When Was the Dwarf Planet Pluto Discovered

On February 18, 1930, Clyde W. Tombaugh, an assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered Pluto. For over seven decades, Pluto was considered the ninth planet of our solar system. The Discovery It was American astronomer Percival Lowell who first thought there might be another planet somewhere near Neptune and Uranus. Lowell had noticed that the gravitational pull of something large was affecting the orbits of those two planets. However, despite looking for what he called Planet X from 1905 until his death in 1916, Lowell never found it. Thirteen years later, the Lowell Observatory (founded in 1894 by Percival Lowell) decided to recommence Lowells search for Planet X. They had a more powerful, 13-inch telescope built for this sole purpose. The Observatory then hired 23-year-old Clyde W. Tombaugh to use Lowells predictions and the new telescope to search the skies for a new planet. It took a year of detailed, painstaking work, but Tombaugh did find Planet X. The discovery occurred on February 18, 1930 while Tombaugh was carefully examining a set of photographic plates created by the telescope. Despite Planet X being discovered on February 18, 1930, the Lowell Observatory was not quite ready to announce this huge discovery until more research could be done. After a few weeks, it was confirmed that Tombaughs discovery was indeed a new planet. On what would have been Percival Lowells 75th birthday, March 13, 1930, the Observatory publicly announced to the world that a new planet had been discovered. Pluto the Planet Once discovered, Planet X needed a name. Everyone had an opinion. However, the name Pluto was chosen on March 24, 1930 after 11-year-old Venetia Burney in Oxford, England suggested the name Pluto. The name denotes both the assumed unfavorable surface conditions (as Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld) and also honors Percival Lowell, as Lowells initials make up the first two letters of the planets name. At the time of its discovery, Pluto was considered to be the ninth planet in the solar system. Pluto was also the smallest planet, being less than half the size of Mercury and two-thirds the size of Earths moon. Usually, Pluto is the planet farthest from the sun. This great distance from the sun makes Pluto very inhospitable; its surface is expected to be made up of mostly ice and rock and it takes Pluto 248 years just to make one orbit around the sun. Pluto Loses Its Planet Status As the decades passed and astronomers learned more about Pluto, many questioned whether Pluto could really be considered a full-fledged planet. Plutos status was questioned in part because it was by far the smallest of the planets. Plus, Plutos moon (Charon, named after Charon of the underworld, discovered in 1978) is incredibly large in comparison. Plutos eccentric orbit also concerned astronomers; Pluto was the only planet whose orbit actually crossed that of another planet (sometimes Pluto crosses Neptunes orbit). When bigger and better telescopes began to discover other large bodies beyond Neptune in the 1990s, and especially when another large body was discovered in 2003 that rivaled the size of Pluto, Plutos planet status became seriously questioned. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially created a definition of what makes a planet; Pluto did not meet all the criteria. Pluto was then downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet.

Characterizing the Religious Encounter between Moravians...

Characterizing the Religious Encounter between Moravians and Saramakas When Moravians in Germany sent three missionaries to Suriname in 1765 to witness to the Saramakas, two groups with unique and fundamentally different cultural, social, and religious beliefs and structures met. During the course of their stay, the Moravians were hounded by disease and disappointed by the poor reception of the gospel; meanwhile, the Saramakas were plagued with inter-tribal rivalries and poor relations with the white government officials and plantation owners, with whom they maintained an unsteady peace. These circumstances, as well as the many ways in which Moravian and Saramaka expectations and social behavior differed, created a barrier between the†¦show more content†¦Moravians, though they came to witness to the blacks as fellow children of God, couldn’t bridge the cultural gap; one brother wrote, â€Å"It is indescribable how uncomfortable it is for me†¦to lodge with the negroes in their huts†¦they live in a very disagreeable manner, wh ich stems from their heathenish customs.† The restrictions Moravians placed on the behavior of converts made them trade some of their Saramaka customs for white customs, and discouraged many Saramaka from converting. As one woman said, â€Å"I still love the spectacles of the negroes. I love to dance and I cannot hear any story about the Great God just now because if I were to convert, I wouldn’t be able to dance any more† (238). The converts, who were initially mainly children, faced many temptations to backslide (98, 320). They were often blamed for problems in the community. For instance, after Alabi and Skipio killed the cayman, Alabi’s sister became sick and the Saramakas divined that Alabi’s conversion had angered his dead father, Abini, who Alabi now needed to placate through ritual means. The Moravian’s restrictions on matters of â€Å"personal style† disappointed the children who asked permission to make a shriek of mourning for Simeon’s death, but were reprimanded for suggesting such uncivilized behavior (227). Those sacrifices were

Presidents Dilemma Speech free essay sample

Our nation is currently in the middle of grim economic circumstances of stagflation. Inflation is high, and getting higher. Unemployment is high, and getting higher. While all of this happens, GDP continues to drop. If nothing is done about this, our nation is sure to suffer worse consequences than we have already been forced to endure. Our economy will be flushed down the toilet. This new economic policy is the answer to our prayers. With the perfect blend of fiscal and monetary policy, we will achieve our goal of curbing inflation and will reduce the price of goods and services. Although GDP will initially go down because of the decrease in personal income, overtime the reduction in prices will eventually lead to an increase in consumption, which will help to stabilize the economy overtime. Overtime, we will see an increase in GDP and employment rates. This is exactly what we need in this time of economic crisis. The first part of our economic policy is to raise taxes and decrease government spending. We will raise increase the income tax for those making more than $200,000 by 10%, and the income tax on those making between $150,00 and $200,000 annually by 5%. We will also put a $0. 39 tax on cigarettes. The tax on cigarettes will not only increase the government’s revenue; it will also discourage the American people from partaking in such a dangerous habit. We will decrease government spending by getting rid of the US penny. We waste around $120 million per year producing pennies. This will increase government revenue and take some extra money out of the economy, causing prices to fall. This will also cause the government budget to become a surplus. This will decrease the demand for loanable funds, decreasing interest rates. Unfortunately, this will result in a phenomenon known as crowding in. When crowding in occurs, the government borrows less money and as a result, private investment increases. Because private investment increases, the economy will not deflate as much as it was intended to. Monetary policy must be combined with fiscal policy to make sure crowding in does not occur. We will use monetary policy in the second part of our economic policy to negate the effects of crowding in. We will start by decreasing the money supply, which will decrease interest rates. This increase will cancel out the decrease caused by fiscal policy, which will result in interest rates staying about the same. Because the interest rates will stay about the same, the amount of investment will stay the same. This combined economic policy will have no affect on our part in the World Trade Market. Because interest rates stay the same, foreign buyers are not encouraged to increase exports, and domestically, we are not encouraged to import. Because the demand and supply for the American dollar in the foreign market remain unaffected, the value of the US dollar on the international market will be unaffected. Since the amount of imports and exports will remain about the same, our net exports will be unaffected. Because our trading will not be affected, our nation’s balance of trade will also remain unchanged. Unfortunately, this policy will initially result in a fall in GDP. Although investment will stay the same, consumption and government spending will fall. Consumption falls because taxes take money of people’s incomes, discouraging them from buying goods or services. Government spending falls because the government spends less money by cutting back on its spending. Since GDP is the sum of consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports, if consumption and government spending falls GDP will fall. Luckily, this fall in GDP will only be temporary. As the value of the dollar rises, prices fall. When prices fall, people are able to buy more goods for the same amount of money. This will slowly put money back into the economy while inflation remains at safe levels. After hearing all this, you may be wondering how this will provide immediate relief to the problem of unemployment and our decreasing GDP. Unfortunately, this policy alone will not do that. We can however, use the money acquired in the government surplus to bring back New Deal programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps to help beautify our country, replant trees to reduce our carbon footprint, and most importantly, provide jobs for the people. Using the money acquired through taxation to do this would cause spending to increase, which will cancel out with the previous decrease caused by getting rid of the penny. Providing jobs to the people would cause consumption to increase, negating the decrease caused by taxation. This means that overall, GDP will remain unchanged, unemployment would decrease, and the inflation rate would go down significantly. This method does work, as shown during the years of the Great Depression when then-President Franklin Roosevelt used these programs to get our economy back into shape. The affect this plan would have on our citizens is mostly positive; all citizens would be positively affected by reductions in prices, and the lower class would be positively affected by the increase in jobs, and the eventual stabilization of the economy would, of course, affect everybody positively. Unfortunately, this plan means increase taxes for those who smoke and those who make over $100,000 a year. Citizens, I ask that you please be understanding of this. For the time being, those who are less fortunate than you cannot afford to pay the taxes; they must concentrate their finances on getting their lives back together. Once they get their lives back together, the money will start flowing through the economy again and will return to you. This is a small sacrifice I am asking you to make for the sake of the entire country. As John F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for. Ask what you can do for your country.