"Is it a planet?" ... "guess again"

By now we've all heard about poor little Pluto. No, not Mickey Mouse's dog i'm talking about the Dwarf Planet Pluto. Are you upset about Pluto not making the cut? Will it help to know why? Well here it is:

Pluto is not a planet because it's too small, and it doesn't meet the necessary requirement needed to be a planet.

The requirements are:

It needs to be in orbit around the sun - Yes, Pluto does indeed orbit the sun.

It needs to have enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape - Pluto... Yup

It needs to have "cleared the neighborhood" of its orbit - Uh-oh. Here's the rule breaker. According to this, Pluto is not a planet.

If you haven't guessed i still need to let you guys know what this all has to do with our friend the Crab Nebula. Well I'm writing this post so i can discuss if the Crab Nebula is a planet or not. I'm gonna make this really simple - Ready?- The Crab NEBULA is not a planet... it's a nebula.

Sizing up the Crab

Currently located at a distance of about 6,500 light years (In common English, very very very far away) from Earth, the nebula has a diameter of 11 light years (Still in English, WOW) and is expanding at a rate of about 1,500 kilometers per second. (Imagine YOU expanding that fast!) So the nebula is expanding 285,120,000 miles a day. In a month that would be 59,875,200,000 billion miles. That's 718,502,400,000 billion miles in a year!

Are you still confused? Well It's so big, that it can't even fit into the sun once. Do you know how big the sun is? The Sun's diameter is 1.4 million kilometers. About 1,000,000 Earths could fit into the sun. About 74,815,267 suns can fit into the Crab Nebula.

So about 74,815,267,000,000 Earths could fit into the Crab Nebula.

That's A LOT!

I couldn't find a picture of the Crab Nebula next to the Earth OR the

Sun so here's a cool picture of the Crab alone

LiFe? 0_o ?

Could there be life in the crab nebula?

Here are the facts:

Is there liquid water on the Crab Nebula: Not that we know of.

A magnetic field: yes, a very strong one.

An oxygen atmosphere: probably.

Do I think there could be life? Yeah, I guess there could be, but I really don't know.

I think that life might be able to survive on Mars. Mars is right behind us in our Solar System (also known as the fourth planet from the Sun). It's 35 million miles away from Earth. Some people think that there used to be- and still may be- life on Mars. Scientists think that there used to be water on Mars too, but they know something happened to make all the water disappear. I think that eventually mars could, in theory, be a suitable planet to live on.

space in Space

So we've been talking about Space, you know the big dark thing we're all living in, but now I want to take some time to talk about space. You know, space, like, how much space is between here and there. Actually, that's exactly what I'm going to be writing about... how much space (both kinds technecally) is between here, earth, and there, the Crab Nebula. What do you think? Should I use Killometers? Astronomical Units? Light years? You don't know? Then I'll explain. One Km is equal to 3,280.8399 feet (or so), an AU is 150 million Kilometers and a Light year is 63,238.82624 Astronomical Units (or so). Obviously we wouldn't use AU's on Earth and especially not Light years. And wouldn't it take a long time to use Km's in Space? So each measure has a place.

The Crab Nebula is about 6,300 Light years from Earth. It would take 145,728,010,000,000,000 hours to get to it so.... I really don't think humans will reach the Crab Nebula. I dont think people will get there because with a life expectancy of 75 years humans only live about 657,000 hours. That's 221,808,234,000 human

life-times. 145,728,010,000,000,000 hours is 6,072,000,420,000,000 years. Unless we find a way to make a supper human who doesn't have to eat, sleep, drink or go to the bathroom and can live forever, we aren't going to make it there.

Forming the Crab

http://www.space.com/php/popup/mediaplayer/noad_skinframeset.php?id=b051129_heic_esa&mode=play&skin=marsmad
(Click the link to see a video of the formation of the Crab Nebula)

Once upon a time, in a supergiant star's core something was wrong. then all of the sudden... BOOOOM!!! The star explodes! Atoms fused together within the first few seconds. Soon it's cooling and expanding, maybe even on forever. While it's expanding atoms scatter and WAHLAAH! The Crab Nebula was "born"!.

Crabby at the AMNH

On Monday the 26th of October my grade went to the American Museum of Natural History. While we were there we went to three different places in the museum: the Hayden Planetarium, the Rose Center and the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites. I learned all about what happens with stars, meteorites and about gravity on various bodies in space. I still want to know why my body is called the "Crab" Nebula. I also want to know what makes meteorites break off.

Finding the Crab in the Sand

The Crab Nebula was discovered in 1731 by the British physician and amateur astronomer John Bevis(1695-1771). Although, it was first seen in China on July 4, 1054 AD and was visible in full day light for 23 days and at night you could see it with a naked eye for 653 days.


A nebula, like the Crab Nebula, is a big part of space. Then again anything that HUGE would be.