(By Rudolf OgooOkonkwo)--While some of us are sure of the number of gates to
heaven and the kind of visa needed to get in, some scientists are scratching
their heads trying to figure out how to locate the 9th planet. Those who have
mastered the layouts of heaven, including the postal code of their mansions,
are waiting for death to come and take them there. Well, not really. Most of
them are not in a hurry to make the journey. It is, however, slightly different
for scientists. For scientists, they are willing and are working to send spacecraft
on a journey of over 2.8 billion kilometers in search of the 9th planet.
When most of us were in school, the 9th planet was
Pluto. It used to stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Venus and
Saturn. In 1992, questions were raised about its status as a planet, following
the discovery of several other objects of its size within the area called the
Kuiper belt. In 2005, an object called Eris was discovered. It has mass that is
27% more than Pluto. So in 2006, Pluto was demoted from a planet to a mere
dwarf planet for failing to clear the objects around its orbit. On July 14,
2015, the New Horizons spacecraft tapping the gravity of Jupiter flew by Pluto
accurately measuring it and providing conclusive proof that it wasn’t a planet.
