Planet: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

For other uses, see Planet (disambiguation).

A planet (from the Greek πλανήτης, planetes or "wanderers") is a body of considerable mass that orbits a star and that produces very little or no energy through nuclear fusion. Prior to the 1990s only nine were known (all of them in our own solar system); as of 2004, 118 are known, with all of the new discoveries being extrasolar planets, sometimes known as "exoplanets".

Planets are thought to form from the collapsing nebula that a planet's star formed out of, aggregating from gas and dust that orbits the protostar in a dense protostellar disk before the star's core ignites and its solar wind blows the remaining material away.

Within the Solar System

Except for Earth (which was not perceived as being a planet by the ancients), all of the accepted planets in the solar system are named after Greek or Roman gods in the English language. Moons are also named after gods and characters from classical mythology or from the plays of Shakespeare. Asteroids can be named, at the discretion of their discoverers, after anybody or anything (subject to approval by the International Astronomical Union's panel on nomenclature). The act of naming planets and their features is known as planetary nomenclature.

Accepted Planets

The commonly accepted list of major planets of our solar system (in increasing distance from the Sun) are

• Mercury (☿)
• Venus (♀)
• Earth (♁)
• Mars (♂)
• Jupiter (♃)
• Saturn (♄)
• Uranus (♅)
• Neptune (♆)
• Pluto (♇) (Pluto's orbit lies partly within that of Neptune; some astronomers consider Pluto to be merely a large asteroid, not a true planet)

English-speaking schoolchildren often use a variety of mnemonics to remember the planets in this order:

• Mary's Violet Eyes Make John Stay Up Nights, Period. (Or Poor John to include the Planetoids)
• Mother Very Thoughtfully Made Jelly Sandwiches Under No Protest. (Or A Jelly Sandwich to include Asteroids)
• My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. (Or "Pistachio Nuts" for those rare times when Pluto is within the orbit of Neptune)
• My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets

Similar mnemonics exist in many other languages.

Other Objects

Recently an object, 2003 VB₁₂ (Sedna) has been discovered orbiting the sun 13 Tm (13 billion kilometres) away, three times farther than Pluto. Sedna, after the Inuit goddess of the sea, is the name proposed for this 1180–2360 km (730-1470 miles) diameter object by its discoverers. Its official name for now is 2003 VB₁₂ (it cannot receive another designation until its orbit has been better nailed down). The diameter is still uncertain but believed to be between 1/2 and 3/4 of Pluto's. Several news sources have already reported Sedna as the tenth planet [1], but that is not generally accepted by astronomers. Another possible planet is 2004 DW, an object with an orbit and mass similar to Pluto's. Other candidates include 50000 Quaoar and 20000 Varuna.

Several hypothetical planets, like Planet X (supposedly beyond the orbit of Pluto) or Vulcan (thought to orbit inside the orbit of Mercury), were posited at various historical times, and were subjects of intense searches that found nothing.

Classification

Astronomers distinguish between minor planets, such as asteroids, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects; and major (or true) planets.

Planets within Earth's solar system can be divided into categories according to composition.

• Terrestrial or rocky: Planets that are similar to Earth—with bodies largely composed of rock: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
• Jovian or gas giant: Those with a composition largely made up of gaseous material: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Uranian planets are a sub-class of gas giants, distinguished from true Jovians by their depletion in hydrogen and helium.
• Icy: Sometimes a third category is added to include bodies like Pluto, whose composition is primarily ice; this category of "icy" bodies also includes many non-planetary bodies such as the icy moons of the outer planets of our solar system (e.g. Triton).

The eight rocky and gaseous planets are universally recognized as major planets. For consistency's sake, some believe that due to size and composition Pluto (like Sedna) should be classified a minor planet, as the largest of the Trans-Neptunian objects in the Kuiper belt. For example, Mike Brown of Caltech defines a planet to be: any body in the solar system that is more massive than the total mass of all of the other bodies in a similar orbit [2] Using this definition, neither Pluto nor Sedna would be a major planet.

Many consider the Earth and Luna to be a double planet, for several reasons:

• The Moon, as measured by its diameter, is 1.5 times larger then Pluto.
• The gravitational force of the Sun on the Moon is larger than the gravitational force of the Earth on the Moon (by about a factor of 2.2)

The latter fact is not unique in the solar system, but is unusual for such a large satellite. Other satellites for which the Sun's gravity is actually stronger than the primary's:

• The outermost moon of Jupiter (S/2003 J 2; factor of 1.5)
• The outermost moon of Uranus (S/2001 U 2; factor of 1.2)
• The two outermost moons of Neptune (S/2002 N 4 and S/2003 N 1; factor of 2.1)
• Several asteroid moons (e.g. S/2001 (22) 1 Linus by a factor of 1.6; S/1998 (45) 1 Petit-Prince by a factor of 2.8; S/1993 243 (1) Dactyl by a factor of 1.3; and, most remarkably, S/2001 (66391) 1 by a whopping factor of 625!)

Most extrasolar planets (those outside our solar system) discovered to date have masses which are about the same or larger than the gas giants within the solar system.

Exceptions include three planets discovered orbiting a burned-out star, or supernova remnant, called a pulsar, comparable in size to the terrestrial planets; and a planet orbiting mu Arae with a mass of approximately 14 times that of the Earth [3].

It is far from clear if the newly discovered large planets would resemble gas giants in our solar system or if they are of an entirely different type or types which are unknown in our solar system. In particular, some of the newly discovered planets orbit extremely close to their parent star, sometimes in highly elliptical orbits. They therefore receive much more stellar radiation than the gas giants in our solar system, which makes it questionable whether they are the same type of planet at all.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States has a program underway to develop a Terrestrial Planet Finder artificial satellite, which would be capable of detecting the planets with masses comparable to terrestrial planets. The frequency of occurrence of these planets is one of the variables in the Drake equation which estimates the number of intelligent, communicating civilizations that exist in our galaxy.

Interstellar planets are rogues in interstellar space, not gravitationally linked to any given solar system. No interstellar planet is known to date, but their existence is considered a plausible hypothesis on the grounds that the results of computer simulations of the origin and evolution of planetary systems often include the formation and subsequent ejection of bodies of significant mass.

There is a minimum amount of wobble that current technology is able to detect. We can only detect extrasolar planets that are large enough and close enough to a star to wobble the star at least that much. As improved telescopes are built, it will become possible to detect [currently hypothetical] smaller and more distant planets. See extrasolar planet for details.