Russia is the largest country on Earth with a land area of 6.6 million square miles and a population of 142 million. It has vast, sparsely populated areas due to harsh climates and forests. Russia also has Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake, and nine different time zones. Russia is the largest country on Earth […]
New Mexico still recognizes Pluto as a planet when it passes over their night skies, due to Clyde Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto and residency in Las Cruces. Despite being demoted in 2006, Pluto was visited by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. Pluto was demoted from a “planet” to a “dwarf planet” in 2006, but […]
Project Pluto was a Cold War project to create a nuclear-powered missile that could fly at supersonic speeds at low altitudes. It was canceled due to improvements in radar technology and the ease of developing ICBMs. The missile would have used a 513 megawatt unshielded nuclear reactor to heat air and travel at Mach 3 […]
Pluto was downgraded from being a planet to a dwarf planet or minor planet due to a new definition of what constitutes a classical planet by the International Astronomical Union. The new standards require a celestial body to be a round shape and gravitational dominant enough to keep anything of similar size from floating around […]
In 2006, Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet by the IAU. Dwarf planets are celestial bodies in regular orbit around a sun with sufficient mass to be shaped by their own gravity. There are five known dwarf planets, including Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris. Ceres and Pluto were both classified as dwarf planets in […]
