Is Pluto a Binary Planet? 275
astroengine writes "If the Pluto-Charon system were viewed in a similar way to binary stars and binary asteroids, Pluto would become a Pluto-Charon binary planet. After all, Charon is 12% the mass of Pluto, causing the duo to orbit a barycenter that is located above Pluto's surface. Sadly, in the IAU's haste to define what a planet is in 2006, they missed a golden opportunity to define the planetary binary. Interestingly, if Pluto was a binary planet, last week's discovery of a fifth Plutonian moon would have in fact been the binary's fourth moon to be discovered by Hubble — under the binary definition, Charon wouldn't be classified as a moon at all."
Re:Sun is the same way (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't Jupiter need to be a star? Short of us igniting it, I think that is going to be a problem.
Re:IAU? Haste? No way. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you call the committee members pseudo-scientists? I'm rather sure everyone has a PhD in astronomy/astrophysics. (I'm technically an IAU member, although I've had little involvement with it.)
Re:Pluto never was a planet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pluto never was a planet (Score:5, Insightful)
To say it "never was a planet" is not quite true. It never was a planet according to the definition of planet that we use now, but it was a planet according to the definition we used to use. If you change the definition, people are going to be confused. It has nothing to do with tradition (except insofar as language is a "tradition"), and everything to do with the alteration of the language. Now, that alteration may be fully scientifically justified and acceptable... but it's still going to annoy people.
The comparison with the geocentrism is a little faulty. The issue here has very little to do with our knowledge of reality changing (it didn't really), but with the way we look at that reality changing (i.e. the words used for a thing).
It's not science, it's linguistics. The result is even now what category Pluto falls into can be debated: we could quite easily call it a planet even now, the problem is the definition would be too wide and force us to call things planets not traditionally called planets. So somewhat contrary to your point, a large part of the reason Pluto isn't called a planet anymore is actually tradition: because we don't want to call all the Kuiper belt objects planets also.
Re:Pluto never was a planet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IAU? Haste? No way. (Score:5, Insightful)
Astronomical knowledge is evolving quite a bit faster than the rest of the library. I'm not necessarily saying that any IAU decisions are correct but I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with recategorizing. Isn't it that a hallmark of the intelligent?
No. I can write a computer algorithm to sort something; that doesn't make it intelligent. Anyone can make something more complicated -- true genius is making things simpler.
Re:IAU? Haste? No way. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason the Pluto stuff (and the IAU) has gotten so much attention and ranting is that an American discovered Pluto and a bunch of patriots got butthurt that 'europeans' were taking away their thunder.
When there is ambiguity, professional and standards organizations redefine stuff all the time. This was a pretty routine thing to do and would have gone completely under the radar if nationalism had not come into play and got people fired up. In the end, they couldn't keep Pluto as a 'planet' without including a significant number of other bodies, which would have pissed off people too.
But like many issues, the original energy behind the backlash has been pretty much lost on the people who continue to push it today....which was part of the point. You can wrap up all sorts of nationalistic bullshit if you tie it into other existing narratives that appeal to the same people... think of the children, elitists forcing things on the public.. plays to the same audience and plays well off even less knowledge of the issue.
Re:IAU? Haste? No way. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a far cry from the organization's original role: Cataloging astronomical objects.
Um, no. Deciding upon definitions is an absolutely necessary part of doing precisely that job.
Re:Pluto never was a planet (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise the compostional argument works in favor of demotion as well. Working outward we have rocky inner planets, two gas giants, two ice giants, and then a buttload of comparitively very tiny solid icy bodies, that when they get perturbed and wander closer, get called comets. I don't understand the emotion behind the debate.
The best idea of what to do with the planet definition I've seen so far is to scrap it. Planets are originally things that move about in the sky. Now it's used for something or other because we're not comfortable with the now thousands of planets that exist under the old definition.
There are several problems with the kinds of planets you mentioned. Currently a planet is (in practice): 1) A rocky round body OR 2) A large gaseous body OR 3) A large gaseous "icy" body. The problem being that if you take a large KBO, Mercury and Jupiter, the two planets certainly will not have the most in common (radii about 1000, 2500 and 69000 km, respectively.) It's possible to build a definition that includes only eight planets, but it will give you a collection of bodies that have nothing else in common.
The planet definition is temporary in any case since it specifically doesn't apply outside the Sol system. I think the science should really throw it away as far as it can, so that the public can use the word however it wants without science being disturbed, while astronomers could stop playing unnecessary politics.
Re:IAU? Haste? No way. (Score:1, Insightful)
No one knows or cares that an American discovered it. It's about the cultural impact of having Pluto as a planet, then having it taken away by an organization about which nobody hears and for which nobody cares.
off-topic (Score:4, Insightful)
What I love about /. is that a topic like this can get almost 200 comments (at the time of this posting).
Most of my friends, even the geekier ones, would go "uh, ok, so what?". Because today "geek" has become to be limited to computers and that was never the gist of it until recently.
Re:IAU? Haste? No way. (Score:2, Insightful)
The biggest branch of Christianity (Catholicism) does not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. It is a collection of books written by humans inspired by God. I know there are branches of Christianity where it is literal, but where do you get your information? I worked with an Atheist that thought the same way you describe and specifically about Catholicism.