One Astronomer's Quest To Reinstate Pluto As a Planet 196
sarahnaomi writes: Most of us grew up believing that tiny, distant Pluto was the outermost planet in our solar system. Then, one day, the scientific powers that be decreed that it wasn't. But it seems the matter is far from settled. David Weintraub—who describes Pluto's exile as a stunt organized by a "very small clique of Pluto-haters"—would have the dwarf world rejoin the ranks of our Solar System's fully-fledged planets today. But solid evidence that Pluto deserves the title may come in July, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft slingshots around the icy rock and sends us back a detailed picture of its composition. Pluto's planethood was revoked by majority vote on the final day of the 2006 IAU conference. Over 2,500 astronomers attended the meeting throughout the week, but only 394 votes ultimately decided Pluto's fate: 237 in favor of demoting the planet and 157 against.
What's the big deal, anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does this guy want to consider a bunch of other Trans-Neptunian objects as planets too? Because if he doesn't, he's probably either letting nostalgia or some other emotional attachment cloud his judgment. I don't mind having a half-dozen more "planets", but I'm sure my kids might get annoyed at having to remember all of their names.
Re:What's the big deal, anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the general idea. You have to add all the objects that meet the criteria. The current criteria does not depend on characteristics of the object itself; the definition includes characteristics of the surrounding objects as well. I tend to agree with the argument that the current definition is wrong, for this reason.
The Kuiper belt and scattered disk are where all the remaining stuff left over from the formation of the solar system ended up. It was pushed out there by the larger planets. Unless the body is very large, for example like Uranus, it's not going to be able to "clear it's orbit" in that region of the solar system. If another large planet did exist out there, it would probably scatter everything in it's orbit, effectively pushing the Kuiper belt and scattered disk further out. Any smaller body, perhaps even an Earth sized body, would be unable to clear it's orbit. So, if the Earth's double was found out there, you would have to call it a "dwarf planet" by the current definition. That doesn't make sense.
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No you do not. you can create an exception into a rule quite easily. I before E except after C. See, a rule with an exception and the earth nor it's inhabitants suffered major catastrophe. And if you look, you will find words that violate those rules too.
Re:What's the big deal, anyway? (Score:4, Informative)
I before E except after C.
What a weird and foreign rule, with so many exceptions from the exception. A scietifically-minded species such as ours should have been sufficiently intelligent to create a more efficient spelling system than this. Let's just hope that future generations seize the opportunity to get rid of this ancient and inefficient spelling rule.
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In science, if you're having to make exceptions to fit the rule to nature, then the rule doesn't make sense.
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The rules make sense enough for the most part. There seems to be a couple exceptions to the rules in science that nobody cares about. For instance, Mammals give live birth- except for the platypus and spiny anteater. Eggs need to be fertilized- except in some bee colonies where male bees or drones develop from unfertilized eggs.
There are plenty more and one more will not matter much at all.
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Or he realizes that the whole concept of a "planet" is just a historical curiosity from ages long past, was invented by people who had no idea what they were describing, and is thus bound to lead to problems in scientific context. Best delegate it to the realm of public relations, where it can serve a usef
Better definition of planet (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as I'm concerned, if it's gravitation is enough to pull it into a sphere, it's a planet. Yes, I'm happy counting Luna and a bunch of other satellites. Let's face it, "Believing" has nothing to do with it. We grew up "choosing to label" Pluto as a planet.
How many exoplanets pass the current IAU definition of 'planet'? I bet a bunch don't.
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"How many exoplanets pass the current IAU definition of 'planet'? I bet a bunch don't."
What jurisdiction does the IAU have outside this solar system anyway?
If there are inhabitants of those exo-solar systems then they get to decide.
Re:Better definition of planet (Score:4, Informative)
How many exoplanets pass the current IAU definition of 'planet'? I bet a bunch don't.
I would bet that every single one of them does. Current exoplanet detection techniques are only sensitive to the big ones in close orbits. To detect something as small as Pluto, in a distant orbit in which it might not have cleared its orbital zone of debris (and so not be a planet, by the IAU definition), is well beyond our current capabilities.
Re:Better definition of planet (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the Sun a planet?
At one time people grew up 'choosing to label' Venus as a star. Then we grew up some more and realized we may have been mistaken or at least felt we should have a more granular scale with more accurate definitions.
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Is the Sun a planet?
Yes, the Sun is a planet by the older definition. But the new definition isn't much better*.
The classification of what is and is not a planet changed over time. Now it is tied to some metrics involving orbits and gravity that doesn't even apply well in the Solar System let alone a different Star System.
By the original meaning the Sun and Moon (of Earth) are also planets.
There are 7 objects that visible to the naked eye (say 5.5 magnitude or less at best) which move with respect to the fixed stars (ever
Re:Better definition of planet (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy balls, how many times have we had this conversation? Will you people ever give it a rest?
First of all, the IAU's definition is for technical and scientific discussions/communications. If you want to call Pluto a planet on your blog or whatever, go fucking wild. The IAU neither has the power (nor the desire!) to dictate language for all human beings for all time.
Now about technical language. The purpose of technical language is to provide a common agreed-upon vocabulary that is consistent, precise, and efficient. If you named everything a planet, you'd lose precision. People would inevitable invent a new set of categories for the eight 'big' planets and the other 'smaller' planets. Some people's new terms would conflict with other people's terms. It would be a mess.
On the other hand, if you named the 'big' planets anything other than 'planet', it would lose efficiency. They are the planets that are talked about most often, so it makes sense to give them a short, concise name.
Yes, the IAU's definition of planet WAS DESIGNED explicitly so that the eight 'main' planets would be the ONLY ones in our solar system called planets. There are very good reasons for this and the IAU did its job quite well in this regard.
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Holy balls, how many times have we had this conversation? Will you people ever give it a rest?
And queue yourself not giving it a rest.
First of all, the IAU's definition is for technical and scientific discussions/communications.
Scientific labels tend to be intentionally recognizably distinct from popular ones as lack of distinction is an invitation for ambiguity and confusion.
People would inevitable invent a new set of categories for the eight 'big' planets and the other 'smaller' planets. Some people's new terms would conflict with other people's terms. It would be a mess.
Yes this is what you get for "voting" rather than recognizing more work is needed to build consensus to get everyone save outliers onboard. 1/3 disagreeing isn't a consensus.
On the other hand, if you named the 'big' planets anything other than 'planet', it would lose efficiency. They are the planets that are talked about most often, so it makes sense to give them a short, concise name.
This sounds a bit lame as justifications go... lose efficiency? Since when are scientists in the business of conserving syllables? In astronomy e
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Scientific labels tend to be intentionally recognizably distinct from popular ones as lack of distinction is an invitation for ambiguity and confusion.
No, they don't. The only example I can think of for that is IUPAC organic chemical naming conventions, and that's because IUPAC naming conventions define an algorithm for naming an unbounded number of chemicals, even ones never mentioned before, unambiguously.
Here are some short, simple scientific words from the top of my head that are often used differently by the non-scientific community:
force
energy
work
power
theory
weight (very similar to planet, the public often conflates weight and mass which are separat
Stop right there! (Score:3)
Tomatoes are axiomatic components of both pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce. You fuck with tomatoes, you are fucking with the fundamental forces that hold the universe together. Back the fuck off before you do something we'll all regret.
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I'm just going to concentrate on your last point as all the rest have been taken care of by Your.Master.
> This sounds a bit lame as justifications go... lose efficiency? Since when are scientists in the business of conserving syllables? In astronomy especially they seem to be preoccupied with naming things after _all_ the principals who discovered them.
It's not just scientists, it's human beings. Language evolves towards better efficiency. That's why the word for 'house' isn't supercalifragilisticexpiali
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It's important to define a common vocabulary in science, because the less ambiguity you have in communicating your intent, the better.
If you think this is just something that's done in astronomy, you're incredibly wrong. Mathematicians and physicists and all other types of scientists put in a lot of effort in naming and standardization. It's important.
I agree that it's a *bit* rare to change terms that are already in wide use. But in this case they had to. Their hand was forced because of all the new KBOs t
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I agree that it's a *bit* rare to change terms that are already in wide use. But in this case they had to. Their hand was forced because of all the new KBOs that were found.
Because school kids would be forced to memorize a few hundred planets, if measures weren't taken. There was no reason to care that there were a lot of new planets. That's actual science. Now, our "scientific vocabulary" includes "dwarf planets" that aren't "planets". It's just dumb.
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Saving scientists from having to say "non-dwarf planets" every time they want to make it clear they're not talking about the hundreds of KBOs and are rather talking about the type of things commonly called planets in existing literature of centuries, is pretty good motivation.
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Saving scientists from having to say "non-dwarf planets"
It didn't. They didn't have to say that in the first place.
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Up until last Thursday night, I completely agreed with you. I thought that if an object had enough mass to pull itself into a sphere, it should be a planet. I thought the IAU's definition of planet was an offense to reason--well, I still think it is. Requiring an object to have "cleared its orbit" is a silly concept that would mean gas giants larger than Jupiter would be "Dwarf Planets" if they were found in a proto-planetary disc. The name, "Dwarf Planet," is completely stupid and offensive. How is a "Dwar
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As far as I'm concerned, if it's gravitation is enough to pull it into a sphere, it's a planet. Yes, I'm happy counting Luna and a bunch of other satellites
Then wouldn't our very own moon be a planet and not a moon by that definition?
Most people are ignorant that Earth's moon has a proper name: Luna, or that the term satellites refers to anything that orbits another body. Man-made satellites have recently become the primary definition of satellite but the original definition is still very much valid.
Another interesting fact: Earth's sun's proper name is Sol.
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Another interesting fact: Earth's sun's proper name is Sol.
You mean it's Jewish?
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Sol and Luna aren't proper names, they are Latin names. They aren't improper names either, just not better. Their English names are the Sun and the Moon. There's a fine point of grammar in there about inserting the definite article "the" in there, much like in "the Earth" vs. "Earth" vs. "Terra" but never "the Terra".
The Latin names aren't all that obscure either. You might stump people you ambush on the street, but "solar" and "lunar" are well-known terms. I agree that satellite has come to mean man-m
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Earth's moon has a proper name: Luna.
Or Selene, if you prefer Greek mythology to Roman.
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A moon is a co-orbiting object with the barycenter of rotation inside the larger object
So the moon will suddenly become a planet in it's own right when it recedes far enough from earth ... - except that then earth has NOT cleared its orbit of major objects within its orbit, so it is no longer a regular planet, and neither is the moon.
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I cannot recite the list of mammals or higher primates. My unability to do so has no influence on the definition of these orders.
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But under the definition you grew up with where Pluto is a planet, there are over 100,000 planets in our solar system alone.
Nope. You must have grown up in a different dimension than me. Pluto was a planet when I grew up, and there were 9 planets. And fewer inconsistencies in the definition than we have today. Though the definition was just as arbitrary as today's.
It's never going back to nine planets... (Score:2, Informative)
By any definition, it's either the 8 we have now, or 10 or 11. That's what started the Pluto mess, we discovered things bigger than Pluto way far out.
Re:It's never going back to nine planets... (Score:4, Informative)
It wasn't about Pluto (Score:5, Informative)
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Karma (Score:5, Funny)
Pluto got what it had coming. It knows what it did.
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Damn right, with a silly name like that. Like Hades already said, "what do they wanna call me in Rome? Pluto? I wouldn't even call my dog Pluto!"
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You know how to not only kill a joke but bury it and hold the funeral speech...
This is disgustingly insensitive (Score:5, Funny)
If Pluto self-identifies as a planet then we should respect Pluto's choice.
Re: This is disgustingly insensitive (Score:4, Funny)
Pluto self identifies as a dog. Lives in a dog house. Wears a dog collar. Goofy lives in a people house. Wears clothes. Goofy is a person.
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Death Star - Control Limbo! (Score:3)
If that mission is worth a crusade:
I now wish I had a death star I could fly to Pluto and blast it to pieces!
Two reasons Pluto must be a planet! (Score:5, Funny)
1) Calling the entitled, greedy rich "Neptunecrats" doesn't sound right.
2) Percival Lowell!
I consider Pluto a planet... (Score:2)
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How about educating them on the real history and telling them about your personal disagreement with the new planetary designations?
Personally, as I remember reading about how Pluto was non-spherical and had an overlapping orbit, and thought that it was rather odd for a planet. When I learned about other similar objects that were *not* considered planets, it also seemed fairly odd to me. I never gave it *much* thought of course, and just figured Pluto was to remain a "planet" purely for historical reasons.
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"How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
--A. Lincoln (provenance uncertain)
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"Haters" (Score:5, Insightful)
The efforts of a very small clique of Pluto-haters within the International Astronomical Union (IAU) plutoed Pluto in 2006
Yeah, that's right. They were "Pluto-haters". Not just people who happened to hold a different opinion he doesn't agree with.
That's not to say that you have to agree with their position, nor the way they went about having Pluto stripped of its status. But to ascribe their actions to the fact they personally "hated" Pluto- rather than simply believing that it couldn't justify its status as a planet- is somewhat childish.
I don't know if he meant "haters" in present-day sense (i.e. with its "haters gonna hate" connotations et al), but I've always had contempt for that usage. It's a cheap and easy way to counter anyone you don't agree with, to depersonalise and dismiss them in as people who hate purely because they're "haters". To make it a personal beef and a partisan issue rather than one of simple disagreement on a particular matter- one which would require legitimately addressing what they're actually saying instead of trying to puff yourself up in the cod-macho bullshit "them versus us/me" manner of an adolescent who's either immature enough to see things in that light, or has nothing to say beyond the convenient "haters gonna hate".
Seriously, step away from the gangsta rap and stop acting like a f*****g fourteen-year-old.
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They were "Pluto-haters"
Yep. Haters gonna hate. Pluto gonna er... plut...?
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To be fair, the argument against calling Pluto a planet was really political more than scientific--it's hard to argue that there's some nonarbitrary scientific justification for removing Pluto's planet status.
I'm sure those on the other side of the debate would argue that it's just as political and arbitrary to claim that it *is* a planet, beyond pure inertia (i.e. because it had always been called a "planet" until then).
Two wrongs don't make a right
Precisely.
Anyway, they were Pluto-haters, or haters of the idea of smaller planets messing up their tidy worldview.
Now I think you're trying too hard to rationalise the "haters" label. As I said, you don't have to agree with their opinion, nor the way they went about getting the result they wanted.
But that doesn't change the fact that dismissing their opinions and actions purely as "haters" was q
Mega Net Neutral Pluto (Score:2)
non-rational scientists (Score:4, Informative)
Even people in science careers are not immune to significant irrationality (I know, hardly Earth-shattering news).
When my grandmother was young, there were only eight planets, plus a few largish asteroids, then someone discovered another. As our instruments improved, we found many, many more "wanderers". We also learned how how their composition varied, and that there were more-descriptive categories to apply to the various bodies not only in this stellar system, but others.
It is utterly irrational to continue to collect Pluto into the same category as the eight other major rocky/gassy/icy Sol-orbiting bodies (the traditional "planets"), and NOT include the dozens of KBOs, TNOs, etc. that also orbit Sol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Solar_System [wikipedia.org].
Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an analogy I gave my students last week...
Imagine you're an alien and you land on Earth in front of a pet store. You go inside and you start meeting dogs. Some are big with a loud deep "WOOF", some are small with a quieter higher "ruff" and there's one little one that goes "meow". Some of them have big floppy ears, some of them have little floppy ears, and that little one has sharp pointed ears with tufts on the end. You think "That little meowing dog with the pointed tufted ears is an unusual dog!"
Then you go onto the rest of the pet store and find a whole bunch more small meowing things with pointed tufted ears, and you say "Oh... I see. That wasn't a funny dog, that was just the first cat I met!"
Pluto was the first Trans-Neptunian Object we met, and so we originally called it by our existing language ("planet"). But once we had a much better lay of the land, it became clear that it was just the first example of a quite different type of object.
[TMB]
Wrong argument (Score:2)
I don't see the problem.... (Score:2)
Pluto versus USA (Score:2)
Pluto's surface area is about 1.6x that of the land area of the United States. (or Canada or China, which are all similar in size). But you couldn't fit Russia or Antarctica onto Pluto. I'm not sure if this is an argument for or against Pluto, but it helped me better grasp the size of Pluto.
The surface area of Ceres is a little less than 1/3rd the land area of the United States. It's truly too tiny to be a planet. But it's my favorite dwarf planet.
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Neither does Jupiter. There are about 100,000 trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit, so it fails the third criteria; "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit."
In fact... Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune all fail to meet that criteria [wikipedia.org].
The definition of "planet" is a fucked up mess that a small group of astronomers threw together with the intent of classifying Pluto as not-a-planet without really thinking it through.
Re:And still (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact... Most astronomers counter this opinion by saying that, far from not having cleared their orbits, the major planets completely control the orbits of the other bodies within their orbital zone. [wikipedia.org]
It's a bit weird that the leading paragraph exists in both articles, while the counterpoint doesn't, but there you go.
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How dare you challenge the might of Jupiter! It weighs 320 times the mass of Earth -- even if those 100,000 trojan asteroids weighed as much as its minor moons (which they don't, they are 0.0001 Earth masses according to wikipedia), it would still dominate its gravitational field by several (9) orders of magnitude.
Compare that to Pluto: Charon already weighs 10% of Plutos mass. The center of rotation in that system is not even inside Pluto.
Also, there are other criteria that apply: a planet has to be spheri
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Re:And still (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. There are many categories of planets, including but not limited to:
* Terrestrial planets
* Gas giants
* Ice giants
* Hot jupiters
* Superearths
And so forth. Why does the concept of another category, dwarfs, enrage people?
Really, the only categorization issue that I'm adamant about is that Pluto-Charon is called a binary. The Pluto-Charon barycentre is not inside Pluto, therefore Charon is not rotating around Pluto, the two are corotating around a common point of space between them. That's a binary.
Re:And still (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, the only categorization issue that I'm adamant about is that Pluto-Charon is called a binary. The Pluto-Charon barycentre is not inside Pluto, therefore Charon is not rotating around Pluto, the two are corotating around a common point of space between them. That's a binary.
The barycenter of the Sun-Jupiter system lies at 1.068 solar radii, outside the Sun. Do you think they should be called a binary?
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No. Because they aren't both stars.
Re:And still (Score:5, Interesting)
Jupiter emits more heat into space than it receives from the Sun.
(I agree with you, just playing devil's advocate).
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And if Jupiter was large enough to be a brown dwarf? Yes, of course.
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"Planet" originally meant a star which moved through the constellations. The concept of size or distance or mass was utterly irrelevant. Having "categories" of planets, particularly given that there were less than a dozen examples, was a ludicrious suggestion.
It still is. There are still less than a dozen planets that can even be halfway considered observed to the point of resolved, much less understood. The idea that humans have somehow categorised these objects is as absurd as it is untenable.
There is no
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It's not the concept or name that enrages people. Well, some might get pissed if you call them a dwarf and are not yourself a dwarf. It's that all the other planets you mentioned are still considered planets while somehow the dwarf planet is being used to denote that Pluto is not a planet. Instead, Pluto is the big headed cousin of a midget or some other shit now.
Lost grant funding? (Score:2)
Why does the concept of another category, dwarfs, enrage people?
I don't think it does but for the definition to work it will have to have some sort of sensible criteria to separate them from asteroids. However clearly the notion that Pluto is not a planet really upsets a lot of people which is something I find hard to understand. Does it really matter that much how we classify it? Indeed it seems such a silly, unimportant thing to be arguing over again when there is real science to be done that it makes me wonder if the astronomers involved have lost their grant fundin
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It does - gravity high enough to deform it into a sphere.
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The IAU members gathered at the 2006 General Assembly agreed that a "planet" is defined as 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.
This means that the
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I suspect there's some kind of pissing match going on behind the scenes, and Pluto is simply being used as a proxy. That's usually the case when something utterly insignificant gets treated like it was Serious Business.
In the end, even astronomers are just humans, and can't avoid projecting their personal issues into their work.
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Exactly. There are many categories of planets, including but not limited to:
* Terrestrial planets
* Gas giants
* Ice giants
* Hot jupiters
* Superearths
And so forth. Why does the concept of another category, dwarfs, enrage people?
Really, the only categorization issue that I'm adamant about is that Pluto-Charon is called a binary. The Pluto-Charon barycentre is not inside Pluto, therefore Charon is not rotating around Pluto, the two are corotating around a common point of space between them. That's a binary.
I think it might be cultural. In Denmark and probably generally for Europe, I grew up with Pluto either never being mentioned as a planet or not said to be a real planet. I knew of Pluto from comic books and American media, so I always brought it up when we had any material on planets in school and Pluto was not mentioned. I was told over and over that Pluto was either not a real planet, or a planet but not like the others.
You can call dwarf planets, planets. Then we have growing number of planets in the so
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Really, the only categorization issue that I'm adamant about is that Pluto-Charon is called a binary. The Pluto-Charon barycentre is not inside Pluto, therefore Charon is not rotating around Pluto, the two are corotating around a common point of space between them. That's a binary.
That definition works, until you realise that Jupiter's barycentre with the Sun is outside of the Sun. Would you consider Jupiter and the Sun a binary system?
To be honest, I don't, but I don't have any real reason _why_ I don't
Going my own way (Score:2)
As far as I'm concerned, if it's orbiting a star, and it itself isn't another star, and it's got, or had, enough mass such that it pulled whatever it is made of into a spheroid, it's a planet. If it's orbiting another planet and the center of the orbit is within the other body, it's a moon, spheroid or not. If the center of the orbit is in space, they're both planets. If there isn't enough mass to pull the thing into a spheroid, and it's not orbiting a planet, then it is either an asteroid (primarily rocky)
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As far as I'm concerned, if it's orbiting a star, and it itself isn't another star, and it's got, or had, enough mass such that it pulled whatever it is made of into a spheroid, it's a planet.
So how many planets orbit the Sun, according to that definition?
Re:Going my own way (Score:4, Informative)
That's the thing. This definition includes Pluto but it also includes Ceres, the largest asteroid. It also includes Eris (of course since Eris is even larger than Pluto, any definition of a planet that includes Pluto must also include Eris). And it includes at least six to eight Kuiper Belt objects like Quaoar (the scrabble world whose name I've almost certainly misspelled). Plus a couple of scattered disk objects like Sedna which seem to just be out there in weir, random-looking orbits would also have to be included.
And this list would only grow as better telescopes and better survey techniques are developed. Here I think is the real reason that Pluto was demoted. Because it's easier to take it off of the list of planets than to include dozens of small, icy worlds.
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I don't see why, when another planet is discovered, we can't admit it.
So... "the problem"... doesn't strike me as a problem.
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I don't know -- I think it's about 13 right now? Could be more or less.
Why?
Just to be explicit, I wasn't complaining about the number nine. Just the very weird and arbitrary demotion of pluto from planetary status. Which I do not go along with.
I like a nice, sane, consistent definition. :)
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As far as I'm concerned, ... no one cares anyway. :) The important thing is *I* know what to think when I learn about something "out there." And Pluto? Pluto is definitely a planet. If someone convinces me that these ideas are inconsistent, I'll do my best to fix 'em so they aren't.
We see articles about how few people are scientifically literate, and so many on Slashdot decry "We are geeks, we understand science!"
Appearently, nope!
Scientists, the astronomers who spend their days and nights studying the stars and planets, people who are intimately familiar with the definitions, and people whose life work and career funding depend on them, came up with a set of definitions.
The definitions draw a line somewhere, and you can argue they are as arbitrary as a meter and a kilogram, or a f
Oh, science, is it? (Score:2)
Actually, my dear fellow poster, it is you that does not understand science. Science is a method. Information gathered and suppositions constructed are both data. Such data, particularly when the scientific method is applied, may give rise to (hopefully) more accurate metaphor(s) (more data) as to how nature behaves, and that in turn may let us go a little
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Covered it. Read my post again.
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A protostar, given it's in a seriously pre-fusion state, will (as far as I know) be large enough to have quite decisively pulled itself into a spheroid. If it is orbiting another star, I'd say that at that point, it is a planet and a protostar.
As I see it, protostars seem to refer to a class of planet, just as do gas giants, balls of frozen gasses, molten worlds, rocky, airless worlds, and earthlike worlds. That namespace is a very rich field to till, I think.
Once it lights off, I see it as a sibling (binar
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It would make sense to classify the Earth - Moon as a binary planet. Life-as-we-know-it is most likely to occur in binary planet situations, where large tides are the stirring rods that keep the proto-life soups from settling into non-interactive stratifications. Creating the class of binary planet with the Earth - Moon as the prototypical first pair would help focus exoplanetary studies, and also inject new considerations into Earth science studies, such as plate tectonics, geomagnetism, possibly meteorolo
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Also, if you are too dumb to think of a single definition of "planet" that includes the traditional 9 planets, then you are too dumb to bother to argue with, there's nothing I could say that would matter. Your tiny, petty little mind is made up and closed, and has no more room for discussions to sway it.
I said "the rules are arbitrary" and you took that as something I
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Pompous asses. :)
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Norman? The interesting part would be to know what Mona Jones was actually doing... but it still makes sense.
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Ceres is also a dwarf planet. An increasingly interesting one at that [discovery.com]. Really I find it pretty amazing that space exploration has practically ignored such a large, nearby body with tons of launch windows up to this point.
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Who needs to get a life? The guy that studies astronomy and wants to correct what he thinks is an error by some of his peers or they guy that reads a blurb on Slashdot and then makes a snide comment?
Then again, I am taking you to task for said snide comment, so... I think I'll go outside for a walk and see if I can find a life.
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Yet still our best telescopes can barely make out its shape.
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I don't really know or even especially care whether Pluto should be called a planet, but it seems like the resolving power of our optics should not be the defining quantity.
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Wow, I don't normally read AC posts, but you are right. Most excellent Poe style post indeed!
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Although what you said was basically true, there is a problem with your position.
The problem is that there is no way to write a law with the intent of preventing abuse of people are too young to be able to form themselves to make reasoned decisions about sex or reproduction other than arbitrarily assigning a numerical age as the borderline.
Consider that there are laws and/or policies against adults of any age having sex with people whom they supervise in a business setting. This is because there is no way
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