We discovered something: Pluto was different! Pluto was discovered because Neptune’s orbit showed an anomaly that indicated that there was something else out there. So they looked and eventually Clyde ...

Once the quirky underdog of our solar system, Pluto held planetary status until 2006, when it got a cosmic demotion that still stings space fans. Discovered in 1930, Pluto was the ninth planet for ...

The year was 2015. After traveling billions and billions of miles through the Erebus, New Horizons encounters the boatman, and the somber lord of the departed. The spacecraft could have been called ...

Shakespeare’s Juliet was being decidedly unscientific when she proclaimed, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.” In science, classifications – the ...

Hey, remember Pluto? Of course you do! When most of us were brought up in school we learned that there were nine known planets in the Solar System, and Pluto was the one that hung out on the outskirts ...

Pluto was a planet in good standing for seventy-six years when in 2006, out of the blue, it was demoted and booted from our solar system’s family of planets. The stunning event – still hotly debated ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Dwarf planets and moons, illustration. A dwarf planet is a ...