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Space

Another New (Minor) Planet In Solar System 112

Posted by timothy from the ok-ok-what's-a-planet-exactly? dept.
jeffsenter writes: "Another new planet (2000 WR106) in our solar system was discovered last week by a U. of Arizona astronomer. The NYTimes has the story (free reg. req.). Like the planetlet (2000 ED173) found in October, this object lies between Neptune and Pluto. The difference is this one is bigger, up to 1/2 the size of Pluto perhaps." Or try this link instead. Once you get into the hundreds, I think "planetlet" starts making more sense than "planet."
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Another New (Minor) Planet In Solar System More

Another New (Minor) Planet In Solar System

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  • At some point, celestial bodies in space will fall OUTSIDE the jurisdiction of any nation on Earth. For this reason, at some point, claims can be made by anyone. A physical presence on an asteriod isn't really required to make a claim on it. The issue is the ability to DEFEND the claim once it has been made. If I decide I like your asteriod, nobody but you will be able to stop me from using it for myself.

    Don't think for a minute that massive wars won't be fought over such things. Think how many wars there have been in the United states since it was colonized for the sole purpose of establishing that it really DID belong to the United States. Certainly, the colonists from the 15th century and beyond were certainly not the first ones here, but that didn't stop them from taking it as their own.

    -Restil
  • I say, a new planet! Just as we all thought seven were enough, along comes some smaller planets that all want the same attention as the original seven. Mind you, my guess is that the public is sick and tired of all those planet wannabees, so the enthusiam will most likely be low. I mean, new planets are really out in the cold.

    --- Can we fix it? Yes we can!
  • It could help understand how exactly gravity affects the center of a moon (or planet).

    Would anything in the center of it break (as it is pulled from all it sides)?

  • Re:Oh no! (Score:3)

    by FatOldGoth ( 207461 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @04:26AM (#581693) Homepage
    Not another planet! How am I going to remember its name? We'd have to create (gasp) new mnemonic devices.

    My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine NGC-11297 Pizzas

    Sounds like they should name the new planet "Pepperoni" to make it easy to remember.

  • This just in NASA now plans a new mission to crash a probe into this new little plannet.

    Spokeman says: " If the planet survives the impact of the probe we'll gather a phenominal amount of data which will be used to figure out if the little guy supports life.

  • Isn't that what it is? Planet, planetoid, planetette, plantlette?, asteroid, TMO... It's the few screws left over when you put together your kid's bike.
  • A suggestion that there may be a massive planet out there, with a 6 million year orbit!

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid _4 67000/467572.stm

    This guy is still analysing the orbits of more comets, so evidence is growing...

  • The Planetlet Specification 1.0

    This document, produced as a result of Planet Specification Request (PSR) 37, defines the Planetlet for the Solar System Platform.

    The goal of the Planetlet is to provide an open, third-party planet development environment for rocks that are less than half the size of the smallest of the previously-known planets in the solar system. Because of the limited size of these rocks, they typically do not provide the features available to larger rocks such as atmospheres, oceans, geological formations, and life forms. The Planetlet specification provides a high-level abstraction for developers to implement features on their planet without having to be concerned with low-level details of the particular rock.

    --

  • Isn't this one more appropriate as a RFC ????

  • umm, isn't it more like *WE* belong to this Solar system, not the opposite. this baby will still be here when were long gone and forgotten...
    We don't own shit on this planet or this solar system. we can just be grateful that it's here...

  • Ah, that's the one.....!
  • Truncate pi!? Are you insane?! A number with that many decimal places must be good!

    And anyway, how the hell am I supposed to while away the hours calculating the nth digit of pi if you daft buggers go and define it as zero??

    Honestly! Some people...

    --
  • C'mon, haven't any of you moderators read "Mostly Harmless"? Killjoys.
  • What is doc.ic.ac.uk anyway? I mention this because seeing it triggers a bit of nostalgia; I remember when the old school first got PCs, and all us nerds sat in the library at lunchtime using gopher and doing ftp-by-email and joining listservs because we weren't allowed to use mosaic, and doc.ic.ac.uk came up a lot and we thought it was cool because it was lots of short words and it sounded aesthetically pleasing.
  • A rough estimate of the force exerted by Pluto on a 10kg satellite is approximately enough to accelerate it by about 2.6 nanometers every second. Somehow I doubt that NASA (or anyone else) cares much.
  • I've seen this commend a view times now and I think it does make things more clear.

    There are several newspapers over the world called the times, like the NY times and the london times.
  • Does this mean if I throw a pebble into orbit around the sun, it becomes a planet?
    Wadabout astroids? are they planets now?

    Seems to me, as soon as we find a new bit of rock flying around, we call it a planet..oh well

  • Fuzzy Math (Score:3)

    by cribcage ( 205308 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @01:20AM (#581707) Homepage Journal
    What?! A new planet? ANOTHER new planet?

    I don't know who the heck is in charge of this recount process; but personally, I suggest we go back to the original count of nine. The scientific community simply can't take this kind of indecision.

    crib
  • You know its becomming that time when finding planets and stars are really not as intresting. Compared to 10 years ago at least. Now they need to be getting compostions of planets material, atmosphere etc. etc. What will be the next important discovery?
  • hmm.. I have no idea, IANAA (I am not an astronomer). But what sounds nice is: If a human can jump off it and reach orbit without jumping aids, it's not a planet. Just an idea.. maybe instead of human one could use any earth animal. I am too lazy what mass would be needed, but should be at least a little large ;)

    //rdj
  • I wonder why this was not noted by the computers.
    My guess is that the software wasn't looking for it. It's also possible that there was insufficient data. If the planet differs between only two frames, then the software is quite likely to ignore it as a random abberation/cosmic ray/whatever. Computers are a lot more exacting in their standards; a human can notice the difference, then go looking for further evidence in different plates.

    On a different topic: I reiterate the point I made during some other planetary discussion. Why do we need new designation? There are nine major planets, and godzillions of minor ones. Calling our diminutive neighbours planetarinos isn't going to help the cause of science at all. They're minor planets; leave 'em that way.
  • I think I was just wondering if a new "planet" will ever be discovered -- one that causes everyone to say "Oh, we now have ten planets!" as opposed to sticking with the current nine.

    Ah. Well that we don't know. I think it's safe to say that anything bigger than Pluto has an excellent chance to get dubbed "planet". Still, there we're talking about something that's probably 50 to 100 times the mass of the new object WR-106.
    ----
  • Surely thats just a definition using mass. If the mass is above a certain threshold, the gravitational pull will be too strong to permit spacejumping.
  • Someone dig up Holst, please.

    "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
  • yes, it's a definition using mass rather then size, which I am well aware off. I think a definition on mass (actually gravitational pull which is dependant on mass) makes more sense then merely size.

    //rdj
  • get your mind out of the gutter ;)

    //rdj
  • Uh, MVEMJSUNED173WR106P.

    My Very Excellent Mind Just Served Up Nine (oh wait, then there's "ED173" and "WR106") Planets.

  • qualifications of a planet (Score:3)

    by brennanw ( 5761 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @03:17AM (#581717) Homepage Journal
    I'm not an astronomer, but if I recall correctly, most of the reasons scientists theorize the existence of a "Planet X" have to do with anomalies in the rest of the planetary orbits that aren't cleared up by factoring in the gravitational pulls of all the planets we know about. I think people knew that Pluto existed well before it was discovered because it was obvious something was affecting Neptune's orbit -- it was "just" a matter of finding it after that. However, Pluto proved not large enough to account for _all_ the irregularities in Neptune's orbit -- it didn't mass enough.

    Does this mini-planet have enough mass to affect Neptune? If so, I'd consider it a full fledged planet and leave it at that. As if I have any say at all in the process. :)
  • Of course the Pluto mission (Pluto-Kuiper Express) has been 'postponed indefinitely due to cost overruns.' (http://www.astronomy.com/content/dynamic/articles /000/000/000/174tttln.asp
    ). Seems the 'Faster, Better, Cheaper' philosphy took some hits with the Mars failures...
  • I'm sure these kinds of "plantlets" will become ever more common in the future, and some categorizing will have to be done. I don't think people will really accept a new "planet" (unless something really big is found outside Pluto, but still at a reasonable distance). In fact, there has been some debate about whether Pluto should be demoted from its position as a planet, as it is so small and unlike the other planets.

    For some discussion about it, see Google hits [google.com] and for example this text [lowell.edu] explaining why Pluto should be concidered a planet.

  • What's wrong with "Minor Planet"? (Score:5)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @03:19AM (#581720) Homepage
    Planetlet? Planette? Heck, we already had planetoid.

    Actually the astronomical term "minor planet [harvard.edu]" has long been used to describe the thousands of identified solar system objects that are neither full-fledged planets nor moons. This new one, WR-106, is a member of the Kuiper Belt [sciam.com], essentially a large amorphous cloud of asteroids outside the orbit of Neptune; hence the official grouping Trnns-Neptunian Objects.

    This is an exciting class of discoveries. It was surmised for a number of years but only in the 1990s did significant identifications of these objects begin. Now we're reached the hundreds, and there's likely many more to come, as techniques for locating them are refined. (In a nutshell, using computers to do the same flash image comparisons that Clyde Tombaugh used to find Pluto.)

    What's significant about WR-106 is its hypothetical size -- which is far from verified. It could possibly be larger than Ceres (d. 570 mi), in the asteroid belt, which up until now has reigned as the largest minor planet. What this suggests is that the larger objects in the outer solar system are by no means all identified and discovered. Heck, there could even be a full-fledged twin of Mercury, or even Mars, way out in the deep dark. It's possible, and discoveries like WR-106 mean you can't just discount that possibility.

    The whole question of Pluto's planethood has never really been open [lowell.edu]. What reached the press was a badly garbled story of disrespect to Clyde Tombaugh; what really happened is simply that the people who track minor planets wanted to include Pluto (and its almost-as-big moon) as part of the TNO group. There's no question, or at least wasn't, that Pluto would be at the head of that class, just as Ceres is at the head [harvard.edu] of the list of asteroids. It wasn't about downgrading Pluto, but about recognizing it as the first discovery in a vast new universe of discoveries in our outer solar system.

    It's not really important to most astronomers what they're called. We've gone beyond the simplistic question of "how many planets, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10?" to the full realization that our solar system is made up of an infinite number of objects, from Jupiter-sized gas giants, to rocks like Pluto or Phobos, down to dust specks too small to see let alone count. The list of numbered asteroids is closing on 20,000, and that's just what we can find from Earth!

    The importance of this discovery doesn't lie in the headline-grabbing reconsider-what-you-all-learned-in-fourth-grade aspects, but in how this affects the questions of cosmology and planetary formation, as well as the prospects for the future. If our solar system is made up of so many small rocks, it increases the odds that there are more rock-strewn star systems out in the larger galaxy. If our solar system has ore-filled rocks all over the place, that's probably a good omen for anyone contemplating colonizing the outer solar system.
    ----

  • this just in... (Score:3)

    by omay ( 192614 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @05:03AM (#581721)
    George W Bush has been found to be president of the new planet. Absentee ballots from the new planet have overwhelmingly gone in favor of the Texas governor. No word from the Al Gore camp, although the Vice-Presidents lawyers were seen buying telescopes.
  • If this doesn't expose astrology as fake, I don't know what will. With all these extra planets, it's sure to throw off all those readings.

  • Actually, according to the shell theorem, in the center of a spherical object with evenly distributed mass (which decribes planents and moons pretty well), the gravitational force from all the material at a greater radius from the center than the object you're considering cancels out. So, in this case, the object would feel no force at all.
  • IIRC, planets such as "earth" and "mercury" (as well as the other 7) have different layers of material inside of them. Earth, for example, as a core, a mantel, and a crust (at a quick glance). Astroids on the other hand are pretty roughly the same, through and through, perhaps with greater concentrations of one metal here and another metal there, but there is no arrangement of differentiated layers of matter. So, a planet can be something that orbits the sun and has a ordered, differentiate composition, and an astroid can be something that orbits a sun and has an unordered composition.

    Oh well, just my $.02
  • You have enough mass to affect Neptune. It's just drowned out by all the other masses that are a)larger and b) closer.
  • According to the USA Today article (the 2nd link),

    Broadly, the IAU group agrees that a planet should independently orbit a star, possess enough gravity to shape itself into a sphere and weigh at least 100,000 billion billion grams.
    hth
  • Of course, Pluto has a moon, whereas from what I
    gather few of the other KBO's do. (Of course, I
    also gather that the resolution we have on most
    of them doesn't preclude moons.)
  • Not exactly, Pluto was suspected to exist because the then current gravitational models suggested a planet beyond Neptune. However Pluto was dicovered optically by comparing images over a certain period of time. Of course, once people found out just how small it was, the search continued for another planet beyond Pluto, as it was simply too small to account for the effects observed in Neptune's orbit.

    Nowadays we realise this search was in vain. Updated grav-models do not show the need for another planet, the peculiarities in Neptune's orbit can be fully explained by these better models, without the existance of a large ninth planet. Pluto does not in any significant way influence Neptune.

    Add to this the fact of Pluto's odd orbit and that we're now discovering a lot of "Plutoids" and you'll understand why things are looking rather grim for Pluto's status as a full-blown planet. ;-)
  • Pretty cool to know that we're still finding stuff when we thought there would be nothing.

    However, what about things like that existing outside of Pluto's orbit? Perhaps something like that could explain comets and maybe extinction of some creatures, and big impacts every couple of thousand years.....

  • New planet means...new Sailor Moon! (Score:3)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @12:46AM (#581730)

    Finally, we can get a new Sailor Moon senshi!

  • Good post, we must always expand and explore. A couple of things though...
    Less overpopulated Earth, cleaner Earth due to people leaving, etc etc. This planet has an extremely good chance of healing itself if we get some people off it and on to other worlds.
    It will take too long before we develop the technology for this to help us. In order for this to make a real difference, you'd have to move billions of people. Where would you put all of them? Before this becomes a reality, the Earth will probably get a lot worse than it is now. Things are moving in a much better direction than they used to be though; that article about the ozone hole finally starting to close because of concerted global effort is proof enough of that.

    IMO also, man will always exploit everything he finds due to simple human greed. I think the biggest reason to expand into space is for simple survival of the species if something DOES happen to the Earth through global warming, deforestation, pollution, giant asteroid collision, or chemical or nuclear war. :)

  • I would just like to inform everyone that I have a patent on small planet like bodies found between the orbit of Neptune and Pluto discovered with telescopes as well as methods for including their names into mnemonic memory devices.

    So, pay up everyone.

  • Haven't they discovered three or four other "planets" in the past couple years? Is this another one that will be forgotten or are they considering this one an actual planet?



    ---
    Rob Flynn
  • Why don't you check the website? BTW the pronunciation is indeed as lots of short words. There used to be a SparcStation called hock.doc.ic.ac.uk but, alas, it has retired.

  • Oh no! (Score:5)

    by caryw ( 131578 ) <carywiedemann.gmail@com> on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @12:47AM (#581735) Homepage
    Not another planet! How am I going to remember its name? We'd have to create (gasp) new mnemonic devices.

    My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine NGC-11297 Pizzas

    People don't like change. Especially the change of something that has been drilled into their heads since the time they were 3. Expect a lot of debate about what to do with these new "mini-planets" between the scientific community and the general public.

  • Question: (Score:3)

    by Psiren ( 6145 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @12:52AM (#581736)
    Whats the scientific defintion of a planet?
  • ....stockings....
  • I find this to be a bit disturbing, seeing as how any object (asteroid/comet/etc) that would potentially hit Earth probably wouldn't come flying out of an uninhabited spot in space. They would probably come from one of these "crowded" areas in space where it could be swayed into a new orbit. It would seem to me that if the amount of astronomers searching the skies was so low, then it would make more sense to focus more effort on so-called "crowded areas".

  • Re:Oh no! (Score:3)

    by Alatar ( 227876 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @12:54AM (#581739) Homepage
    I say, declare them new planets. It'll make all the astrology nuts (yup, believe it or not, there are still people who believe in astrology) redo all their charts and have to buy all-new materials. Look at what happened when Uranus, Neptune, Pluto were added 80-plus years ago.

  • Planetlet (Score:3)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @12:57AM (#581740) Homepage
    Why not call it a 'planette'?
  • I wonder if Nasa can shuttle my cat to this new planet!!
  • Heh, Sorry bud, Zilding hasn't been a member of the team for about a year now :-). I've been looking at the possiblity of an MS port but I don't know if it'll happen anytime in the near future. You never know, though.

    ---
    Rob Flynn
  • If I remember right, the thing has an absolute magnitude of 4.7 (I may be thinking of 2000 EB173, not 2000 WR106 (or maybe I'm just crazy, and my sick mind simply generated that number on its own somehow)), so I'd think it ought to be visible, at least with a decent telescope.

    Space is so damn big, the odds of anything knocking it out of orbit in the first place, let alone of it then hitting something else, are incredibly tiny.

    And it's not really that small...330-750 miles in diameter is pretty sizeable...much smaller things seem to stick quite happily to their orbits without much trouble.
  • First off, your assumption that were going to fuck up another planet just like we are on Earth, is ignorant. This is our first shot mmkay? You can't expect humans to do well on their first try!

    Nevertheless, there is unlimited potental that good mining and testing could do to us as a whole. There could be bacterial life or something to that effect that could cure illnesses that no other could do here on earth. There could be a new metal that doesn't originate on Earth but is vastly superior to anything we can mine here. Not only that but colonization can be a good thing.

    Less overpopulated Earth, cleaner Earth due to people leaving, etc etc. This planet has an extremely good chance of healing itself if we get some people off it and on to other worlds.

    This is OUR solar system, that is true. However to say that we will mess up anything we lay our hands on is WRONG. that's like saying "No, we won't explore new lands on Earth, because we might mess them up!" If everyone thought like you did we wouldn't bother leaving where we came from.

    Personally I think the KEY is that all of us work together on this as a whole. If we invested in colonization like we invest in technology this would be well on it's way by now. I wouldn't mind living on a colony base on the moon or this new planet. Who knows what neat things will come out of this if we never try. I serously doubt that one piece of rock holds all the knowledge of the universe. Even so, it gives us more reason to go check it out. And if it doesn't which I expect, then go ahead and fire up the drills. A new metal just might make your computer, car, refrigerator lighter, run better, and make them more durable.

    The Solar system is OUR point of origin in the universe, just like Earth is our point of origin in the solar system. I say we get out there and see what's going on.

    "Just another random thought derailing"
  • While the odds are smaller, there's no reason why it couldn't be orbiting very slowly and still remain in orbit.

    Is there?
  • I suggest we go back to the original count of nine
    Never! What this place needs is a decent, decimal solar system! None of this base-nine nonsense...

    --
  • I really like the idea we're still finding whole WORLDS out there left to explore, without even having to leave the solar system. Granted, they're not quite as big worlds as our's, but 330-750 miles in diameter is pretty damn big.

    It's funny though, that we're hearing so much about this one (or maybe it just seems that way) and relatively little about previous ones like 2000 EB173, which is probably only slightly smaller, discovered a month or so ago, and previous large Transneptunians, like 1999 TC36 and 1993 SC, which are both well more than 200 miles in diameter. They've been finding these things out there for a quite a few of years now, and granted this one may be the biggest so far, and I, personally, think it would be kind of cool if it bumped Ceres out of the number one spot on the Minor Planet size list, but, really, how much does the general populace really care about Ceres? Or Transneptunian objects?

  • Our Solar System? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why all the news about the solar system? I know the secret order of marcians are using Linux, but is that really not common knowledge? :)
  • And what about those 2 numbers, pi and e? If we were elected [sillyparty.com] we would have set pi=3 and e=2, and put two of the biggest freaks of numerical nature in line with the rest of the number line!

  • Its mighty cold out there. (Score:3)

    by waveclaw ( 43274 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @01:41AM (#581750) Homepage Journal

    I am wondering if, like they suspect with Pluto [planetscapes.com], this planetismal might be able to hold a thin atmosphere. I haven't run any of the gas-law computations or looked up the kinetic energy tables to find out when (thermally and gravitationally speaking) a planet, with a certain gas mixture, would loose its atmosphere.

    I'd love to see if; the Pluto Express Mission [spacedaily.com] and its ilk would go through, what kind of liquid mixes one can find on distance snowballs like this. If they can't get to Pluto on time though, before it gets too far from the sun (or if they send a probe to look at one of these many *new planets* out further) they could consider using large lenses or some form of retransmitted light to cook the little rocks back up to temperature (sort of a planetary bake-off with the dial stuck to low).

  • I'm not saying fucking planets over is a good thing...

    You need to make up your mind.

    One thing that people always seems to forget when discusing colonisation of other planets & "fucking them up", is that in order for us as humans to survive on another planet, we have to fuck it up.

    For example, Mars does not have a natural Nitrogen / Oxygen atmosphere. We would need to change the entire planets atmosphere in order to live comfortably there. What if there is microbacterial life there? We'd probably kill that pretty effectivly by changing the atmosphere.

    If that isn't fucking up a planet, i don't know what is. It is Human nature to fuck things up.
  • Is that

    Pla NET lets

    or

    PLA netlets...

  • Haven't they discovered three or four other "planets" in the past couple years?

    Scores [harvard.edu] of them.

    Is this another one that will be forgotten or are they considering this one an actual planet?

    Who will forget them, the wilfully ignorant?

    Who are "they"?

    If an astronomer discovers something today, do you believe that "they" suddenly hold a conference call to change all the textbooks? It's a little more complicated than that.
    ----
  • I hope NASA starts up a new program which has as its' ultimate goal to send a (dead) whale in orbit.

    Score -1, Bameflait.

  • Probably, its not even M type.

  • Re:Ahh! Let's create a new planet, or moon! (Score:3)

    by empesey ( 207806 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @03:38AM (#581756) Homepage
    I hope NASA starts up a new program which has as its' ultimate goal to send a (dead) whale in orbit.

    Nah. It'll just wind up turning into a potted flower anyway.

  • It's time to find names for these tiny astronomical objects. After all, Phobos and Deimos (martian moons) have names. How about a slashdot poll?

  • Yes, but surely the astrologers would have known all about this new planet already - and been out to buy all the new materials so that everything would transition smoothly? *Grin*

    "The astrology column can't be printed today because the astologer is ill"
  • Beware that some thing that small could very easilty get knocked out of orbit and sent hurdling towards some other planet.

    Will Casini be in range to do a fly by? What is the average full solar orbit? Is it visible via back yard telescope? Say, a Celestron C-8?

  • Scientists claimed to have discovered a huge gas giant beyond Pluto, based on gravitational influences observed on the outer planets in our system, but it's an idea that has grown out of favour, so to speak... basically, there are 9 planets and any number of comets and asteroids. You have to remember that there WAS a planet between Mars and Jupiter, but it was shattered billions of years ago, either by a huge cometary impact or by gravitational stresses from Jupiter.
    -- Chris Dunham
    http://www.chamdex.com
  • Actually, Pluto was thought to be bigger than Mercury until the late 1970s. The actual size of Pluto was first determined shortly after the discovery of Pluto's moon, Charon, when the Pluto/Charon system went through a period of mutual eclipses. The original estimates of size were made based on the brightness and distance. It turned out that Pluto was lighter in color than had been originally thought.

    As far as the size of a planet, if and when something is found that is larger than Pluto, that's when the conversations will become interesting. In the meantime, objects such as this one (and all the asteroids) are referred to as "minor planets".
  • The BBC's science section [bbc.co.uk] has lots of cool stuff on space and science including another similar article [bbc.co.uk] on the new large minor planet.
  • Whats the scientific defintion of a planet?

    There really isn't one. Sure, you can point to a dictionary and quote the entry for "planet", but I can point to a different dictionary with a different definition. You can point to an astronomer who has put forth his or her preferred definition, and I can point to another astronomer who uses a different definition as his or her standard.

    There are a few we can discuss (and possibly dismiss.) Clearly, "something which orbits the Sun" is inappropriate, because that would make planets out of everything from asteroids to man-made spacecraft.

    "An object in space with an atmosphere and sufficient mass to have compressed it to a sphere or oblate spheroid" is much better, but there are a couple of problems with this, as well. First of all, this would mean that objects like Titan (Saturn's largest moon) would be considered planets. Additionally, not all of the objects that we consider to be planets have appreciable atmospheres; Mercury has virtually none, and the atmosphere of Pluto tends to freeze onto the planet's surface as it approaches the perihelion of its very elliptical orbit (due to the extreme cold.)

    So maybe we can combine the two examples and say that a planet is "an object that directly orbits the sun, has sufficient mass to have been compressed into a sphere or an oblate spheroid, and has an atmosphere or a trace thereof." This is better, but there are still going to be people who have problems with it and object to it for one reason or another.

    So in lieu of any hard-and-fast definition, I offer the following:

    An object is a planet if people generally think it is.

    Unscientific as hell, but it might be the only one that keeps people happy. :-)
  • Seems Useful Naming Planetlets (maybe)

  • This is more along the lines of what I was talking about. I would think that the odds of finding anything large past pluto would be difficult. I would imagine that anything past pluto would need to be quite small to still be caught in the orbit of our solor system. Again, I could just be blowing smoke. :-/

    ---
    Rob Flynn
  • They already tried that in Oregon [hackstadt.com]. Didn't work, tho'. They just ended up with large chunks of blubber crushing cars. This is the unknown first catastrophic result of NASA's higher, faster, cheaper.
  • I was just speaking generaly. I know there have been several discovered, the ones I knew about I remembered. I think I was just wondering if a new "planet" will ever be discovered -- one that causes everyone to say "Oh, we now have ten planets!" as opposed to sticking with the current nine.

    ---
    Rob Flynn
  • There are nine planets in the solar system. No, wait, ten! No, eleven!

    Sheesh, who's scoring this, Florida?

  • Does there happen to be a name for that (former) planet? I mean "the asteroid belt" doesn't seem very original. And if there isn't, why not? Just because it isn't there now doesn't mean it doesn't deserve a name. Maybe since Ceres (or something like that) is this biggest piece left, the planet should be called that. Or some other (major) Roman god.
  • Yes, about 3*10^-8N for an 80kg human.
  • But couldn't you argue that the only reason that *this* planet is special, is because it's the only one we have? If humans were spread across hundreds of different planets, why would one of them being fucked up, as you say, be such a big deal anyway?

    I'm not saying fucking planets over is a good thing, but I think you've got to decide whether you'd prefer humans or planets..

    -
  • If we are still discovering moons around our "original" planets and even discovering new planets...

    ...do we have even the slighest chance of seeing some [comet|asteroid|alien] aproaching us?

    I dont really remember who said it, but "it" goes something along the lines of: "The more we know, the more we notice we know less"...
  • Would ya look at the size of that kid's head! It's the size of a planetoid and it has it's own weather system! Looks like an orange on a toothpick! I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Aye, now that was offsides, now wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow.

  • Re:Question: (Score:5)

    by AudioPunk ( 202103 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @01:03AM (#581774)
    planet (plnt) n. A nonluminous celestial body larger than an asteroid or a comet, illuminated by light from a star, such as the sun, around which it revolves. In the solar system there are nine known planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

    there is also some definition that goes like this :
    A ``planet'' is an object that has a mass between that of Pluto and the Deuterium-burning threshold* and that forms in orbit around an object that can generate energy by nuclear reactions.

    * Deuterium Burning Limit: Objects less massive than 12 Jupiter masses never burn Deuterium nor generate significant energy from any nuclear reactions. Coincidentally this Deuterium-burning limit at 12 Mjup resides near the high-end of the observed planet mass distribution.
    Corollary #1: Observations may enhance but not authenticate planet status.
    Corollary #2: Sharp parameter boundaries for the domain of "planets" can be neither physically nor empirically justified at this time. Objects which have masses and formation histories near the perimeter of the adopted parameter domain constitute part of a natural continuum.

    just for those who might be wondering ...
    asteroid n, Astronomy; a rocky body, less than 1000 kilometers across, in orbit around the sun

  • The definition of Planet is more than a little on the vague side. For example, there's some argument over whether or not Pluto should be called a planet, given that there are several moons in the solar system bigger than Pluto.

    Still, roughly, a planet is a body that orbits the sun, and is heavy enough (i.e. has strong enough gravity) to hold a spherical shape.

    Possibly a more accurate definition of a planet would be whatever the latest textbook happens to decide is worth listing as a planet.

  • McMillan said he first saw the slow-moving object on Nov. 28 while glancing at the computer screen from real-time images captured from a telescope on Kitt Peak, near Tucson, Ariz. It was not detected by computer software.

    I wonder why this was not noted by the computers. They are supposed to be checking for just such an event. It seems the human eye outclasses the machine this time.

  • "Our" solar system? Who the heck are you to call it "ours"?

    We can call it "ours", because it's ours.

    Why? Oh, indeed. We've got the NUKES!

    We will colonize the Solar System, we will mine the asteroids, we will build the space stations. We will discover origins of the solar system, the universe, and the life, or just dump garbage there, as we see fit. And you will be permitted to watch from distance. Maybe.
    --

  • Couldn't it be a moon of a planet that left it's orbit?
  • Do these small planets affect the orbit of sattelites send out by nasa.. Half the size of pluto, that's still a lot of mass.
  • Just how big does an orbiting mass need to be before it's considered a planet? Scientists endlessly debated whether or not pluto was indeed a planet or not when it was discovered. It had a strange elliptical orbit, and was smaller than any other planet.

    YOu could have a definition something like "An object massive enough the self gravitation forces it into a spherical shape which has a stable orbit around a star."
  • Sorry...I screwed up, and I should know beter. The absolute magnitude is somewhere in the range of 4.7 or so, but the APPARENT magnitude, which is, of course, what matters, is more like 20, so, unless you've got a better telescope than me, no, it's not remotely visible.
  • the atmosphere of Pluto tends to freeze onto the planet's surface as it approaches the perihelion of its very elliptical orbit

    Surely you meant to say "aphelion," since Pluto gets colder the farther it gets from the sun?

    Pedantry aside, your definition is close to the working definition I've often seen in the astronomy crowd, except most of them don't seem to think the "atmosphere" part is very critical... and your final "think-it-is" isn't that far off, either.

    ---

  • I wonder why this was not noted by the computers. They are supposed to be checking for just such an event. It seems the human eye outclasses the machine this time.

    That would depend on what the telescope was being used for -- if it was doing spectroscopy, for example, there'd be no reason for software to be checking for new Solar System objects. Astronomers do a lot besides look for that stuff, you know.

    Sorta like when I'm running a trajectory simulation -- the software doesn't catch my input spelling errors... but my wordprocessor does.

    ---

  • That was the case quite a while ago: Neptune was predicted from Uranus' unresolved orbital anomalies. But its presence didn't quite cover them all, and what's more, Neptune's orbit wasn't quite what it should have been either -- or so the astronomers calculated. But more recently (within the last 30 years or so) reexamination of the data shows that the orbital anomalies were due to poor data and mis-analysis -- considering the planets' distance from us, and their very long orbital times, this isn't hard to understand.

    No one expects a massive outer-system planet nowadays -- all the anomalies have dropped below the level of observational noise. This doesn't mean there's not something out there, though... just that we don't have any evidence for it.

    ---

  • Re:qualifications of a planet (Score:3)

    by IHateEverybody ( 75727 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @06:57AM (#581788) Homepage Journal

    I'm not an astronomer, but if I recall correctly, most of the reasons scientists theorize the existence of a "Planet X" have to do with anomalies in the rest of the planetary orbits that aren't cleared up by factoring in the gravitational pulls of all the planets we know about. I think people knew that Pluto existed well before it was discovered because it was obvious something was affecting Neptune's orbit -- it was "just" a matter of finding it after that. However, Pluto proved not large enough to account for _all_ the irregularities in Neptune's orbit -- it didn't mass enough.

    These anomalies disappeared when the Voyager spacecraft allowed astronomers to determine the mass of the outer planets more accurately. Planet X, the orbit disrupting gas giant that astronomers had searched for never existed. The following link tells the story of the search for Planet X:

    http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/hypo.html#planetx [seds.org]
  • A "hidden" planet would have to be massive to noticably affect Neptune's orbit, especially at a distance. Pluto (or any planet around that size) would have a contribution to Neptune's orbit similar to my effect on the earth's orbit.

    The effect is so infintessmal we probably won't have the technology to notice it for generations, let alone measure it.
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
  • The new planet is supposed to be RUPERT damn it! Rupert!

    And now I'm off to check my updated horoscope. Hmm, When Saturn is in Libra and Rupert is in Scorpio that means...

    Steven

  • How big is a planet before it is a planet? (Score:3)

    by Ardant ( 93302 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @01:09AM (#581795) Homepage
    We're faced with yet another problem with quantifying the qualitative.

    Just how big does an orbiting mass need to be before it's considered a planet? Scientists endlessly debated whether or not pluto was indeed a planet or not when it was discovered. It had a strange elliptical orbit, and was smaller than any other planet.

    As our technology progresses, we find smaller and smaller objects that orbit around our sun.

    Where does this stop? Does a rock the size of a small town count as a planet? How about the size of a building? A dump truck? A basketball?

    Just how big is a planet?

  • Not a planet.. (Score:3)

    by Dr. Merkwürdigliebe ( 90125 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2000 @01:11AM (#581797)
    I would not classify this as a planet, rather as a Kuiper Belt Object. There are several of them discovered already, and if one compares the Objects closely, you'll find that Pluto doesn't really deserve to be called a planet either.

    One of the recent (well, last few decades) developments in astronomy is the realisation that there is a zone of many planetoids, little (in comparison) balls of ice and dust, outside Neptun's orbit. These are called Trans-Neptunian or Kuiper Belt Objects.

    Now that the number of them is increasing, maybe we can finally declassify Pluto and put it in its rightful place. Of course, the Pluto-fraction won't be happy.

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