Makemake Becomes the Newest Dwarf Planet

Kligat writes "The Kuiper belt object formerly known as (136472) 2005 FY9 has been rechristened Makemake and classified as a dwarf planet and plutoid by the International Astronomical Union, according to the United States Geological Survey. The reclassification occurs just a month after the latter category was created. The object was referred to by the team of discoverers by the codename Easterbunny, and the name Makemake comes from the creation deity of Easter Island, in accordance with IAU rules on naming Kuiper belt objects."

I miss...

I miss Pluto.

Me too...

... but not as much as I miss Goofy.

Re:Me too...

As long as it's not jarjar I don't care.

Re:I miss...

I miss Pluto.

Don't worry, if you keep training, your aim will eventually improve.

Whatwhat?

$ make dwarf_planet

make: *** No rule to make target `dwarf_planet'. Stop.

Alright, well, that doesn't help at all. Maybe this [wikipedia.org]?

Re:Whatwhat?

I don't know, it seems an eminently sensible way to name gods. We could have Killkill for the bringer of death, or Badbad for the source of evil, or Hichic for the god of wine... this has possibilities.

About Venus...

So, are you suggesting that Venus, or Aphrodite, be renamed Fuckfuck?

Re:Whatwhat?

it failed, there for it was the one that comes with SUN.

Re:Whatwhat?

By issuing the command make make, obviously. Nobody said make couldn't exist before you make make. Do you not think that those who make make did not previously make another make? So, to make make all you have to do is make make with another make.

plutoid... I like it

I've got to say, I think the compromise struck is a pretty good one. Pluto being a planet with similar objects not being a planet was not really scientific.

Plus, plutoid has a good ring to it.

Re:plutoid... I like it

Pluto does not have rings.

Re:plutoid... I like it

I agree. Even if it was decided to keep Pluto as a 'planet', we would still have to come up with a new name for the eight large objects that orbit our Sun in a manner unlike anything else in the solar system (specifically, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).

There is little room for sentiment in science. Things are what they are, and if it is discovered that something is being called something it shouldn't be, it has to be changed. Some people just don't get that.

The good news is that in this case, it isn't likely to happen again. Apart from the distinction between terrestrial and gaseous, the definition for planet seems pretty solid (I do expect the term 'exoplanet' to be absorbed into the definition of planet in the long term, though. Either that or we'll be extinct and it won't matter what anything is called anymore :-).

I think it's stupid.

The definition has no scientific usefullness. I have no problem with creating taxonomies purely for local use, but they should at least tell you something about the objects you are classifying. Plutinos, cubiwanos, twotinos, are all usefull categorizations of objects by their orbits in the Kuiper belt, which is likely correlated to their orgins. Dwarf planet is a usefull categorization of things bigger than an asteroid, but smaller than a planet.

Plutinoid is just stupid - all the dwarf planets except Ceres. Yes, I know that Ceres has different orgins and makeup than the large KBOs, but there is an awful lot of variation between those as well. If we wanted a more specific definition than dwarf planet then we should have waited until we knew more about them so we could make one that has some meaning.

Depends.

Depends on what you mean by similar, for a start. I would not define a planet according to where it happens to be in the solar system, but rather according to composition, structure and mass, as these are things which we know for a fact to distinguish planets from asteroids (eg: asteroids have no core) and planets from comets (eg: comets have multiple cores). I would define a new class for objects for which insufficient data existed to produce a firm classification, but that is it.

Why does it matter? Well, think back a few days to the recent news on the DNA analysis of birds. Turns out, the definition based on appearances is completely wrong. What was it, kestrels are genetically closer to hummingbirds than any other bird of prey? And the DNA variation between any two lineages within a species has next to zero correspondence to morphology. In other words, looking at something from the outside tells you bugger all. So, naturally, looking at the outside of an object orbiting the sun is the perfect way to tell what it is. It's only a method every other discipline has now ruled to be faulty, after all.

Re:plutoid... I like it

The current definition of 'planet' is specifically restricted to describing objects within our solar system. Your latter two points are thus irrelevant and your first does not carry enough weight on it's own to be convincing. Hence your argument is refuted.

Once we have a better understanding of the dynamics of other star systems, we can think about a more inclusive definition. For now, we shouldn't worry about them because, as you said, observation is difficult and any conclusions we make now are subject to change.

In our own star system, the only system we can observe directly and thus the only system we can have any real knowledge of, Pluto is not, and never was, a planet. Get over it.

Re:plutoid... I like it

Our observations of the Solar System and of the bodies orbiting other suns, if we are to be quite strict about it, would lead to the following three classes.

1: Stars
2: Gas Giants
3: Rubble

Re:plutoid... I like it

The current definition of 'planet' is specifically restricted to describing objects within our solar system. Your latter two points are thus irrelevant and your first does not carry enough weight on it's own to be convincing. Hence your argument is refuted.

I'm aware of the way they defined it. You apparently are not.

The IAU...resolves that planets and other bodies, except satellites, in our Solar System [my emphasis - khallow] be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

1. A planet [1] is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
2. A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape [2], (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
3. All other objects [3], except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".

This statement says nothing about planets about other star systems. In particular, it doesn't say that there can't be planets in other star systems. And note that the key distinction between "planet" and "dwarf planet" is an undefined characteristic, "cleared the neighborhoor around its orbit". So we have a definition that is ill-defined, works only for 1 star system out of tens of billions, and makes a distinction based on hard to observe dynamics that would only make sense for a portion of these star systems.

Pluto is not, and never was, a planet. Get over it.

I see we're revising history now. Pluto was indeed a planet from roughly the time of its discover until it was reclassified in 2006.

But...

Shouldn't it be named Module::Build?

Leader of the discovery team wrote a blog entry

Sorry I didn't include this in the submission, but Michael E. Brown [mikebrownsplanets.com], the leader of the discovery teams of Makemake and Eris, wrote a blog entry about his experience picking a name for the object. It's supposed to be pronounced "maki-maki," Hawaiian-style as he calls it. He likes to name objects discovered around the time his wife was pregnant after fertility gods and goddesses. You might remember "lila," his child's name, being in the URL of the Eris discovery announcement web page.

Re:Leader of the discovery team wrote a blog entry

It's supposed to be pronounced "maki-maki," Hawaiian-style as he calls it.

That is definitely not Hawaiian style. (This rant is directed at him, not you.)

In Hawaiian, and many other languages in the Polynesian family, vowels have one main pronunciation. Es are pronounced with an "ay" sound, so the correct "Hawaiian-style" pronunciation would be closer to maKAY-maKAY. In fact, vowels are generally pronounced longer than English, so an even better transcription might be muhKEH-muhKEH.

Also, Hawaiian and Rapanui have common roots, but like all languages, they evolved. "Make" means death or defeat in Hawaiian; "makemake" can mean defeat or desire or wish.

Re:Leader of the discovery team wrote a blog entry

It's pronounced "make - make", the English way, i.e. the way that the Baby Jesus would have said it. You got the part about it being "christened", right?

Re:Leader of the discovery team wrote a blog entry

It was discovered around Easter. 2003 EL61 is codenamed Santa and its moons are codenamed Rudolph and Blitzen. It was discovered three days after Christmas. Maybe an object discovered in late October would be named "Grim" after the Reaper, but Halloween doesn't have any standard commercial holiday mascot like the others do.

Maybe you're frustrated because of Mars rover operators naming minor landforms around their landing probes things like "lollipop," but these are just placeholder names until they think up better ones.

Nice coincidence...

...that the name for their creation deity as written is automatically read by English speakers as make make. (even though it's pronounced makimaki)

Re:Why can't they just leave shit alone?

If astronomers couldn't change the number of planets as new information became available, then astronomy would be dogma instead of a science. To me the pluto demotion has been a great illustration of science at work. Educators should be using it as an example of the difference between science and dogma. Mistake made, mistake corrected.

Re:Why can't they just leave shit alone?

I agree with the principle of dogma vs. science, but I don't think this is the best example. It doesn't do well for credibility if you keep changing your mind based on unstable definitions and pretend it to be news each time you've tweaked one of them.

It's not "changing your mind", it's discovering new information. The discovery of Pluto was an accident (due to an error in calculation, a much bigger planet was predicted in that location, but it wasn't there), and because Kuiper Belt Objects were unknown at that time, Pluto got planetary status, although it was immediately obvious that it was a very abnormal planet.

Eventually it became clear that Pluto had to be a Kuiper Belt Object. As long as it was the only big one, that wasn't much of a problem, but eventually, astronomers discovered KBOs that were as big as or even bigger than Pluto, and a choice had to be made. Leaving Pluto a planet while denying that status to other large KBOs would be silly and unscientific, so either all large KBOs would become planets, resulting in dozens or hundreds of extra planets in our solar system, most of which would share similar irregular orbits, or accept that KBOs are different from regular planets, and give them their own class. That's what happened. Maybe they should have demoted Pluto earlier, but it was unavoidable, and by the time it happened, it was long overdue.

Not that this wasn't the first time planets had been demoted. In the 19th century, Ceres and a couple of other asteroids were also considered planets, but eventually astronomers decided that since they shared a similar orbit with lots of smaller asteroids, they had to be a different class of objects from the regular planets. Ceres and the others didn't have planetary status for as long as Pluto did, but that was due to Pluto accidentally being discovered way before we technically should be able to do so.