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Allen G. Thurman

Allen Granberry Thurman (November 13, 1813 – December 12, 1895), sometimes erroneously spelled Allan Granberry Thurman, was a Democratic U.S. representative, Ohio Supreme Court justice, and Senator from Ohio. He unsuccessfully ran for Vice President of the United States in 1888 with President Grover Cleveland.

Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, he and his family moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, when Thurman was young. Thurman established a legal practice in Chillicothe with his uncle, William Allen, who later represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate. Thurman won election to the House of Representatives in 1844, becoming the youngest member of that body. He supported the James K. Polk administration during the Mexican–American War and voted for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery from any territory gained from Mexico. He served a single term in the House before joining the Supreme Court of Ohio. He narrowly lost the 1867 Ohio gubernatorial election to Rutherford B. Hayes. He won election to the Senate in 1869, becoming an opponent to the Republican Reconstruction policy. He actively campaigned against African-American voting rights and worked to reverse the civil rights advances of Reconstruction. He offered an amendment to continue to segregate public schools in the District of Columbia. During the disputed 1876 presidential election, Thurman helped establish the Electoral Commission. Thurman lost re-election in 1881 as the Republicans had won control of the Ohio legislature.

Thurman was a "favorite son" candidate for president in 1880 and 1884. The 1888 Democratic National Convention selected him as President Grover Cleveland's running mate, as Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks had died in office. The aging Thurman did not actively campaign and the Democratic ticket was defeated.

Early years
Allen Granberry Thurman was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, to Pleasant Thurman and Mary Granberry Allen Thurman. Both of his parents were teachers; his father also a Methodist minister. In 1815, his parents emancipated their slaves and moved to Chillicothe, Ohio. He attended Chillicothe Academy, an academy run by his mother, and then studied law as an apprentice to his uncle, William Allen (who later became a senator from Ohio). At the age of eighteen, Thurman worked on a land survey, and at twenty-one became private secretary to the Governor of Ohio, Robert Lucas. In 1835 he was admitted to the Ohio bar and became his uncle's law partner. In 1837 his uncle entered the Senate.

Congressman
The same year he was elected to the House of Representatives as its youngest member. He generally supported the majority of the Democrats on all issues except internal improvements, on which he tended to vote with the Whigs. He supported the Polk Administration's conduct of the Mexican–American War, spoke in favor of the 54°40' northern limit to the Oregon territory, and voted for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery from the territory gained from Mexico. His support for the latter was due to anti-African-American prejudice, as he wanted to reserve this territory for white settlement. After a single two-year term, he left the House voluntarily to resume private law practice.

State Supreme Court Justice
In 1851 he was elected to a four-year term (February 1852 – February 1856) on the Ohio Supreme Court, the last year as the chief justice. He then returned to private law practice in Columbus. Thurman spoke out against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and opposed the pro-slavery Lecompton constitution for Kansas. In 1860 he was a supporter of Stephen A. Douglas for President. A "peace Democrat" or "Copperhead," he never accepted the right of a state to secede but felt it was unwise to fight a state that had already left the Union, and during the American Civil War he was opposed to Lincoln's policies, especially on emancipation. While he supported the war effort, he encouraged compromise and a political settlement.

Candidate for Governor
In 1867, he ran for Governor of Ohio, on a platform opposed to extending suffrage to blacks, but lost to future U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes in a close election. Statewide Democrats including Thurman ran a banner under the slogan "No Negro Equality!"

During the campaign, Thurman appealed to white supremacist attitudes in virulent tones, vowing to fight "the thralldom of n*****ism." In Ohio, like most Northern states, black suffrage referendums failed to pass due to small fractions of Republican voters joining Democratic opposition. The issue thus became seized upon by Democratic politicians in race-baiting rhetoric.

U.S. Senator
The Ohio voters chose a Democratic state legislature, however, which selected Thurman as senator for the term beginning in 1869. He there became a strong opponent of the Republicans' Reconstruction measures. In 1873 Thurman crafted a strategy that led to Ohio choosing once more a Democratic legislature, and electing Thurman's uncle William Allen as governor. The legislature elected Thurman to another term in the Senate. During the twelve years he served in the Senate, he became the leader of the Democrats in that body. He was known for constant hard work, good preparation, and courteous treatment of his opponents, and other members ranked him among the top three senators of his time, in terms of ability. He came nearest, a Washington correspondent concluded, to "the beau ideal of a Senator of any man on his side of the House. He has fine passing power of cutting up his political opponents, saying a word of encouragement to some Republican when he is down, and scattering the caucuses of the opposite side with a pistol shot." His prepared speeches were clear and cogent, but it was in debate that he showed himself at his most picturesque. "He would wave his red bandana pocket handkerchief like a guidon, give his nose a trumpet-blast, take a fresh pinch of snuff, and dash into the debate, dealing rough blows, and scattering the carefully prepared arguments of his adversaries like chaff," a Washington long-time reporter remembered. He kept up a close friendship with his chief sparring partner on the opposite side, George F. Edmunds of Vermont. Journalists told how at a given signal—a long blow of his nose—he would get ready to exit the Senate so that the two could meet in the Judiciary Committee room to share a liberal amount of Kentucky Bourbon.

"When I speak of the law," Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York once said, "I turn to the Senator as the Mussulman turns towards Mecca. I look to him only as I would look to the common law of England, the world's most copious volume of human jurisprudence." In particular he made himself the critic of giveaways to the large railroad corporations and of Republicans' Reconstruction policies. "A fine juicy roast of land grants is what sends Thurman's tongue a-wagging," wrote one reporter.

An advocate of free trade, Thurman bemoaned of protective tariffs as a taxation upon "everything one wears from the crown of his head to the soles."

In the 1876–1877 electoral college crisis, he helped to arrive at the solution of creating the Electoral Commission to settle the controversy, and ultimately served as one of the members of the commission, as one of the five Senators (one of the two Senate Democrats, and one of the seven Democrats altogether). As a Democrat, he voted with the seven-member minority, in favor of the Samuel J. Tilden electors in all cases, but the Republican majority prevailed in all the votes, and Thurman's 1867 gubernatorial opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes (who had returned to the governorship by defeating Thurman's uncle), became president. One of the House of Representatives' members of the commission, fellow Ohioan James Garfield, was to become the president four years later, after being chosen by the now-Republican Ohio legislature to succeed Thurman. Both men were lifelong friends.

"To look at Thurman one would suppose that his favorite reading was "Foxe's Book of the Martyrs' and "Baxter's Saints' Rest,'" a reporter wrote, "for Thurman's face certainly carries a heavier pressure of solemnity to the square inch than any face I ever saw." In fact, he was a wide reader, fond of Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Renan, and the lighter French novels, and colleagues admitted him the best French scholar in the Senate. He had picked up French from one Monsieur Gregoire, a tutor in his childhood, and in retirement continued reading French novels in the original language.

In the Senate, Thurman served on the Judiciary Committee, becoming its chairman when the Democrats won control of the Senate in the 46th Congress. He became President pro tempore of the Senate on April 15, 1879, being the first Democrat to hold this position in nearly twenty years. He briefly served as president of the Senate because of the illness of Vice President William A. Wheeler, before Ohio chose a Republican legislature, which would not reelect Thurman. They first chose Garfield, but on his election to the Presidency, selected John Sherman to succeed Thurman beginning in 1881. Garfield did appoint Thurman as American representative to the international monetary conference in Paris, a selection that Republican senators welcomed: they regretted his departure from among them. It was noted that in twelve years in the chamber, he had never had an angry word with any colleague, and noted, too, that he left the Senate as poor as he had come to it.

Candidate for vice president
Thurman spent his retirement reading French novels in the original language, playing whist, and amusing himself with mathematical problems; he had a reputation as one of the best mathematicians in Ohio. He was put forth as a favorite son candidate in the Democratic presidential nominating conventions in 1880 and 1884. In 1888, he was selected as President Grover Cleveland's running mate, because Vice President Thomas Hendricks had died in office in November 1885. Democrats turned his red bandana handkerchief into an emblem of the campaign, tying red bandanas to the top of canes in political parades, and manufacturing bandanas with the candidates' faces on them. Thurman's appeal came from his popularity among old-line Democrats, distrustful of Grover Cleveland's liberalism, and his known hostility to railroad monopolists. All the same, Thurman, who had retired from active politics, could not put on an active campaign, and added little to the ticket's chances.

Among the issues emphasized by the Cleveland/Thurman campaign included support for a reduction of taxes and protective tariffs.

In the concurrent 1884 United States Senate election in Ohio, Thurman did not oppose the campaign of incumbent Democratic senator George H. Pendleton, who faced opposition from the statewide party due to his sponsoring of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act that ended patronage politics in the United States.

When Cleveland was re-nominated for the presidency in June 1892, Thurman supported him but was not a candidate for vice president. Cleveland and running mate Adlai Stevenson went on to win the general election that November.

Personal life
On November 14, 1844, Thurman married Mary Anderson Dun Tompkins of Lexington, Kentucky. Her father was a wealthy landowner named Walter Dun, and she had been married until 1840 when her first husband died. Together, Thurman and his wife had five children, including:
 * Allen W. Thurman, eugenicist and baseball executive
 * Mary Thurman, who married William S. Cowles, Thomas Scott Gifford, and Bug Holliday
 * Elizabeth Thurman, who married Arizona governor Richard Cunningham McCormick

He was known as the "Old Roman".

Death and burial
Thurman died on December 12, 1895, at his home in Columbus and is buried at Green Lawn Cemetery.

Legacy
Following the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Democrats charged that Donald Trump was responsible for the violence and sought to impeach and remove him from office. When the articles of impeachment passed the U.S. House of Representatives and reached the Senate, by which Trump already left office, Chuck Schumer of New York cited a resolution by Thurman against Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of War William W. Belknap as a precedent for convicting Trump.

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title: Allen G. Thurman


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Pluto

Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of Earth's moon, and one-third its volume.

Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from 30 to 49 AU from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its orbital distance of 39.5 AU. Pluto's eccentric orbit periodically brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune, but a stable orbital resonance prevents them from colliding.

Pluto has five known moons: Charon, the largest, whose diameter is just over half that of Pluto; Styx; Nix; Kerberos; and Hydra. Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a binary system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body, and they are tidally locked. The New Horizons mission was the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moons, making a flyby on July 14, 2015, and taking detailed measurements and observations.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh, making it by far the first known object in the Kuiper belt. It was immediately hailed as the ninth planet, but it was always the odd object out, and its planetary status was questioned when it was found to be much smaller than expected. These doubts increased following the discovery of additional objects in the Kuiper belt starting in the 1990s, and particularly the more massive scattered disk object Eris in 2005. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) formally redefined the term planet to exclude dwarf planets such as Pluto. Many planetary astronomers, however, continue to consider Pluto and other dwarf planets to be planets.

Discovery
In the 1840s, Urbain Le Verrier used Newtonian mechanics to predict the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after analyzing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century led astronomers to speculate that Uranus's orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune.

In 1906, Percival Lowell—a wealthy Bostonian who had founded Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1894—started an extensive project in search of a possible ninth planet, which he termed "Planet X". By 1909, Lowell and William H. Pickering had suggested several possible celestial coordinates for such a planet. Lowell and his observatory conducted his search, using mathematical calculations made by Elizabeth Williams, until his death in 1916, but to no avail. Unknown to Lowell, his surveys had captured two faint images of Pluto on March 19 and April 7, 1915, but they were not recognized for what they were. There are fourteen other known precovery observations, with the earliest made by the Yerkes Observatory on August 20, 1909.

Percival's widow, Constance Lowell, entered into a ten-year legal battle with the Lowell Observatory over her husband's legacy, and the search for Planet X did not resume until 1929. Vesto Melvin Slipher, the observatory director, gave the job of locating Planet X to 23-year-old Clyde Tombaugh, who had just arrived at the observatory after Slipher had been impressed by a sample of his astronomical drawings.

Tombaugh's task was to systematically image the night sky in pairs of photographs, then examine each pair and determine whether any objects had shifted position. Using a blink comparator, he rapidly shifted back and forth between views of each of the plates to create the illusion of movement of any objects that had changed position or appearance between photographs. On February 18, 1930, after nearly a year of searching, Tombaugh discovered a possible moving object on photographic plates taken on January 23 and 29. A lesser-quality photograph taken on January 21 helped confirm the movement. After the observatory obtained further confirmatory photographs, news of the discovery was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory on March 13, 1930.

One Plutonian year corresponds to 247.94 Earth years; thus, in 2178, Pluto will complete its first orbit since its discovery.

Name and symbol
The name Pluto came from the Roman god of the underworld; and it is also an epithet for Hades (the Greek equivalent of Pluto).

Upon the announcement of the discovery, Lowell Observatory received over a thousand suggestions for names. Three names topped the list: Minerva, Pluto and Cronus. 'Minerva' was the Lowell staff's first choice but was rejected because it had already been used for an asteroid; Cronus was disfavored because it was promoted by an unpopular and egocentric astronomer, Thomas Jefferson Jackson See. A vote was then taken and 'Pluto' was the unanimous choice. To make sure the name stuck, and that the planet would not suffer changes in its name as Uranus had, Lowell Observatory proposed the name to the American Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society; both approved it unanimously. The name was published on May 1, 1930.

The name Pluto had received some 150 nominations among the letters and telegrams sent to Lowell. The first had been from Venetia Burney (1918–2009), an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England, who was interested in classical mythology. She had suggested it to her grandfather Falconer Madan when he read the news of Pluto's discovery to his family over breakfast; Madan passed the suggestion to astronomy professor Herbert Hall Turner, who cabled it to colleagues at Lowell on March 16, three days after the announcement.

The name 'Pluto' was mythologically appropriate: the god Pluto was one of six surviving children of Saturn, and the others had already all been chosen as names of major or minor planets (his brothers Jupiter and Neptune, and his sisters Ceres, Juno and Vesta). Both the god and the planet inhabited "gloomy" regions, and the god was able to make himself invisible, as the planet had been for so long. The choice was further helped by the fact that the first two letters of Pluto were the initials of Percival Lowell; indeed, 'Percival' had been one of the more popular suggestions for a name for the new planet. Pluto's planetary symbol $49.305 AU$ was then created as a monogram of the letters "PL". This symbol is rarely used in astronomy anymore, though it is still common in astrology. However, the most common astrological symbol for Pluto, occasionally used in astronomy as well, is an orb (possibly representing Pluto's invisibility cap) over Pluto's bident $7.376 billion km$, which dates to the early 1930s.

The name 'Pluto' was soon embraced by wider culture. In 1930, Walt Disney was apparently inspired by it when he introduced for Mickey Mouse a canine companion named Pluto, although Disney animator Ben Sharpsteen could not confirm why the name was given. In 1941, Glenn T. Seaborg named the newly created element plutonium after Pluto, in keeping with the tradition of naming elements after newly discovered planets, following uranium, which was named after Uranus, and neptunium, which was named after Neptune.

Most languages use the name "Pluto" in various transliterations. In Japanese, Houei Nojiri suggested the calque "Star of the King (God) of the Underworld" (冥王星), and this was borrowed into Chinese and Korean. Some languages of India use the name Pluto, but others, such as Hindi, use the name of Yama, the God of Death in Hinduism. Polynesian languages also tend to use the indigenous god of the underworld, as in Māori Whiro. Vietnamese might be expected to follow Chinese, but does not because the Sino-Vietnamese word 冥 minh "dark" is homophonous with 明 minh "bright". Vietnamese instead uses Yama, which is also a Buddhist deity, in the form of Sao Diêm Vương 星閻王 "Yama's Star", derived from Chinese 閻王 Yán Wáng / Yìhm Wòhng "King Yama".

Planet X disproved
Once Pluto was found, its faintness and lack of a viewable disc cast doubt on the idea that it was Lowell's Planet X. Estimates of Pluto's mass were revised downward throughout the 20th century.

Astronomers initially calculated its mass based on its presumed effect on Neptune and Uranus. In 1931, Pluto was calculated to be roughly the mass of Earth, with further calculations in 1948 bringing the mass down to roughly that of Mars. In 1976, Dale Cruikshank, Carl Pilcher and David Morrison of the University of Hawaiʻi calculated Pluto's albedo for the first time, finding that it matched that for methane ice; this meant Pluto had to be exceptionally luminous for its size and therefore could not be more than 1 percent the mass of Earth. (Pluto's albedo is 1.4–1.9 times that of Earth. )

In 1978, the discovery of Pluto's moon Charon allowed the measurement of Pluto's mass for the first time: roughly 0.2% that of Earth, and far too small to account for the discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus. Subsequent searches for an alternative Planet X, notably by Robert Sutton Harrington, failed. In 1992, Myles Standish used data from Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune in 1989, which had revised the estimates of Neptune's mass downward by 0.5%—an amount comparable to the mass of Mars—to recalculate its gravitational effect on Uranus. With the new figures added in, the discrepancies, and with them the need for a Planet X, vanished. the majority of scientists agree that Planet X, as Lowell defined it, does not exist. Lowell had made a prediction of Planet X's orbit and position in 1915 that was fairly close to Pluto's actual orbit and its position at that time; Ernest W. Brown concluded soon after Pluto's discovery that this was a coincidence.

Classification
From 1992 onward, many bodies were discovered orbiting in the same volume as Pluto, showing that Pluto is part of a population of objects called the Kuiper belt. This made its official status as a planet controversial, with many questioning whether Pluto should be considered together with or separately from its surrounding population. Museum and planetarium directors occasionally created controversy by omitting Pluto from planetary models of the Solar System. In February 2000 the Hayden Planetarium in New York City displayed a Solar System model of only eight planets, which made headlines almost a year later.

Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta lost their planet status among most astronomers after the discovery of many other asteroids in the 1840s. On the other hand, planetary geologists often regarded Ceres, and less often Pallas and Vesta, as being different from smaller asteroids because they were large enough to have undergone geological evolution. Although the first Kuiper belt objects discovered were quite small, objects increasingly closer in size to Pluto were soon discovered, some large enough (like Pluto itself) to satisfy geological but not dynamical ideas of planethood. On July 29, 2005, the debate became unavoidable, astronomers at Caltech announced the discovery of a new trans-Neptunian object, Eris, which was substantially more massive than Pluto and the most massive object discovered in the Solar System since Triton in 1846. Its discoverers and the press initially called it the tenth planet, although there was no official consensus at the time on whether to call it a planet. Others in the astronomical community considered the discovery the strongest argument for reclassifying Pluto as a minor planet.

IAU classification
The debate came to a head in August 2006, with an IAU resolution that created an official definition for the term "planet". According to this resolution, there are three conditions for an object in the Solar System to be considered a planet: Pluto fails to meet the third condition. Its mass is substantially less than the combined mass of the other objects in its orbit: 0.07 times, in contrast to Earth, which is 1.7 million times the remaining mass in its orbit (excluding the moon). The IAU further decided that bodies that, like Pluto, meet criteria 1 and 2, but do not meet criterion 3 would be called dwarf planets. In September 2006, the IAU included Pluto, and Eris and its moon Dysnomia, in their Minor Planet Catalogue, giving them the official minor-planet designations "(134340) Pluto", "(136199) Eris", and "(136199) Eris I Dysnomia". Had Pluto been included upon its discovery in 1930, it would have likely been designated 1164, following 1163 Saga, which was discovered a month earlier.
 * The object must be in orbit around the Sun.
 * The object must be massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity. More specifically, its own gravity should pull it into a shape defined by hydrostatic equilibrium.
 * It must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

There has been some resistance within the astronomical community toward the reclassification, and in particular planetary scientists often continue to reject it, considering Pluto, Charon, and Eris to be planets for the same reason they do so for Ceres. In effect, this amounts to accepting only the second clause of the IAU definition. Alan Stern, principal investigator with NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, derided the IAU resolution. He also stated that because less than five percent of astronomers voted for it, the decision was not representative of the entire astronomical community. Marc W. Buie, then at the Lowell Observatory, petitioned against the definition. Others have supported the IAU, for example Mike Brown, the astronomer who discovered Eris.

Public reception to the IAU decision was mixed. A resolution introduced in the California State Assembly facetiously called the IAU decision a "scientific heresy". The New Mexico House of Representatives passed a resolution in honor of Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto and a longtime resident of that state, that declared that Pluto will always be considered a planet while in New Mexican skies and that March 13, 2007 was Pluto Planet Day. The Illinois Senate passed a similar resolution in 2009 on the basis that Tombaugh was born in Illinois. The resolution asserted that Pluto was "unfairly downgraded to a 'dwarf' planet" by the IAU." Some members of the public have also rejected the change, citing the disagreement within the scientific community on the issue, or for sentimental reasons, maintaining that they have always known Pluto as a planet and will continue to do so regardless of the IAU decision. In 2006, in its 17th annual words-of-the-year vote, the American Dialect Society voted plutoed as the word of the year. To "pluto" is to "demote or devalue someone or something".

Researchers on both sides of the debate gathered in August 2008, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for a conference that included back-to-back talks on the IAU definition of a planet. Entitled "The Great Planet Debate", the conference published a post-conference press release indicating that scientists could not come to a consensus about the definition of planet. In June 2008, the IAU had announced in a press release that the term "plutoid" would henceforth be used to refer to Pluto and other planetary-mass objects that have an orbital semi-major axis greater than that of Neptune, though the term has not seen significant use.

In April 2024, Arizona (where Pluto was first discovered in 1930) passed a law naming Pluto as the official state planet.

Orbit
Pluto's orbital period is about 248 years. Its orbital characteristics are substantially different from those of the planets, which follow nearly circular orbits around the Sun close to a flat reference plane called the ecliptic. In contrast, Pluto's orbit is moderately inclined relative to the ecliptic (over 17°) and moderately eccentric (elliptical). This eccentricity means a small region of Pluto's orbit lies closer to the Sun than Neptune's. The Pluto–Charon barycenter came to perihelion on September 5, 1989, and was last closer to the Sun than Neptune between February 7, 1979, and February 11, 1999.

Although the 3:2 resonance with Neptune (see below) is maintained, Pluto's inclination and eccentricity behave in a chaotic manner. Computer simulations can be used to predict its position for several million years (both forward and backward in time), but after intervals much longer than the Lyapunov time of 10–20 million years, calculations become unreliable: Pluto is sensitive to immeasurably small details of the Solar System, hard-to-predict factors that will gradually change Pluto's position in its orbit.

The semi-major axis of Pluto's orbit varies between about 39.3 and 39.6 AU with a period of about 19,951 years, corresponding to an orbital period varying between 246 and 249 years. The semi-major axis and period are presently getting longer.

Relationship with Neptune

Despite Pluto's orbit appearing to cross that of Neptune when viewed from north or south of the Solar System, the two objects' orbits do not intersect. When Pluto is closest to the Sun, and close to Neptune's orbit as viewed from such a position, it is also the farthest north of Neptune's path. Pluto's orbit passes about 8 AU north of that of Neptune, preventing a collision.

This alone is not enough to protect Pluto; perturbations from the planets (especially Neptune) could alter Pluto's orbit (such as its orbital precession) over millions of years so that a collision could happen. However, Pluto is also protected by its 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune: for every two orbits that Pluto makes around the Sun, Neptune makes three, in a frame of reference that rotates at the rate that Pluto's perihelion precesses (about degrees per year ). Each cycle lasts about 495 years. (There are many other objects in this same resonance, called plutinos.) At present, in each 495-year cycle, the first time Pluto is at perihelion (such as in 1989), Neptune is 57° ahead of Pluto. By Pluto's second passage through perihelion, Neptune will have completed a further one and a half of its own orbits, and will be 123° behind Pluto. Pluto and Neptune's minimum separation is over 17 AU, which is greater than Pluto's minimum separation from Uranus (11 AU). The minimum separation between Pluto and Neptune actually occurs near the time of Pluto's aphelion.

The 2:3 resonance between the two bodies is highly stable and has been preserved over millions of years. This prevents their orbits from changing relative to one another, so the two bodies can never pass near each other. Even if Pluto's orbit were not inclined, the two bodies could never collide. When Pluto's period is slightly different from 3/2 of Neptune's, the pattern of its distance from Neptune will drift. Near perihelion Pluto moves interior to Neptune's orbit and is therefore moving faster, so during the first of two orbits in the 495-year cycle, it is approaching Neptune from behind. At present it remains between 50° and 65° behind Neptune for 100 years (e.g. 1937–2036). The gravitational pull between the two causes angular momentum to be transferred to Pluto. This situation moves Pluto into a slightly larger orbit, where it has a slightly longer period, according to Kepler's third law. After several such repetitions, Pluto is sufficiently delayed that at the second perihelion of each cycle it will not be far ahead of Neptune coming behind it, and Neptune will start to decrease Pluto's period again. The whole cycle takes about 20,000 years to complete.

Other factors
Numerical studies have shown that over millions of years, the general nature of the alignment between the orbits of Pluto and Neptune does not change. There are several other resonances and interactions that enhance Pluto's stability. These arise principally from two additional mechanisms (besides the 2:3 mean-motion resonance).

First, Pluto's argument of perihelion, the angle between the point where it crosses the ecliptic (or the invariant plane) and the point where it is closest to the Sun, librates around 90°. This means that when Pluto is closest to the Sun, it is at its farthest north of the plane of the Solar System, preventing encounters with Neptune. This is a consequence of the Kozai mechanism, which relates the eccentricity of an orbit to its inclination to a larger perturbing body—in this case, Neptune. Relative to Neptune, the amplitude of libration is 38°, and so the angular separation of Pluto's perihelion to the orbit of Neptune is always greater than 52° (90°–38°). The closest such angular separation occurs every 10,000 years.

Second, the longitudes of ascending nodes of the two bodies—the points where they cross the invariant plane—are in near-resonance with the above libration. When the two longitudes are the same—that is, when one could draw a straight line through both nodes and the Sun—Pluto's perihelion lies exactly at 90°, and hence it comes closest to the Sun when it is furthest north of Neptune's orbit. This is known as the 1:1 superresonance. All the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) play a role in the creation of the superresonance.

Orcus
The 2nd-largest known plutino, Orcus, has a diameter around 900 km and is in a very similar orbit to that of Pluto. However, the orbits of Pluto and Orcus are out of phase, so that the two never approach each other. It has been termed the "anti-Pluto", and is named for the Etruscan counterpart to the god Pluto.

Rotation
Pluto's rotation period, its day, is equal to 6.387 Earth days. Like Uranus and 2 Pallas, Pluto rotates on its "side" in its orbital plane, with an axial tilt of 120°, and so its seasonal variation is extreme; at its solstices, one-fourth of its surface is in continuous daylight, whereas another fourth is in continuous darkness. The reason for this unusual orientation has been debated. Research from the University of Arizona has suggested that it may be due to the way that a body's spin will always adjust to minimise energy. This could mean a body reorienting itself to put extraneous mass near the equator and regions lacking mass tend towards the poles. This is called polar wander. According to a paper released from the University of Arizona, this could be caused by masses of frozen nitrogen building up in shadowed areas of the dwarf planet. These masses would cause the body to reorient itself, leading to its unusual axial tilt of 120°. The buildup of nitrogen is due to Pluto's vast distance from the Sun. At the equator, temperatures can drop to -240 C, causing nitrogen to freeze as water would freeze on Earth. The same polar wandering effect seen on Pluto would be observed on Earth were the Antarctic ice sheet several times larger.

Surface
The plains on Pluto's surface are composed of more than 98 percent nitrogen ice, with traces of methane and carbon monoxide. Nitrogen and carbon monoxide are most abundant on the anti-Charon face of Pluto (around 180° longitude, where Tombaugh Regio's western lobe, Sputnik Planitia, is located), whereas methane is most abundant near 300° east. The mountains are made of water ice. Pluto's surface is quite varied, with large differences in both brightness and color. Pluto is one of the most contrastive bodies in the Solar System, with as much contrast as Saturn's moon Iapetus. The color varies from charcoal black, to dark orange and white. Pluto's color is more similar to that of Io with slightly more orange and significantly less red than Mars. Notable geographical features include Tombaugh Regio, or the "Heart" (a large bright area on the side opposite Charon), Belton Regio, or the "Whale" (a large dark area on the trailing hemisphere), and the "Brass Knuckles" (a series of equatorial dark areas on the leading hemisphere).

Sputnik Planitia, the western lobe of the "Heart", is a 1,000 km-wide basin of frozen nitrogen and carbon monoxide ices, divided into polygonal cells, which are interpreted as convection cells that carry floating blocks of water ice crust and sublimation pits towards their margins;  there are obvious signs of glacial flows both into and out of the basin. It has no craters that were visible to New Horizons, indicating that its surface is less than 10 million years old. Latest studies have shown that the surface has an age of $29.658 AU$ years. The New Horizons science team summarized initial findings as "Pluto displays a surprisingly wide variety of geological landforms, including those resulting from glaciological and surface–atmosphere interactions as well as impact, tectonic, possible cryovolcanic, and mass-wasting processes."

In Western parts of Sputnik Planitia there are fields of transverse dunes formed by the winds blowing from the center of Sputnik Planitia in the direction of surrounding mountains. The dune wavelengths are in the range of 0.4–1 km and likely consist of methane particles 200–300 μm in size.

Internal structure
[[File:Pluto's internal structure2.jpg|thumb|Model of the internal structure of Pluto • Water ice crust

• Liquid water ocean

• Silicate core]] Pluto's density is $4.437 billion km$. Because the decay of radioactive elements would eventually heat the ices enough for the rock to separate from them, scientists expect that Pluto's internal structure is differentiated, with the rocky material having settled into a dense core surrounded by a mantle of water ice. The pre–New Horizons estimate for the diameter of the core is $39.482 AU$, 70% of Pluto's diameter. It is possible that such heating continues, creating a subsurface ocean of liquid water 100 to 180 km thick at the core–mantle boundary. In September 2016, scientists at Brown University simulated the impact thought to have formed Sputnik Planitia, and showed that it might have been the result of liquid water upwelling from below after the collision, implying the existence of a subsurface ocean at least 100 km deep. In June 2020, astronomers reported evidence that Pluto may have had a subsurface ocean, and consequently may have been habitable, when it was first formed. In March 2022, a team of researchers proposed that the mountains Wright Mons and Piccard Mons are actually a merger of many smaller cryovolcanic domes, suggesting a source of heat on the body at levels previously thought not possible.

Mass and size
Pluto's diameter is $5.906 billion km$ and its mass is $0.249$, 17.7% that of the Moon (0.22% that of Earth). Its surface area is $17.16 °$, or just slightly bigger than Russia or Antarctica (particularly including the Antarctic sea ice during winter). Its surface gravity is 0.063 g (compared to 1 g for Earth and 0.17 g for the Moon). This gives Pluto an escape velocity of 4,363.2 km per hour / 2,711.167 miles per hour (as compared to Earth's 40,270 km per hour / 25,020 miles per hour). Pluto is more than twice the diameter and a dozen times the mass of Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. It is less massive than the dwarf planet Eris, a trans-Neptunian object discovered in 2005, though Pluto has a larger diameter of 2,376.6 km compared to Eris's approximate diameter of 2,326 km.

With less than 0.2 lunar masses, Pluto is much less massive than the terrestrial planets, and also less massive than seven moons: Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, the Moon, Europa, and Triton. The mass is much less than thought before Charon was discovered.

The discovery of Pluto's satellite Charon in 1978 enabled a determination of the mass of the Pluto–Charon system by application of Newton's formulation of Kepler's third law. Observations of Pluto in occultation with Charon allowed scientists to establish Pluto's diameter more accurately, whereas the invention of adaptive optics allowed them to determine its shape more accurately.

Determinations of Pluto's size have been complicated by its atmosphere and hydrocarbon haze. In March 2014, Lellouch, de Bergh et al. published findings regarding methane mixing ratios in Pluto's atmosphere consistent with a Plutonian diameter greater than 2,360 km, with a "best guess" of 2,368 km. On July 13, 2015, images from NASA's New Horizons mission Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), along with data from the other instruments, determined Pluto's diameter to be 2370 km, which was later revised to be 2372 km on July 24, and later to $110.299 °$. Using radio occultation data from the New Horizons Radio Science Experiment (REX), the diameter was found to be $113.834 °$.

Atmosphere
Pluto has a tenuous atmosphere consisting of nitrogen (N2), methane (CH4), and carbon monoxide (CO), which are in equilibrium with their ices on Pluto's surface. According to the measurements by New Horizons, the surface pressure is about 1 Pa (10 μbar), roughly one million to 100,000 times less than Earth's atmospheric pressure. It was initially thought that, as Pluto moves away from the Sun, its atmosphere should gradually freeze onto the surface; studies of New Horizons data and ground-based occultations show that Pluto's atmospheric density increases, and that it likely remains gaseous throughout Pluto's orbit. New Horizons observations showed that atmospheric escape of nitrogen to be 10,000 times less than expected. Alan Stern has contended that even a small increase in Pluto's surface temperature can lead to exponential increases in Pluto's atmospheric density; from 18 hPa to as much as 280 hPa (three times that of Mars to a quarter that of the Earth). At such densities, nitrogen could flow across the surface as liquid. Just like sweat cools the body as it evaporates from the skin, the sublimation of Pluto's atmosphere cools its surface. Pluto has no or almost no troposphere; observations by New Horizons suggest only a thin tropospheric boundary layer. Its thickness in the place of measurement was 4 km, and the temperature was 37±3 K. The layer is not continuous.

In July 2019, an occultation by Pluto showed that its atmospheric pressure, against expectations, had fallen by 20% since 2016. In 2021, astronomers at the Southwest Research Institute confirmed the result using data from an occultation in 2018, which showed that light was appearing less gradually from behind Pluto's disc, indicating a thinning atmosphere.

The presence of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in Pluto's atmosphere creates a temperature inversion, with the average temperature of its atmosphere tens of degrees warmer than its surface, though observations by New Horizons have revealed Pluto's upper atmosphere to be far colder than expected (70 K, as opposed to about 100 K). Pluto's atmosphere is divided into roughly 20 regularly spaced haze layers up to 150 km high, thought to be the result of pressure waves created by airflow across Pluto's mountains.

Natural satellites
Pluto has five known natural satellites. The largest and closest to Pluto is Charon. First identified in 1978 by astronomer James Christy, Charon is the only moon of Pluto that may be in hydrostatic equilibrium. Charon's mass is sufficient to cause the barycenter of the Pluto–Charon system to be outside Pluto. Beyond Charon there are four much smaller circumbinary moons. In order of distance from Pluto they are Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Nix and Hydra were both discovered in 2005, Kerberos was discovered in 2011, and Styx was discovered in 2012. The satellites' orbits are circular (eccentricity < 0.006) and coplanar with Pluto's equator (inclination < 1°), and therefore tilted approximately 120° relative to Pluto's orbit. The Plutonian system is highly compact: the five known satellites orbit within the inner 3% of the region where prograde orbits would be stable.

The orbital periods of all Pluto's moons are linked in a system of orbital resonances and near-resonances. When precession is accounted for, the orbital periods of Styx, Nix, and Hydra are in an exact 18:22:33 ratio. There is a sequence of approximate ratios, 3:4:5:6, between the periods of Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra with that of Charon; the ratios become closer to being exact the further out the moons are.

The Pluto–Charon system is one of the few in the Solar System whose barycenter lies outside the primary body; the Patroclus–Menoetius system is a smaller example, and the Sun–Jupiter system is the only larger one. The similarity in size of Charon and Pluto has prompted some astronomers to call it a double dwarf planet. The system is also unusual among planetary systems in that each is tidally locked to the other, which means that Pluto and Charon always have the same hemisphere facing each other — a property shared by only one other known system, Eris and Dysnomia. From any position on either body, the other is always at the same position in the sky, or always obscured. This also means that the rotation period of each is equal to the time it takes the entire system to rotate around its barycenter.

Pluto's moons are hypothesized to have been formed by a collision between Pluto and a similar-sized body, early in the history of the Solar System. The collision released material that consolidated into the moons around Pluto.

Quasi-satellite
In 2012, it was calculated that 15810 Arawn could be a quasi-satellite of Pluto, a specific type of co-orbital configuration. According to the calculations, the object would be a quasi-satellite of Pluto for about 350,000 years out of every two-million-year period. Measurements made by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015 made it possible to calculate the orbit of Arawn more accurately, and confirmed the earlier ones. However, it is not agreed upon among astronomers whether Arawn should be classified as a quasi-satellite of Pluto based on its orbital dynamics, since its orbit is primarily controlled by Neptune with only occasional perturbations by Pluto.

Origin

Pluto's origin and identity had long puzzled astronomers. One early hypothesis was that Pluto was an escaped moon of Neptune knocked out of orbit by Neptune's largest moon, Triton. This idea was eventually rejected after dynamical studies showed it to be impossible because Pluto never approaches Neptune in its orbit.

Pluto's true place in the Solar System began to reveal itself only in 1992, when astronomers began to find small icy objects beyond Neptune that were similar to Pluto not only in orbit but also in size and composition. This trans-Neptunian population is thought to be the source of many short-period comets. Pluto is the largest member of the Kuiper belt, a stable belt of objects located between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun. As of 2011, surveys of the Kuiper belt to magnitude 21 were nearly complete and any remaining Pluto-sized objects are expected to be beyond 100 AU from the Sun. Like other Kuiper-belt objects (KBOs), Pluto shares features with comets; for example, the solar wind is gradually blowing Pluto's surface into space. It has been claimed that if Pluto were placed as near to the Sun as Earth, it would develop a tail, as comets do. This claim has been disputed with the argument that Pluto's escape velocity is too high for this to happen. It has been proposed that Pluto may have formed as a result of the agglomeration of numerous comets and Kuiper-belt objects.

Though Pluto is the largest Kuiper belt object discovered, Neptune's moon Triton, which is larger than Pluto, is similar to it both geologically and atmospherically, and is thought to be a captured Kuiper belt object. Eris (see above) is about the same size as Pluto (though more massive) but is not strictly considered a member of the Kuiper belt population. Rather, it is considered a member of a linked population called the scattered disc.

Like other members of the Kuiper belt, Pluto is thought to be a residual planetesimal; a component of the original protoplanetary disc around the Sun that failed to fully coalesce into a full-fledged planet. Most astronomers agree that Pluto owes its position to a sudden migration undergone by Neptune early in the Solar System's formation. As Neptune migrated outward, it approached the objects in the proto-Kuiper belt, setting one in orbit around itself (Triton), locking others into resonances, and knocking others into chaotic orbits. The objects in the scattered disc, a dynamically unstable region overlapping the Kuiper belt, are thought to have been placed in their positions by interactions with Neptune's migrating resonances. A computer model created in 2004 by Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in Nice suggested that the migration of Neptune into the Kuiper belt may have been triggered by the formation of a 1:2 resonance between Jupiter and Saturn, which created a gravitational push that propelled both Uranus and Neptune into higher orbits and caused them to switch places, ultimately doubling Neptune's distance from the Sun. The resultant expulsion of objects from the proto-Kuiper belt could also explain the Late Heavy Bombardment 600 million years after the Solar System's formation and the origin of the Jupiter trojans. It is possible that Pluto had a near-circular orbit about 33 AU from the Sun before Neptune's migration perturbed it into a resonant capture. The Nice model requires that there were about a thousand Pluto-sized bodies in the original planetesimal disk, which included Triton and Eris.

Observation
Pluto's distance from Earth makes its in-depth study and exploration difficult. Pluto's visual apparent magnitude averages 15.1, brightening to 13.65 at perihelion. To see it, a telescope is required; around 30 cm (12 in) aperture being desirable. It looks star-like and without a visible disk even in large telescopes, because its angular diameter is maximum 0.11".

The earliest maps of Pluto, made in the late 1980s, were brightness maps created from close observations of eclipses by its largest moon, Charon. Observations were made of the change in the total average brightness of the Pluto–Charon system during the eclipses. For example, eclipsing a bright spot on Pluto makes a bigger total brightness change than eclipsing a dark spot. Computer processing of many such observations can be used to create a brightness map. This method can also track changes in brightness over time.

Better maps were produced from images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which offered higher resolution, and showed considerably more detail, resolving variations several hundred kilometers across, including polar regions and large bright spots. These maps were produced by complex computer processing, which finds the best-fit projected maps for the few pixels of the Hubble images. These remained the most detailed maps of Pluto until the flyby of New Horizons in July 2015, because the two cameras on the HST used for these maps were no longer in service.

Exploration

The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto in July 2015, is the first and so far only attempt to explore Pluto directly. Launched in 2006, it captured its first (distant) images of Pluto in late September 2006 during a test of the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager. The images, taken from a distance of approximately 4.2 billion kilometers, confirmed the spacecraft's ability to track distant targets, critical for maneuvering toward Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects. In early 2007 the craft made use of a gravity assist from Jupiter.

New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, after a 3,462-day journey across the Solar System. Scientific observations of Pluto began five months before the closest approach and continued for at least a month after the encounter. Observations were conducted using a remote sensing package that included imaging instruments and a radio science investigation tool, as well as spectroscopic and other experiments. The scientific goals of New Horizons were to characterize the global geology and morphology of Pluto and its moon Charon, map their surface composition, and analyze Pluto's neutral atmosphere and its escape rate. On October 25, 2016, at 05:48 pm ET, the last bit of data (of a total of 50 billion bits of data; or 6.25 gigabytes) was received from New Horizons from its close encounter with Pluto.

Since the New Horizons flyby, scientists have advocated for an orbiter mission that would return to Pluto to fulfill new science objectives. They include mapping the surface at 30 ft per pixel, observations of Pluto's smaller satellites, observations of how Pluto changes as it rotates on its axis, investigations of a possible subsurface ocean, and topographic mapping of Pluto's regions that are covered in long-term darkness due to its axial tilt. The last objective could be accomplished using laser pulses to generate a complete topographic map of Pluto. New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern has advocated for a Cassini-style orbiter that would launch around 2030 (the 100th anniversary of Pluto's discovery) and use Charon's gravity to adjust its orbit as needed to fulfill science objectives after arriving at the Pluto system. The orbiter could then use Charon's gravity to leave the Pluto system and study more KBOs after all Pluto science objectives are completed. A conceptual study funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program describes a fusion-enabled Pluto orbiter and lander based on the Princeton field-reversed configuration reactor.

New Horizons imaged all of Pluto's northern hemisphere, and the equatorial regions down to about 30° South. Higher southern latitudes have only been observed, at very low resolution, from Earth. Images from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996 cover 85% of Pluto and show large albedo features down to about 75° South. This is enough to show the extent of the temperate-zone maculae. Later images had slightly better resolution, due to minor improvements in Hubble instrumentation. The equatorial region of the sub-Charon hemisphere of Pluto has only been imaged at low resolution, as New Horizons made its closest approach to the anti-Charon hemisphere.

Some albedo variations in the higher southern latitudes could be detected by New Horizons using Charon-shine (light reflected off Charon). The south polar region seems to be darker than the north polar region, but there is a high-albedo region in the southern hemisphere that may be a regional nitrogen or methane ice deposit.

title: Pluto


text:
Talk:Pluto (disambiguation)

Suggested move of Pluto to Pluto (dwarf planet)
I have suggested the move to make this disambiguation page the automatic direct for "Pluto". Please add your thoughts at Talk:Pluto The Enlightened (talk) 10:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This may be out of context but …
This in out of context (as Dr. JHK might say), but how about listing all the women the gods abducted and married or raped. It would be quite a long list, I imagine. I used to like Greek mythology for its many charming stories and insight into human character and relations, but when I think of how the male gods so often took advantage of females I have begun to have second thoughts. Is there a place for this in the wikipedia? User:Ed Poor

'PLUTO' (pipeline)
I just did some minor edits to the 'PLUTO' (pipeline) bit, but was wondering -- shouldn't this blurb be on its own page? --Zizonus

"the Roman god above?"
Is it necessary to put "the Roman god above"? Wouldn't "the Roman god" suffice? Theaterfreak64 08:36, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Removed Pluto as planet discussion

 * Pluto is the solar system object traditionally called a planet (better described scientifically instead as a trans-Neptunian object), named after the Roman god. Its common cultural classification as being a planet (ninth in order of semi-major axis from the Sun) remains a controversial scientific issue.

I don't think that a discussion of the Pluto-Planet or not? controversy belongs on this page. The links to planet and trans-Neptunian object provide plenty of information about this topic. Most people who go to this page looking for Pluto the astronomical object will be wanting to get to the Pluto (planet) page as quickly as possible, without having to parse a paragraph of discussion containing two parenthesized statements.--Wronkiew 15:23, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree. Paul August ☎ 15:32, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

PLUTO the rockband linked incorrectly
The link on the name PLUTO goes to operation pluto of WW2. I don't know if there is a site for the band PLUTO but just letting you guys know about just in case.

Pluto as a Planet discussion
Watch out for the backlash kids, argument over this old horsechestnut is only just starting.

However some information about the circumstances surronding its (current (?)) declassifcation (as in only 424 of the 2,700 astronomers voted on this issue, which if you believe the IAU's own database of around 10,000 astronomers is less then 4%) and additionally how the new description of a "dwarf planet" technically also invalidates Earth and Jupiter (as they have "not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit") as Planets. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.75.159.78 (talk)

title: Talk:Pluto (disambiguation)


text:
The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp is John Irving's fourth novel, about a man born out of wedlock to a feminist leader who grows up to be a writer. Published in 1978, the book was a bestseller for several years. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979, and its first paperback edition won the award the following year.

A movie adaptation of the novel starring Robin Williams was released in 1982, with a screenplay written by Steve Tesich.

BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial broadcast a three-part adaptation of the novel by Linda Marshall Griffiths in January 2014. The production was directed by Nadia Molinari and featured Miranda Richardson as Jenny, Lee Ingleby as Garp, Jonathan Keeble as Roberta and Lyndsey Marshal as Helen.

On 3 November 2015, Irving revealed that he'd been approached by HBO and Warner Brothers to reconstruct The World According to Garp as a miniseries. He described the project as being in the early stages. According to the byline of a self-penned, 20 February 2017 essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Irving completed his teleplay for the five-part series based on The World According to Garp.

Synopsis
The novel is about the life of T. S. Garp. His mother, Jenny Fields, is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband. She encounters a dying ball turret gunner known only as Technical Sergeant Garp, who was severely brain damaged in combat. Jenny nurses Garp, observing his infantile state and almost perpetual erection. Unconstrained by convention and driven by her desire for a child, Jenny impregnates herself by raping the brain-damaged Garp once, and names the resulting son "T. S." (a name derived from "Technical Sergeant", but consisting of just initials). Jenny raises young Garp alone, taking a position as the live-in nurse at the all-boys Steering School in New England.

Garp grows up, becoming interested in sex, wrestling, and writing fiction—three topics in which his mother has little interest. After his graduation in 1961, his mother takes him to Vienna, where he writes his first novella. At the same time, his mother begins writing her autobiography, A Sexual Suspect. After Jenny and Garp return to Steering, Garp marries Helen, the wrestling coach's daughter, and begins his family—he a struggling writer, she a teacher of English. The publication of A Sexual Suspect makes his mother famous. She becomes a feminist icon, because feminists view her book as a manifesto of a woman who does not care to bind herself to a man, and who chooses to raise a child on her own. She nurtures and supports women traumatized by men, among them the Ellen Jamesians, a group of women named after an eleven-year-old girl whose tongue was cut out by her rapists to silence her. The members of the group cut out their own tongues in solidarity with Ellen, even though she opposes the practice.

Garp becomes a devoted parent, wrestling with anxiety for the safety of his children. He and his family inevitably experience dark and violent events through which the characters change and grow. Garp learns (often painfully) from the women in his life (including transgender ex-football player Roberta Muldoon), who are struggling to become more tolerant in the face of intolerance. The story contains a great deal of (in the words of Garp's fictional teacher) "lunacy and sorrow".

The novel contains several narratives: Garp's first piece of fiction, a short story entitled "The Pension Grillparzer"; "Vigilance", an essay; and the first chapter of his third novel, The World According to Bensenhaver. The book also contains some motifs that appear in other Irving novels: bears, New England, Vienna, hotels, wrestling, a person who prefers abstinence over sex, and adultery.

Background
John Irving's mother, Frances Winslow, had not been married at the time of his conception, and Irving never met his biological father. As a child, he was not told anything about his father, and he told his mother that unless she gave him some information about his biological father, in his writing he would invent the father and the circumstances of how she got pregnant. Winslow would reply "Go ahead, dear."

In 1981, Time magazine quoted the novelist's mother as saying "There are parts of Garp that are too explicit for me."

title: The World According to Garp


text:
Ctesiphon

Ctesiphon (, Tyspwn or Tysfwn; ; Κτησιφῶν, ; ) was an ancient Mesopotamian  city, located on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and about 35 km southeast of present-day Baghdad. Ctesiphon served as a royal capital of the Iranian empire in the Parthian and Sasanian eras for over eight hundred years. Ctesiphon was capital of the Sasanian Empire from 226–637 until the Muslim conquest of Persia in 651 AD.

Ctesiphon developed into a rich commercial metropolis, merging with the surrounding cities along both shores of the river, including the Hellenistic city of Seleucia. Ctesiphon and its environs were therefore sometimes referred to as "The Cities" (Mahuza, المدائن). In the late sixth and early seventh century, it was listed as the largest city in the world by some accounts.

During the Roman–Parthian Wars, Ctesiphon fell three times to the Romans, and later fell twice during Sasanian rule. It was also the site of the Battle of Ctesiphon in 363 AD. After the Muslim invasion, the city fell into decay and was depopulated by the end of the eighth century, its place as a political and economic center taken by the Abbasid capital at Baghdad. The most conspicuous structure remaining today is the Taq Kasra, sometimes called the Archway of Ctesiphon.

Names
The Latin name Ctesiphon derives from Ancient Greek Ktēsiphôn (Κτησιφῶν). This is ostensibly a Greek toponym based on a personal name, although it may be a Hellenized form of a local name, reconstructed as Tisfōn or Tisbōn. In Iranian-language texts of the Sasanian era, it is spelled as Tyspwn, which can be read as Tīsfōn, Tēsifōn, etc. in Manichaean Parthian, in Middle Persian 𐭲𐭩𐭮𐭯𐭥𐭭 and in Christian Sogdian (in Syriac alphabet) languages. The New Persian form is Tisfun (تیسفون).

Texts from the Church of the East's synods referred to the city as Qṭēspōn or some times Māḥôzē  when referring to the metropolis of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.

In modern Arabic, the name is usually Ṭaysafūn (طيسفون) or Qaṭaysfūn (قطيسفون) or as al-Mada'in (المدائن "The Cities", referring to Greater Ctesiphon). "According to Yāqūt [...], quoting Ḥamza, the original form was Ṭūsfūn or Tūsfūn, which was arabicized as Ṭaysafūn." The Armenian name of the city was Tizbon (Տիզբոն). Ctesiphon is first mentioned in the Book of Ezra of the Old Testament as Kasfia/Casphia (a derivative of the ethnic name Cas, and a cognate of Caspian and Qazvin). It is also mentioned in the Talmud as Aktisfon. In another Talmudic reference it is written as Akistfon, located across the Tigris River from the city of Ardashir.

Location
Ctesiphon is located approximately at Al-Mada'in, 35 km southeast of the modern city of Baghdad, Iraq, along the river Tigris. Ctesiphon measured 30 square kilometers, more than twice the surface of a 13.7-square-kilometer fourth-century imperial Rome.

The archway of Chosroes (Taq Kasra) was once a part of the royal palace in Ctesiphon and is estimated to date between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD. It is located in what is now the Iraqi town of Salman Pak.

Parthian period
Ctesiphon was founded in the late 120s BC. It was built on the site of a military camp established across from Seleucia by Mithridates I of Parthia. The reign of Gotarzes I saw Ctesiphon reach a peak as a political and commercial center. The city became the Empire's capital circa 58 BC during the reign of Orodes II. Gradually, the city merged with the old Hellenistic capital of Seleucia and other nearby settlements to form a cosmopolitan metropolis.

The reason for this westward relocation of the capital could have been in part due to the proximity of the previous capitals (Mithradatkirt, and Hecatompylos at Hyrcania) to the Scythian incursions.

Strabo abundantly describes the foundation of Ctesiphon:

"In ancient times Babylon was the metropolis of Assyria; but now Seleucia is the metropolis, I mean the Seleucia on the Tigris, as it is called. Nearby is situated a village called Ctesiphon, a large village. This village the kings of the Parthians were wont to make their winter residence, thus sparing the Seleucians, in order that the Seleucians might not be oppressed by having the Scythian folk or soldiery quartered amongst them. Because of the Parthian power, therefore, Ctesiphon is a city rather than a village; its size is such that it lodges a great number of people, and it has been equipped with buildings by the Parthians themselves; and it has been provided by the Parthians with wares for sale and with the arts that are pleasing to the Parthians; for the Parthian kings are accustomed to spend the winter there because of the salubrity of the air, but they summer at Ecbatana and in Hyrcania because of the prevalence of their ancient renown."

Because of its importance, Ctesiphon was a major military objective for the leaders of the Roman Empire in their eastern wars. The city was captured by Rome five times in its history – three times in the 2nd century alone. The emperor Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return Ctesiphon in 117 as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avidius Cassius captured Ctesiphon in 164 during another Parthian war, but abandoned it when peace was concluded. In 197, the emperor Septimius Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off thousands of its inhabitants, whom he sold into slavery.

Sasanian period
By 226, Ctesiphon was in the hands of the Sasanian Empire, who also made it their capital and had laid an end to the Parthian dynasty of Iran. Ctesiphon was greatly enlarged and flourished during their rule, thus turning into a metropolis, which was known by in Arabic as al-Mada'in, and in Aramaic as Mahoze. The oldest inhabited places of Ctesiphon were on its eastern side, which in Islamic Arabic sources is called "the Old City" (مدينة العتيقة Madīnah al-'Atīqah), where the residence of the Sasanians, known as the White Palace (قصر الأبيض), was located. The southern side of Ctesiphon was known as Asbānbar or Aspānbar, which was known by its prominent halls, riches, games, stables, and baths. Taq Kasra was located in the latter.

The western side was known as Veh-Ardashir (meaning "the good city of Ardashir" in Middle Persian), known as Mahoza by the Jews, Kokhe by the Christians, and Behrasir by the Arabs. Veh-Ardashir was populated by many wealthy Jews, and was the seat of the church of the Nestorian patriarch. To the south of Veh-Ardashir was Valashabad. Ctesiphon had several other districts which were named Hanbu Shapur, Darzanidan, Veh Jondiu-Khosrow, Nawinabad and Kardakadh.

Severus Alexander advanced towards Ctesiphon in 233, but as corroborated by Herodian, his armies suffered a humiliating defeat against Ardashir I. In 283, emperor Carus sacked the city uncontested during a period of civil upheaval. In 295, emperor Galerius was defeated outside the city. However, he returned a year later with a vengeance and won a victory which ended in the fifth and final capture of the city by the Romans in 299. He returned it to the Persian king Narses in exchange for Armenia and western Mesopotamia. In c. 325 and again in 410, the city, or the Greek colony directly across the river, was the site of church councils for the Church of the East.

After the conquest of Antioch in 541, Khosrow I built a new city near Ctesiphon for the inhabitants he captured. He called this new city Veh-Antiok-Xusrō, or literally, "better than Antioch Khosrow built this". Local inhabitants of the area called the new city Rumagan, meaning "town of the Romans" and Arabs called the city al-Rumiyya. Along with Weh Antiok, Khosrow built a number of fortified cities. After a campaign in 573, John of Ephesus wrote that no fewer than 292,000 persons had been deported from Dara, Apamia, and other Syrian towns to Veh-Antiokh. John would later cite a letter stating no more than 30,000 prisoners were deported. It's thought that the first number he gave is not to be taken literally.

In 590, a member of the House of Mihran, Bahram Chobin repelled the newly ascended Sasanian ruler Khosrow II from Iraq, and conquered the region. One year later, Khosrow II, with aid from the Byzantine Empire, reconquered his domains. During his reign, some of the great fame of al-Mada'in decreased, due to the popularity of Khosrow's new winter residence, Dastagerd. In 627, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius surrounded the city, the capital of the Sassanid Empire, leaving it after the Persians accepted his peace terms. In 628, a deadly plague hit Ctesiphon, al-Mada'in and the rest of the western part of the Sasanian Empire, which even killed Khosrow's son and successor, Kavad II.

In 629, Ctesiphon was briefly under the control of Mihranid usurper Shahrbaraz, but the latter was shortly assassinated by the supporters of Khosrow II's daughter Borandukht. Ctesiphon then continued to be involved in constant fighting between two factions of the Sasanian Empire, the Pahlav (Parthian) faction under the House of Ispahbudhan and the Parsig (Persian) faction under Piruz Khosrow.

Downfall of the Sasanians and the Islamic conquests
In the mid-630s, the Muslim Arabs, who had invaded the territories of the Sasanian Empire, defeated them during a great battle known as the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah. The Arabs then attacked Ctesiphon, and occupied it in early 637.

The Muslim military officer Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas quickly seized Valashabad and made a peace treaty with the inhabitants of Weh Antiok Khusrau and Veh-Ardashir. The terms of the treaty were that the inhabitants of Weh Antiok Khusrau were allowed to leave if they wanted to, but if they did not, they were forced to acknowledge Muslim authority, and also pay tribute (jizya). Later on, when the Muslims arrived at Ctesiphon, it was completely desolated, due to flight of the Sasanian royal family, nobles, and troops. However, the Muslims had managed to take some of troops captive, and many riches were seized from the Sasanian treasury and were given to the Muslim troops. Furthermore, the throne hall in Taq Kasra was briefly used as a mosque.

Still, as political and economic fortune had passed elsewhere, the city went into a rapid decline, especially after the founding of the Abbasid capital at Baghdad in the 760s, and soon became a ghost town. Caliph Al-Mansur took much of the required material for the construction of Baghdad from the ruins of Ctesiphon. He also attempted to demolish the palace and reuse its bricks for his own palace, but he desisted only when the undertaking proved too vast. Al-Mansur also used the al-Rumiya town as the Abbasid capital city for a few months.

It is believed to be the basis for the city of Isbanir in One Thousand and One Nights.

Modern era
The ruins of Ctesiphon were the site of a major battle of World War I in November 1915. The Ottoman Empire defeated troops of Britain attempting to capture Baghdad, and drove them back some 40 mi before trapping the British force and compelling it to surrender.

Population and religion
Under Sasanian rule, the population of Ctesiphon was heavily mixed: it included Arameans, Persians, Greeks and Assyrians. Several religions were also practiced in the metropolis, which included Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. In 497, the first Nestorian patriarch Mar Babai I, fixed his see at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, supervising their mission east, with the Merv metropolis as pivot. The population also included Manicheans, a dualist church, who continued to be mentioned in Ctesiphon during Umayyad rule fixing their "patriarchate of Babylon" there. Much of the population fled from Ctesiphon after the Arab capture of the metropolis. However, a portion of Persians remained there, and some important figures of these people are known to have provided Ali with presents, which he, however, refused to take. In the ninth century, the surviving Manicheans fled and displaced their patriarchate up the Silk Road, in Samarkand.

Archaeology
A German Oriental Society led by Oscar Reuther excavated at Ctesiphon in 1928–29 mainly at Qasr bint al-Qadi on the western part of the site. In winter of 1931–1932 a joint expedition of the German State Museums (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art continued excavations at the site, focusing on the areas of Ma'aridh, Tell Dheheb, the Taq-i Kisra, Selman Pak and Umm ez-Za'tir under the direction of Ernst Kühnel.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an Italian team from the University of Turin directed by Antonio Invernizzi and worked at the part of the site on the other side of the Tigris, which they identified as Veh Ardashir. Work mainly concentrated on restoration at the palace of Khosrow II. In 2013, the Iraqi government contracted to restore the Taq Kasra, as a tourist attraction.

title: Ctesiphon