to mop the faces off the floor.

Let me break it down for you. The overtly electronic robot-factory background, perhaps a prelude to the almost disquieting calm of All Is Full Of Love, might not unsettle you too much, especially if you're used to the sweet strains of that pioneer of twentieth-century noise-as-popular-music genius, the Aphex Twin. In fact, it sounds like a rather tamer version of the similarly respiratory-system-melting Richard D. James ditty, Ventolin.

What else does Björk have in store for you? Oh, a drum kit kicks in early, fine. This song could use a real beat. As more machinery starts rumbling in the background, Bjork starts singing a deceptively low-key lyric, aside from the undercurrent of menacing fuzziness. Excuse me, she sings, and we get another real beat, this one with more punch than that first one.

But I just have to

explode.

Explode this body off me.

Here goes. We get a whole pile of backup Björks kicking in on harmony, and the vocals start building. This song is about to take off. Brace yourself for the explosion. Hold on to your face. Björk is about to free the human race from suffering.

But no! Not yet. There's one last thing to tell you. When the explosion comes, don't worry about Björk. She'll be fine.

I'll be brand new. Brand new tomorrow. A little bit tired. But brand new.

Hold on, we're starting again. This time we get the full treatment. An infinity of Björks singing backup again, and this time they've brought the strings with them. The vocals build again just like they did thirty seconds ago, and then the strings and backing vocals drop out.

Now it's just Björk, with the robotic eschaton at her heels, screaming like she was given the ability to scream for this very moment as she explodes this body off her in preparation for a brand new tomorrow.

Meanwhile you, the listener, are in Melt Disney World.

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All lyrics (formatted like this) are from Björk's Pluto, off the album Homogenic. This writeup was prepared for Orpheum's Songs and Lyrics quest, and has been CST Approved. Please see ophie's writeup above if you're curious about the significance of the song's title.

Outer space has been a lifelong interest to me, and I recently decided to take on some short science courses in planets and astronomy at Britain's Open University. Faced with the complexities of cosmology and gamma-ray, infrared, radio, ultraviolet and X-ray astronomy, as well as the sheer vastness of the universe, with its billions of stars, galaxies, nebulae and other objects, I soon decided my main focus would be the solar system itself: Earth's back yard, so to speak.

I thought I would be on fairly safe ground in memorising the nine planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and of course, Pluto. As my studies continued, however, I began to discover about trans-Neptunian objects (TNO)s, which orbit the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. If he had discovered it today, it would have been classed as a TNO, not a planet. Since 1992, over a thousand such objects have been found, and Pluto came under increasing pressure to forego its planetary status, saved only by the fact that it was larger than any then-discovered TNOs.

In January, 2005, Michael Brown discovered 2003 UB313, which had been overlooked in routine observations in 2003. He gave it the informal nickname "Xena", although it was later named Eris by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The Hubble Space Telescope measured its diameter as 2400km, larger than Pluto, in April 2006, and suddenly Pluto's status was under threat. Either 2003 UB313 became a tenth planet, or Pluto lost its own status. The IAU was forced to decide upon a formal definition of the term "planet" to clear up the controversy and confusion, and the decision was announced on 24th August, 2006. The definition meant that Pluto was no longer a planet, and that the eight other planets will be considered the "classical planets". Pluto, 2003 UB313, and 1 Ceres (previously classified as an asteroid) will be known as "dwarf planets".

In July, 2015, NASA's New Horizons mission performed a close fly-by of Pluto and its system of moons. An initial press conference on 15th July showed two exciting images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, raising intriguing questions already. No doubt more questions and answers will be raised as the mission continues. A heart-shaped region visible on some of the first images of Pluto has been named Tombaugh Regio after the world's discoverer. Young surfaces on the Pluto image show no visible craters. Charon has a 4-6 mile deep chasm which reminds me of the Valles Marineris on Mars.

The beautiful dwarf planet imaged by the New Horizons probe.

i am a space nerd, have been since a very early age. i grew up in the era of the US vs. USSR 1960s space race and was fascinated and astonished by the TV and newspaper images and reports of launches, spaceflights and just in general anything to do with what was beyond our atmosphere. I watched Gemini launches, watched the V specials on the missions flown by those brave explorers. In time I followed the transition to the Apollo program, bought books on the topic. I watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon, held my breath during the Apollo 13 return to Earth.

As manned spaceflight slowed down, I got equally excited about robotic spaceprobes sent out. the Voyager missions, various landing attempts on Mars and Venus. Finally i watched the launch of New Horizons, a probe sent out to investigate Pluto, followed the mission and made sure i was online for the first conference discussing the first images sent back from millions of miles away.

Like so many other people I had been disappointed at Pluto's "demotion from 'planet' status", but here were images showing the beauty of this little rocky body unimaginably far away. I felt like a child again as over time more images were released. This rock is beautiful. Darn it, it has a heart-shaped structure on its surface, who couldn't love that? New Horizons went on to investigate the body now known as Arrokoth, and may yet be given another science target in the future. Meanwhile, images of Pluto stand out as one of th most amazing space-related things i have lived to witness. Thank you Pluto!

Some Pluto Facts

Pluto has an atmosphere. Hardly breathable by life as we know it, it's nitrogen, with some methane and traces of carbon monoxide. It's long been known that it has a moon, CHaron, but it seems that they are tidally locked to each other, as well as being effectively a binary planet system, as they each orbit a barycentre, a point just beyond Pluto's surface.

Pluto's plains are largely covered with ices of its atmosphere, with mountains made of water ice. A large heart-shaped area known as Tombaugh Regio, named after Clyde Tombaugh who discovered the planet (and who is the only American to discover a planet!).

The interior is likely to be a core of rocky material surrounded by a mantle of water ice. Pluto has volcanoes! Spewing not lava, but liquid water likely heated by radioactive materials in the core, ome parts of Pluto are renewed by its volcanoes. According to the New Horizons science team, "Pluto displays a surprisingly wide variety of geological landforms, including those resulting from glaciological and surface–atmosphere interactions as well as impact, tectonic, possible cryovolcanic, and mass-wasting processes." these features even include dunes of material in parts of Sputnik Planitia. Thank you, New Horizons!

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$ xclip -o | wc -w
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Plu"to (?), n. [L., fr. Gr. .] Class. Myth.

The son of Saturn and Rhea, brother of Jupiter and Neptune; the dark and gloomy god of the Lower World.

Pluto monkey Zool., a long-tailed African monkey (Cercopithecus pluto), having side whiskers. The general color is black, more or less grizzled; the frontal band is white.

 

© Webster 1913.