The Sun's 10th Planet... Sedna?

dsanfte writes "While NASA remains intentionally vague, promising only a news conference Monday, The Australian has the details. The new planet, dubbed Sedna after the Inuit goddess of the sea, is 3 billion km further from the sun than Pluto, and is slightly smaller at 2000km in diameter. This discovery has apparently reignited the debate as to how big a solar object must be in order to qualify as a 'planet', but it is significant nonetheless."

Comments

A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

So why should we start counting an even smaller "planet"? Pluto gets grandfathered in, and that's it.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Concerned Onlooker]

You exclusive club-types are all alike....

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[WorkEmail]

I say we put up a huge sign next to the Sun that says "You must be at least this big (insert huge red line) to ride this ride."

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[c1ay]

So where's the line between asteroid and planet? IMO, Pluto should be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon. Of course, there are also asteroids with moons but yet, they are considered asteroids, not planets. And what makes a comet a comet and not an asteroid, it's orbit? It would certailny seem that agencies like NASA that are so concerned with being precise in other areas could could come up with a more precise classification system.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Rick the Red]

Comets are snowballs; asteroids are rocks. Oversimplification, but you get the idea.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Jesus 2.0]

Pluto should be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon.

Frankly, I don't understand this line of reasoning. Why does it matter, with regards to whether something is a "planet" or not, whether that thing is bigger than, for example, our moon?

And "asteroid"? Pluto is far, far larger than anything currently considered an "asteroid".

Jupiter and Saturn both have moons that are bigger than Mercury. Do you not consider Mercury to be a "planet", either?

What if Jupiter had a moon bigger than Earth? That's not unimaginable; would Earth then not be a "planet"? In fact, would then nothing be a "planet" except Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune?

I frankly don't see what's wrong with (something like) a "planet" being a non-star that's orbiting (directly) around a star. Sure, that makes for some seriously small "planets" relative to what we're used to, but at least it's not an arbitrary and useless definition like (no offense) yours.

And anyway, if you want to add back in your preferred amount of arbitraryness, you can always start referring to "major planets", "minor planets", and so forth.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[r2vf]

IMO, Pluto should [shouldn't?] be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon [wikipedia.org].

An interesting point, though to be fair, its an arbitrary cutoff. There are moons elswhere in our solar system larger than Mercury, which is indisputably a planet, for example. Also its worth pointing out that our moon is large enough that it and Earth are sometimes called a double planet. Consider this, Luna does not orbit Earth as near the equator as is usual among most other moons. Also, peculiar to all 138 known moons with the exception of Charon, it possesses an orbit where the effect of the Sun's gravity is greater than that of Earth's. Without their host planets, they would float off, wheareas the moon would continue orbiting the sun quite contently.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[djcreamy]

I've always heard that Pluto is not a planet but a very large asteroid in the Keiper belt. I'd imagine the same could be said of Sedna.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[mysticgoat]

It would certailny seem that agencies like NASA that are so concerned with being precise in other areas could could come up with a more precise classification system.

Uh, well, it's not really NASA's fault.

The messiness is really Mama's work. Not only is she perpetually younger than any of us kids, she was even younger than that back when she did that part of her Creatrix thing. And like all young girls, she sometimes colored outside the lines.

The thing is, she is still doing it, and I think she always will be. Contemplate the value of pi for a moment, and if you think about it a certain way, you'll hear her giggle.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[catbutt]

So where's the line between asteroid and planet?

Why does there have to be one? Man's tendency is to compartmentalize things, to make sure everything has a name and that name is unambiguous. Problem is, nature doesn't cooperate. There are always going to be intermediate forms, so there are never going to be definitions that aren't arbitrary.

Same thing applies to species. The nice simple definition "if it can interbreed, its the same species" doesn't always work, and there is no reasonable definition that covers all cases and removes ambiguity.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[glitch23]

I say if it's large enough that its own gravity shapes it into a sphere then it can be called a planet. An asteroid will not qualify under this criteria as its gravity is not sufficient enough to shape it into a sphere.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[el-spectre]

To be fair, luna is also the closest moon to the sun by a hundred million miles...

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[mysticgoat]

Quoth grandparent: Pluto should be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon.

Quoth parent: Frankly, I don't understand this line of reasoning. Why does it matter, with regards to whether something is a "planet" or not, whether that thing is bigger than, for example, our moon?

I agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.

Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.

In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.

In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.

But what do I know? IANAA.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[CrazyTalk]

I remember hearing awhile back when the debate was raging about Pluto that to be a planet, the object has to be sufficently large so that gravitational forces caused it to form in the shape of a sphere. So, varous small hunks of debris orbiting the sun definately are not "Planets". At the other end of the spectrum, objects large enough to radiate a certain amount of heat are considered stars. Neither of these definitions are exact, and the astronomy dictionary will probably need to be rewritten with all the recent scientific discoveries emerging, but there are some definitions out there that are not completely arbitrary.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

A 2000km diameter object (lets move this to US measurements) is 3220mi. Our moon is 2797.21mi in diameter, and the earth itself is 20537.16mi.

Argueably the earth/moon system the moon a co-planet due to the size and mass compared to the earth. Especially in consideration of other bodies in the solar system in relation to their moons. (Saturn, Jupiter, etc.) We should probably start by defining "What is a rock?", then we would know "What is a planet?" I'll go with popular opinion and common sense... If something is bigger than 1000mi in diameter it's big enough to be considered a planet. Most of the things we consider asteroids are much smaller, and rightly so. If it's big enough to annihilate earth in one impact (that is there would be nothing left but small rocks) that's probably NOT an asteroid. As much as this seems like "big news", don't forget the other 118 planets (see wikipedia, search planets).

-Mind

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[kirkjobsluder]

The criterion that a planet is large enough to compact into a sphere is actually quite useful and justified. If something is big enough to shape its self into a sphere, then it is also big enough for gravitational sorting to be a factor in its structure and chemistry.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[NanoGator]

"Why does there have to be one?"

Because my Oprah jokes are at a standstill until this issue is resolved!

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

So Rossie O'Donnel is officially a planet!?!?!

• big, check.
• Sphere, check
• own gravity, check

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[the_2nd_coming]

I think you would have to add in that it must be a spheroid.

asteroids are for the most part not spheroids.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Loconut1389]

I think it should be something like this.. If a uniformly round object's primary orbit is an orbit of our sun and meets X size requirement, it is a planet. This excludes moons that way since its primary orbit is not around the sun. Then theres just a size disctinction.. but i think aside from space debris anything larger than a few miles around should be considered a planet.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Guppy06]

"asteroids are rocks"

We should use this for the demarkation between "asteroid" and "planet." An asteroid is one big chunk of rock. A planet is a bunch of little rocks held together by their own gravity.

If Pluto primarily orbits the sun and it's dense enough to hold on to an atmosphere from time to time, why shouldn't it be considered a planet?

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Reivec]

If I were the one to classify it (and I am obviously not). I would have to base whether it is a planet or not on what it is made up of and how it came to be. If it is simply a fragment from some other large body then I wouldn't call it a planet, but it was formed from the birth of a solar system (any solar system), I would call it a planet. I say any solar system because it could be a planet from another system that left its orbit and then ended up in orbit around our sun, which is a likely case with pluto. Pluto was probably a moon from something else that left its orbit and entered orbit around our sun, which accounts for it strange orbit. But if Sedna appears to be in independent creation and not just a chunk of something else, I would call it a planet, no matter its size.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[GigsVT]

not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity.

I'm trying to eat more fiber OK? I wish you would stop talking about this stuff in public!

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anarke_Incarnate]

And some planets are not much more than super dense gas. About the only thing solid on them is their subzero cores which contain things such as frozen/metallic hydrogen.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[illogique]

In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system. i'm pretty sure the moon interacts with at least 1 known planet: the earth!!

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Entropy2016]

I've got a couple possible solutions regarding the debate over labeling something a planet.

1. Why not just call all solid [and liquid?] bodies "satellites" ? Asteroid, planet, moon, deathstar, they're all satellites from now on.

OR

2. Redefine "Planet" to mean: Any satellite of a star with enough mass to retain an atmosphere of any [detectable?] pressure.

Rocks come in all sizes, so we ought to ditch the term or define it with respect to something as arbitrary as size.

Our universe is hopelessly complex. Accept it. Part of life as a human is dealing with a world that impossible to fully predict or control. If we didn't have such a world, things would be far less interesting. (we might even be wishing that there would be issues to debate).

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[pfdietz]

There are no planets with 'subzero cores'.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[tomatensaft]

Actually, according to the physics Gravity Law, *every* object in the Universe interacts with *any* other one. This proves that the idea of distinguishing planets from other solar system's objects can't be done based on just this concept (by the "interaction level")

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[addaon]

We should use this for the demarkation between "asteroid" and "planet." An asteroid is one big chunk of rock. A planet is a bunch of little rocks held together by their own gravity.

But then you have the situation that an asteroid can, upon impact, both become smaller and become a planet...

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not have the definition as Star (i.e. Sol), Planet, Moon, Moonette?

If it orbits the sun, it's a planet. Orbits a planet, it's a moon, and if that moon happens to have it's owns natural orbiters, why not call them moonettes?

Pluto and Charon I think qualify as a binary planet, and I like to think that there's others out there.

I can just imagine there being an extra-terrestrial species out in our universe, or a parallel one, that's "impossibly" evolved on two planets that circle each other as they orbit a star.

Can you imagine the reaction when they look up at their "moon" and see it lit up much like their own planet? I'd like to think that they'd get space travel working a lot quicker than we did, and perhaps not have the arrogant "fact" from religion stating that god made one planet in a universe as big as ours that has intelligent life, and no others.

Although I suppose it would probably be just to fight each other. :/

When you think about it, the original definitions of Star, Planet and Moon were probably just to describe an orbital body's position in relation to other orbiters.

`Thine Moon is journeying around us, as thee are orbiting thine Sun.'

I'd guess that as astronomy became more educated on our solar system, that's when they started using the definitions of size and consistancy to group together objects.

Maybe:-

Star: Center of solar system.

Planet: Orbits a Star.

Moon: Orbits a Planet.

Moonette: Orbits a Moon.

Comet: Obviously elliptical orbit with a tail.*

Asteroid: As Comet but no tail.

Binary-?: Any two orbital bodies which move around each other as they move in orbit.

Trinary-?: Like Binary but with three.

*I know Pluto and Charon have a slightly elliptical orbit and it's off-tilt to the other planets. Maybe an obviously elliptical orbit could be one that is crossing at least three planetary orbits? Or two really big ones?

Anyway, the current establishment will probably do what they like despite what we say - we're not scientists and why should they listen to us, eh?

So let's just forget the definitions, stop being anal about our solar system when we can just get people to our own moon, and have a beer - or whatever's your poison - for the newest member of our little corner of the galaxy.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Martin Blank]

A large number of known asteroids are exactly that: clumps of rock weakly held together through their own weak gravitational forces.

This incidentally leads to one of the fears of trying to deflect such an asteroid were it on a collision with the earth -- that it would simply fragment it and cause destruction on a wider scale.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Yunzil]

Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity.

Actually, no. When Pluto was discovered it was found to be too small to account for the irregularity in Uranus's orbit. When they went back and checked, they found there had been a mistake and there wasn't any irregularity to start with. The discovery of Pluto was an accident.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[sunscream]

A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

You're right.

But does it matter if we call Pluto a planet or not?

Brian Marsden, who for thirty years has been the director of the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams of the International Astronomical Union, insists that it does. By calling Pluto a planet, he says, astronomers perpetuate a distorted and thoroughly outdated image of a solar system that neatly ends in a ninth planet, rather than trailing off beyond Neptune into a far-reaching and richly populated field of objects. "It gives a misleading impression to the public and particularly to schoolchildren," he says. "We ought to be explaining that there are four giant planets, four terrestrial planets, two belts of minor bodies, and scattered interesting material."

(quoted from http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98feb/pluto.htm)

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[eugene ts wong]

I'd prefer that. In an extreme situation, where the object would be fragmented to a bunch of dust & powder, everything would get burned up in the atmosphere. I could be wrong, but that's where I'm placing my bets.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

You did your conversions wrong. A kilometer is less than a mile. The Earth has a diameter of roughly(top of my head) 7800 miles. Certainly not 20500. Hell, Jupiter is 88000 miles in diameter.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[marine_recon]

astroids are planitods (sic) the term astroid has gained popularity dispite its innaccurcy

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[squiggleslash]

2. Redefine "Planet" to mean: Any satellite of a star with enough mass to retain an atmosphere of any [detectable?] pressure.

Where would that leave Mercury? The nearest thing it has to an atmosphere are little particles being blasted off it by the solar wind. I suspect, ultimately, many things we wouldn't regard as planets are likewise.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Shakrai]

This incidentally leads to one of the fears of trying to deflect such an asteroid were it on a collision with the earth -- that it would simply fragment it and cause destruction on a wider scale.

I'd perfer low-level destruction on a wide-scale to massive life-ending destruction on a Worldwide scale thank you very much.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[salimma]

A planet is a bunch of little rocks held together by their own gravity.

We don't know that the gas giants even have solid rocky cores underneath...

But yes, a mass body substantial enough to hold on to an atmosphere could be a valid definition of a planet. Not *the* valid definition since we have planets like Mercury buffeted by solar winds..

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

If it goes around the Sun, and has been doing that for a looong while, then it's a
planet. If it lights up, it's another "sun", and might have it's own planets.
Simple, based on "If it quacks...".

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[RedWizzard]

Pluto is far, far larger than anything currently considered an "asteroid".

Pluto has a diameter of 2274kms. Ceres, the largest of the asteriods (if Sedna isn't classified an asteriod) has a diameter of approximately 950kms. That's hardly "far, far larger", especially when you consider that the next larger planet, Mercury, is more than twice Pluto's diameter at 4880kms. You may as well say that Pluto doesn't deserve to be a planet because it is "far, far" smaller than Mercury.

I frankly don't see what's wrong with (something like) a "planet" being a non-star that's orbiting (directly) around a star. Sure, that makes for some seriously small "planets" relative to what we're used to, but at least it's not an arbitrary and useless definition like (no offense) yours.

So you want to include comets and asteroids as planets as well? That definition is entirely too broad to be useful for anything and would result in people using other terms for more specific classes of object, as they do now.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[pkcyll]

I don't think we ought to use "it can hold an atmosphere" as a marker for a planet. Planetoids like Pluto and now Sedna are so cold (being so far from the Sun) that their surface will be frozen. Atmosphere escapes due to two facts: 1) gravity of body is too weak and 2) surface temperature enables the atmosphere to evaporate because its mean temperature allows the gas to go faster than the escape velocity. So a small planetoid far enough can still have an atmosphere because it is too cold to escape.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

Weel,

its customary to regard a planet as being something that orbits directly around a star and has some form of internal differentiation. That is, as you move out in radius from the centre, you encounter differing compositions.

All of the current planets conform to this definition. The reason that Pluto is often not counted is that it is unlikely to be very differentiated at all, and so is more like an asturoid (just an icy one).

What I would say is that it is an absolutely huge non-planet, and, hell, one day, we may find out if it really qualifies.

You may recall that anoth Kuiper object was found a couple of years ago, which was about 800 kilometres accross. If Sedna is a planet, then maybe this other one is too?

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[SEWilco]

Yes, it would be so much better to just reshape the incoming rock into a long needle so we have destruction confined to only two tiny little spots, including the spot on the opposite side of the Earth.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[SEWilco]

1. Why not just call all solid [and liquid?] bodies "satellites" ? Asteroid, planet, moon, deathstar, they're all satellites from now on.

No, that collection of examples is not correct. It makes Deathstar be "That's no satellite."

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[DunbarTheInept]

How about this set of definitions:

1 - Planet: A chunk of material directly orbiting a star (as opposed to a moon, which orbits a body which in turn orbits a star). To be called a planet, the object must have become a sphere or elipsoid. (This will happen when there is enough mass there for gravity to 'crunch' the bits of matter together and pack them like a snowball.)

2 - Asteroid: an object that directly orbits a star, like a planet does, but it's NOT a sphere or elipsoid. This will happen where there is not enough mass there for the gravity to 'crunch' the matter into a packed ball.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[DunbarTheInept]

If an object is a moon orbiting quickly (relative to the length of a year) around a parent planet, then it's mass ends up just adding to the parent's mass for the purpose of detecting how it affect's other object's orbits. The entire orbiting system of moons around jupiter can be thought of as one large mass centered at Jupiter, for the most part.

(Calculate how the earth-moon system pulls at the orbit of Mars. Now replace the earth-moon system with a single object equal to their combined mass and calculate based on that - the difference in the effect on mars is negligable.)

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Sindri]

According to dictionary.com a planet is:

"A nonluminous celestial body larger than an asteroid or 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."

Maybe this should be changed to:

A nonluminous celestial body large enough to be spherical from gravity, 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, Pluto and Sedna.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[1u3hr]

I'd prefer that. In an extreme situation, where the object would be fragmented to a bunch of dust & powder, everything would get burned up in the atmosphere. I could be wrong, but that's where I'm placing my bets.

From Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: Review of Deep Impact:

This was the Biggest Baddest Astronomy in the movie. Blowing up a comet does no good at all, and might even make matters worse. Just because the pieces are smaller doesn't mean you have changed anything. If every piece still impacts the Earth (by that I mean actually is stopped by the Earth or its atmosphere) you are still dumping all the kinetic energy of The Comet into the Earth's atmosphere! That's a HUGE amount of energy, dumped in practically all at once. It would still create a massive explosion, dwarfing all of our nuclear bombs combined. Even if you could somehow soften the blow, all that heat would wreak havoc with our weather. Some people actually think it might be better to simply let a big one hit rather than blow it up, because the Earth itself can absorb the energy of impact better than the atmosphere can. This is still argued, though. I'd prefer not to try any experiments!

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[dave420]

Patrick Moore, the famous British astronomer, calls celestial bodies straddling the planet/asteroid line "planetessimals"... I think it covers the gap nicely :)

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[tkg]

We don't know that the gas giants even have solid rocky cores underneath...

Jupiter at least has Schumaker-Levi in there. We can't see through the atmospheres of the gas giants, but if they absorb asteroid and comet impacts, then it seems likely there are some solids or molten solids at their cores.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[geoswan]

Ancient Astronomers used the term planet to distinguish heavenly bodies that moved from the fixed stars that didn't appear to move. The seven planets the ancients recognized were Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Luna and the Sun. If Jupiter had a planet the size of the Earth it would be visible to the naked eye, so it would have fit within the original criteria for being a planet.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[TwistedGreen]

The discovery of Pluto was an accident.

Just don't tell Pluto that!

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[hozzies]

How a planet came to be is a bit hazy -- we have very good ideas on how the solar system was created, but it will always be a subject of debate.. Perhaps a planet should be an object with a specific and predictable orbit around a star with a specific and predictable rotation. (This assumes asteroids don't have predictable year and day/night cycles.)

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[geoswan]

Worth noting: the volume of an asteroid increases by the cube of the diameter. If they are of similar density then Pluto is about 14 times more massive than Ceres. Mercury is about 135 times more massive than Ceres.

(I am not sure Ceres is quite sperical though.)

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[mysticgoat]

When Pluto was discovered it was found to be too small to account for the irregularity in Uranus's orbit. When they went back and checked, they found there had been a mistake and there wasn't any irregularity to start with. The discovery of Pluto was an accident.

Above statement adds confusion to a complicated history. The second sentence is flat out wrong.

Pluto was found in a deliberate search for a nineth planet that would account for the pertubations of Neptune and Uranus. It was found fairly close to where the predictions said it should be.

But Pluto has neither the mass nor the orbital characteristics the predictions called for. (This was confirmed with the discovery of Charon and observations of the interactions of Pluto and Charon.) In a sense Pluto's discovery was accidental for its real orbit matches the predicted orbit for only a little while: it was fortunate that people were looking for it during those decades.

The second statement in quote from parent is false: there are significant pertubations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, and also in Pluto's orbit. All three of these consistently fail to be where their ephemerides predict they should be. The irregularities (pertubations) are definitely there. Something else is out there. Perhaps a lot of small stuff in a lumpy distribution; perhaps a few pieces approaching planetary size.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[le_jfs]

Yes, it would be so much better to just reshape the incoming rock into a long needle so we have destruction confined to only two tiny little spots, including the spot on the opposite side of the Earth.

You better make sure that the needle doesn't rotate... Otherwise, chances are the Earth will be cut in two halves.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

An object that creates this much debate should have been named after Eris or Loki or someone like that.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[SEWilco]

You better make sure that the needle doesn't rotate... Otherwise, chances are the Earth will be cut in two halves.

Needle, not sword.

Although it might be better to put a head on the trailing end, so after it nails the Earth we have a column on the far side for a space elevator.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[juhaz]

Big rocks don't cause massive life-ending destruction on a worldwide scale.

Kinetic energy does. And that rock has every Joule of it's kinetic energy left even if you reduce it to nothing but a cloud of sand.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Entropy2016]

When I stated #2, "enough mass to retain an atmosphere", I meant it hypothetical sense, with disregard to wether or not it actually does.

Although some might wrongly assume that you could just claim that's the same as establishing a specific mass. It isn't because having an atmosphere doesn't depend simply on mass, but rather, density. (so I guess it's less of a mass definition and more of a gravity definition)

Just an idea...

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[RedBear]

There are no planets with 'subzero cores'.

It would be more correct to say there are no planets in this solar system with sub-zero cores. It's quite possible there are planets in other solar systems that have had time to bleed off all the heat from their cores. In fact, I'd say it's quite likely, being that there are probably on the order of 10^12 planets just in the "nearby" visible universe alone.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Shakrai]

Big rocks don't cause massive life-ending destruction on a worldwide scale.

Umm. Says who? Let me quote from this webpage:

The Earth's atmosphere protects us from most NEOs smaller than a modest office building (50 m diameter, or impact energy of about 5 megatons). From this size up to about 1 km diameter, an impacting NEO can do tremendous damage on a local scale. Above an energy of a million megatons (diameter about 2 km), an impact will produce severe environmental damage on a global scale. The probable consequence would be an "impact winter" with loss of crops worldwide and subsequent starvation and disease. Still larger impacts can cause mass extinctions, like the one that ended the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago (15 km diameter and about 100 million megatons).

A 2 kilometer wide "big rock" as you call it would cause life-ending destruction on a worldwide scale. True we'd probably survive as a race and eventually recover but billions would die. I'd call that a "life-ending level of destruction on a worldwide scale".

Now obviously would it be better to let that 2km rock hit the Earth or break it into smaller pieces? These smaller pieces that survived the atomosphere would still hit with the impact of thermonuclear bombs (read up on the Tunguska event sometime) and destroy everything for miles around ground zero. Obviously if one of these fragments impacted in or near a large city the death toll could be in the millions -- but I'll take that any day over a nuclear winter and billions of people straving to death.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[hawkfish]

The nice simple definition "if it can interbreed, its the same species" doesn't always work, and there is no reasonable definition that covers all cases and removes ambiguity.

Cute example (from Stephen Jay Gould): On the coast of Australia there are species of eucalyptus that go from sea level up to the top of the mountains. Adjacent species can interbreed all the way up to the top of the mountains, but the alpine and sea-level species can not interbreed.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Carewolf]

You better make sure that the needle doesn't rotate... Otherwise, chances are the Earth will be cut in two halves.

What harm would that do?(*) It's a planet not an orange, it is held together by gravity.

(*) besides masive earthquakes near the cuts.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Vindicator9000]

Who you represent? I represent the smallest planet
Attorney in this tourney versus those who've tried to ban it
If you don't agree go see Interplanet Janet
Cause sun is star, like Pluto is planet
Lend me all your ears and let me state my case
About all the types of satellites you must embrace
Cause like my parents, great grandparents
This planet was an immigrant
To deport it makes no sense
It's an upstanding member of the solar system
Apply the laws of earth and make it a victim
Of Proposition 187
When Pluto spawns a moon it will apply to the heavens
I will damn thee like Judas of Iscariot
If you demote this mote remote to affiliate
It's like taking ET's custody from Elliot
Support your Lilliput, cause simply put

Pluto is a planet

--2 Skinnee J's, Pluto

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[juhaz]

Umm. Says who?

Laws of Physics. There's not much point trying to argue with them, they don't tend to listen, even NASA's oversimplified web pages for Joe Average don't impress one of these guys very much.

Also note that the page lists the impact required for global damage as _million megatons of energy_.

Big rock in one chunk is going to discharge most of it's energy into the impact point, big rock ground into sand cloud is going to discharge all it's energy into the atmosphere, big rock in big and not-so-big chunks is going to do little bit of both, nevertheless, all the energy original big rock carried is still released to Earth, one way or another. What makes you think all that energy is only going to cause damage if it hits one specific point in ground or water?

Full atmospheric hit would first cause an enormous shock wave. Remember nuclear bombs are usually blown on air to maximize damage caused by the shock wave? Would you like to be underneath shockwave of 1000000 megaton nuke? Thought so... Additionally, there's no knowing what it would do to the upper atmosphere, bye bye ozone layer, perhaps? Ouch. As if that's not enough, all the heat released into atmosphere might royally screw up weather, it doesn't really matter if those billions of people are starving to death because of nuclear winter or some other weather anomaly.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[SEWilco]

You better make sure that the needle doesn't rotate... Otherwise, chances are the Earth will be cut in two halves.

What harm would that do?(*) It's a planet not an orange, it is held together by gravity.
(*) besides masive earthquakes near the cuts.

I challenge that statement.
I have never read any peer-reviewed scientific literature which states that earthquakes would occur if the Earth were cut in half.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Yunzil]

The second statement in quote from parent is false: there are significant pertubations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, and also in Pluto's orbit.

No, there aren't.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Gheorghe Tomescu]

Perhaps we should consider a planet to be a body with a round shape and not big enough to start nuclear fusion in its core. An asteroid should be a body too small for its gravity to round it.

We could try to put radius measures to make a clasification. This is useful to delimit dust and molecules floating in space from asteroids.

But on big planets, it's harder to use radius measurements. We could find a very heavy planet, with a diameter roughly like Jupiter's, but with a much greater mass. This planet would ignite helium3 in its core and be considered a brown dwarf, a failed star. And there are dead stars like white dwarves, smaller than Jupiter. A neutron star is 10 miles in diameter and it isn't a star by definition, no fusion is taking place in its core.

In the last years astronomers discovered groups of free floating planets. They are bigger than Jupiter, but not big enough to start helium3 fusion, to be catalogued as brown dwarves. I'm sure a planet can be born around stars and then kicked out from a star system (most likely Sedna was kicked out on its current orbit by Jupiter or by other big planet) or can form in space, outside star systems. I don't think it is a bottom line for a cloud of dust or gas to collapse, if it's dense enough. A supernova explosion can form shock waves in a cloud, so it may be possible for a planet to form.
Because of that, we should not consider a planet to necessarely orbit a star.

So, let's count the bodies in our solar system big enough to be round, and consider them as planets - no matter they are around the Sun or around other planets.

There are different types of planets: star planets (planets revolving around a star), moon planets (planets revolving around another planet, free planets (free floating planets in space).

There are some problems even with these definitions:

The moon planet definition:
Our Moon floats around Earth. It's a system of two planets, one bigger than the other. But, as the Moon floats around Earth, it drags our planet in a smaller circle. Had the Moon been bigger, it would had dragged Earth around it. Sometimes in the near future we'll find two planets having roughly the same mass, orbiting around a star and around each other. They are star planets or moon planets?

The star planet definition:
Where is our solar system boundary? We could consider than any planet or asteroid that floats around our star is a part of our solar system. Gravity is a force that bounds bodies that has mass, and weakens by distance. But it never dissapear. It might be not so obvious, but you and I are bound to our galactic black-hole, Andromeda Galaxy and quasars billions of light years distance from us.
That's why, there could be bodies out there, one or two light years from our Sun, and gravitationaly bound to it. The nearest star system is Alpha Centaury, at 4.5 light years from us. But this system is in a very specific place in the sky. There are other nearby stars, like Sirius etc. Nevertheless, we could find a planet or asteroid perhaps at 10 light years from us, in other parts of the sky, that is more gravitationaly bound to our Sun than to other stars, because our Sun is its nearest star. This planet would make an orbit around our Sun in millions of years and eventually will be captured by another star that passes near-by. So, where is our solar system boundary? One definition marks this place at the point where stellar wind from other stars is stronger than our Sun's own wind. If this is the boundary, then Sedna surely passes out of the boundary at least 95% of its year which is 10.500 terrestrial years (it has a very eccentric orbit, from 6 billion miles to roughly 50 billions miles distance from our Sun )

The free float definition:
Obviously, there are no free float bodies in our Galaxy. All the planets move around stars or around the galactic center which is packed with billions of stars and a huge black-hole.(at the core, there are some 10 millions stars around the black hole, in a s

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the smallest have the basic need of recognition, and without out doubt, i'm sure your grandfather would agree with me on this.

Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto

[Anarke_Incarnate]

What would you call liquid/solid hydrogen? I was not talking about subzero K, but subzero C.

Woop de fucking do!

[Operating Thetan]

Cue conspiracy theories, New Age freaks, Planet X believers and other idiots. Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Amiga Lover]

I want to know what happened to Quoaor or whatever the hell it's name is. wasn't it planet 10 last year?

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Snowspinner]

Yeah, it'll probably cost a lot to reprint all the New Age ancient traditions to include a tenth planet.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[beebware]

It was called Rupert.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[JayBlalock]

It was only something like 1,400 klicks across, if memory serves. So this new find does at least have the distinction of being substantially larger.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[meringuoid]

Cue conspiracy theories, New Age freaks, Planet X believers and other idiots.

What do you mean, 'cue'? GodlikeProductions.com scooped Slashdot on this one, and that place is so kooky that Nancy Lieder gets most of her evidence for Planet X from posts there :-)

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but just think of all the new Christian derivatives that can arise! 10 COMMANDMENTS! 10 PLANETS! COINCIDENCE? I think not.

Please send donations now to my paypal account to start our new church.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it'll probably cost a lot to reprint all the New Age ancient traditions to include a tenth planet.

Ten Planets? You haven't been keeping up with here astrology has been going the last twenty-fove years. I know astrologers who use twenty planets, most of which are imaginary. [ Dutch School of Astrology. Germans School of Astrology. The Planets of Alice Bailey, and related flakes.]

This, of course, ignores the two hundred or so asteroids which new age astrologers use. And don't forget the plethora of comets, meteor showers, deep space objects, and other things that may, or may not exist.

And to be sure that you haven't forgotten anything, there are umpteen "Arabic Parts", Midpoints, Orbs, harmonics, ( or something like that) etc.

In short, roughly 10^8 objects that no self-respecting astrologer would omit, if one believes in the validity of all the books on astrology that have been published.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

Planet X believers

Father Antos chants: You have earned my blessing, return and claim the ring!

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[cybermace5]

Wanna know what will REALLY give the conspiracy theorists, New Age freaks, etc? "Sedna" is "Andes" spelled backwards! Everyone knows the advanced Inca civilization lived in the Andes mountains, and there are more than enough wacky theories about the Incas involving aliens and whatnot. Oooh...why is an Inuit god named after backwards-Andes...are the Inuits actually Inca refugees? They're close the Pole, too, and there are already crazy theories about a hole to the interior of the earth where advanced civilizations live, and the Eskimos are somehow related....

Yeah, can't imagine a worse name, really. Backwards-spelled stuff is pure gold in the conspiracy community.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[S.O.B.]

But then the evolutionists would respond with, "10 planets, ten fingers. Coincidence?"

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Tablizer]

The research is probably funded by the companies that make Solar System mobile kits so that you have to buy an updated mobile. Maybe they should name the new sphere "Microsoft" in honor of that technique :-)

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me your date, place, and time of birth and I'll tell you why you don't believe in astrology :-)

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a matter of fact, I have been reading about Astrology out of curiosity, just to know what is that, and the outer planets like Uranus, Neptune and Pluto do not matter that much because of their long time they take to complete a lap around the sun.

Only in cases of evalutating influences on generations of people and groups, through the decades, it would have some degree of influence, theoretically.

So, it doesn't matter if they "discover" another 30 planets, they will be so far that it will not mess with anything already written.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[SurgeonGeneral]

Cue conspiracy theories, New Age freaks, Planet X believers and other idiots. Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology

Umm, I dont know much about astrology, but clearly you dont know anything at all.

Besides the fact that the influence of the planets is considered largely independant of one another, astrology was completely fucked up long before this event, when the president of the World Astrologers Association (or whatever its called) wrote a paper saying its all just a load of hocus-pocus crap.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[kcomplex]

Yeah, can't imagine a worse name, really.

Are you kidding? This is great! I can't wait to see the conspiracy theorists pulling their hair out trying to connect the dots.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[John Courtland]

I realize this was in jest, but it's not like it obviates any of that, it just introduces a new variable. The way astrology works is by finding out which "house" each major intra-solar celestial body was in during the exact time of your birth, and using that data to compile a birth chart. Using this chart, by which each house has rules for each planet, you can see what forces are supposedly controlling you and your future. Now, of course that seems like hogwash, and maybe it is, but it is pretty accurate, and it is a lot more complex than "What's your sign?" I haven't done the math but there's probably over a thousand different outcomes. This just adds a few more I suppose, and the rules that this new "planet" governs will probably have to be figured out.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Snowspinner]

I was actually being more snide to various Kabbalistic types who correspond some of their points on the kabbalistic tree with planets. Of course, they'd already had trouble with Pluto, because they really wanted the moon in there too. /sigh

Silly rabbits.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Jesus 2.0]

The way astrology works is ... not at all?

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[ImTwoSlick]

Backwards-spelled stuff is pure gold in the conspiracy community.

Ok... Let's just call the planet Bob, and be done with it.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[tfreport]

More likely the Incas are Inuit refugees. Or descendents from the same people that spread out after coming across the Bering Straits a long time ago.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[dj245]

And a small handful of elementary school astrology information poster publishers rejoice.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[John Courtland]

Gotcha. Yeah, I don't buy into the tree of life matching with planets. Doesn't make sense.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[benja]

You got that soo backwards. It's like saying that it costs a lot to make all the CDs to update Windows to the next less secure version. Think of it, a new planet, that's new astrology, let's say a new force permeating our astral bodies, hey, maybe we can discover a new chakra too? The open-minded new-ageist just must buy these new books about how Sedna can solve our problems at work and bring salvations to our overloaded lives. Hey, maybe there's a market for Innuit religion books, too? I can see the $$$ pouring in already! *rubs hands*

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[osgeek]

Now, of course that seems like hogwash, and maybe it is, but it is pretty accurate

Bullshit. If it's accurate, then you could come up with a test to prove it. You could take astrological predictions for an individual based upon his house and compare them with random predictions. These could then be compared for statistical validity, proving once and for all that astrology is accurate.

Wow, if only someone would take the time to perform tests like these. Maybe someone could even make a contest to offer money to anyone who could prove a fantastic claim like "astrology is accurate".

Get it through your skull. It's PROVEN TO BE bullshit. It's always been bullshit, and it will always be bullshit. I've had close dealings with astrologists. I know how some of what they say can seem to be more than just coincidence, but that's all it is -- coincidence and psychology. It's got nothing to do with anyone's "house" or "fate". It's all just bullshit. Don't be a sucker.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology

Actually no, not at all. Modern astrology sometimes works only with the seven classic planets (Sun and Moon are regarded as planets in astrology systems), but it sometimes works with Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and also Chiron, Vesta, Juno, Pallas Athena, and another whose name escapes me at the moment. Astrology will have no difficulty assimilating this new body.

Astrological research has gone into a vibrant and interesting phase starting about 15 years ago. Computer tools are opening up whole new ways of studying things, and leading to insights in how transits relate to natal aspect patterns like grand trines and yods.

So astrology is growing in a healthy way, despite the continued bias of stupidass people who mistake their belief system for scientific enquiry.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Trolling4Dollars]

But, but, but... I know it's accurate cause I can always tell what sign someone is before they tell me.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[MagicDude]

It's only spelled backwards in English. If you can come up with a relationship between their native representations, then you'll have soemthing. If there is a reason for the coincidences between those two names, it'll likely be because of an intentional change by the conquering spaniards to break the sprits of the Incans.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[WeblionX]

Well, the new planet is small...

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the spaniards would have used spanish, not english?

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought one of the precepts of the scientific method is that you can never positively prove a negative.

i.e. that science can't say "God doesn't exist" or "Astrology is false"

At the very least, the huge amount of energy that's used in planetary physics (gravity and e/m both) would have some sort of butterfly effect on every aspect of our world.

One could say Astrology isn't the problem in itself, it's just that it's not nearly as preditable as Ms. Cleo thinks it is.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Snowspinner]

In mild defense of astrology, someone like Randi who actively seeks to debunk astrology and the supernatural is probably not terribly invested in designing a fair test. I mean, let's face it - his goal is not to determine whether or not astrology is accurate - his goal is to repeatedly show it is not.

Which is not good science - it's not objective. Which is where a lot of the science/religion conflict comes up. Each side really wants to disprove the other side.

In the end, they're equally based on unprovable assumptions. (Go ahead - prove that the world as you observe it corresponds to objective reality.)

The best that can be said is that, given a set of premises that contradict the premises of astrology, astrology is false.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[kubrick]

You haven't been keeping up with here astrology has been going the last twenty-fove years. I know astrologers who use twenty planets, most of which are imaginary.

As far as I am concerned, astrology using twenty planets is no less scientific than astrology using nine (or ten) planets.

Of course, it's no *more* scientific either.

Zero equals zero, after all (except to astrologers, I guess).

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[raodin]

Why don't we just combine the two? 10 fingers, 10 commandments.. coincidence? (probably not..)

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[stwrtpj]

Wanna know what will REALLY give the conspiracy theorists, New Age freaks, etc? "Sedna" is "Andes" spelled backwards! Everyone knows the advanced Inca civilization lived in the Andes mountains, and there are more than enough wacky theories about the Incas involving aliens and whatnot. Oooh...why is an Inuit god named after backwards-Andes...are the Inuits actually Inca refugees? They're close the Pole, too, and there are already crazy theories about a hole to the interior of the earth where advanced civilizations live, and the Eskimos are somehow related....

Great, you just went and gave Erich Von Daaniken the plot of his next book.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[salimma]

You just made my friends list. Cool link, like your no-holds-barred attitude.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[stfvon007]

But I have 1010 fingers.... Oh wait your using the decimal system....

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[cpeterso]

Science experiments all start with a hypothesis. So Randi's hypothesis is that psychics are fakes. If his test is unfair or unscientific, then let the "psychics" create a fair, scientific, repeatable test. I didn't think so...

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Snowspinner]

There's a difference between a hypothesis and an ideology. Randi's experiments are more akin to the "studies" by groups on whether or not being raised by gay parents negatively affects children. That is to say, he's not just guessing what the result is beforehand - he's actively fishing for a specific result, and is going to keep going until he proves it.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Doomdark]

10 COMMANDMENTS! 10 PLANETS! COINCIDENCE? I think not.

Hmmh. But that doesn't make any sense... I always thought there were already 1001 known planets and... uhm, never mind.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Penguinshit]

But what about Gor?

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[some guy I know]

Wanna know what will REALLY give the conspiracy theorists, New Age freaks, etc? "Sedna" is "Andes" spelled backwards! Everyone knows the advanced Inca civilization lived in the Andes mountains, and there are more than enough wacky theories about the Incas involving aliens and whatnot.

Yes, and Sedna is inhabited by a race of aliens called the "Acni" ("Inca" spelled backwards), who are easily distinguished by their pock-marked faces.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[quisph]

In mild defense of astrology, someone like Randi who actively seeks to debunk astrology and the supernatural is probably not terribly invested in designing a fair test.

Why not try reading the application before you go any further. Especially this part:

Applicants must state clearly what they claim as their special ability, and test procedures must be agreed upon by both parties before any testing will take place. All tests must be designed in such a way that the results are self-evident, and no judging process is required. We do not design the protocol independently of the applicant, who must provide clear guidelines so that the test may be properly set.

Randi stakes his credibility on a fair test. And every applicant has agreed that his/her test was fair.

Re:Woop de fucking do!

[Anonymous Coward]

that was pretty funny

too bad it was a bit late, you would have scored a 5

How could

[j_sp_r]

nobody has seen it before. This is not very far from earth compared to where Hubble looked latly. I'm far more interested in what's around us then far away (except when there is life there)

Re:How could

[dreamchaser]

Because you have to be looking at the right place at the right time. Do you have any idea how vast a volume of space we're talking about?

Re:How could

[phch]

It's always been hard to see distant planets because they don't emit light. Hubble can see distant galaxies because they contain lots of luminous objects.

Re:How could

[imsabbel]

"FAR" is a very vague thing in space.
Yes, its near, but its small and its cold. So its only to detect if you are looking EXACTLY at it.
A blue giant a million light years away is MUCH easier to spot that that pile of cold rock.

Re:How could

[Anonymous Coward]

At 6 billion km, since the volume of a sphere is V = 4/3 * pi * r^3 = 9 * 10^29 km ^ 3.

Re:How could

[Limburgher]

Not to mention that in the Hubble's field of vision, a local planet would be moving much faster than a star millions of AUs out. Imagine looking through binoculars at your sexy neighbor sunbathing in her (or his) yard. You might not see the gnat flying a foot in front of you, because you're not focusing there, so it would just be a blurry fuzz, possibly ignored by the eye if visible at all.

The binoculars also limit or eliminate local vision while in use, obscuring the approach of your spouse/mother and a disapproving hand. . .:)

Re:How could

[jayhawk88]

How could you not have seen that microbe of dust on the end of your 15th eyelash before? It is not very far from your eyes compared where your eyes have looked lately.

Re:How could

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even worse when I look at your Mom, because my field of vision has to be far out indeed to see her in her entirety.

Re:How could

[Sqwubbsy]

"FAR" is a very vague thing in space.

I hear they're going to adopt the new distance measures 'hither' and 'yonder' so normal folks will have a better understanding, at least in galactic terms, of where things are.

Re:How could

[thomasdelbert]

I'm far more interested in what's around us then far awayWhen Hubble looks at objects that are incredibly distant, it is also looking back at time. When an object is 13 billion light years away, we see it in the state it was in 13 billion years ago, and thus shortly after the big bang. The object in itself may not be interesting but the state of the universe shortly after the big bang is can provide us clues that bring us closer to unifying General Reletivity with the Uncertainty Principle - the Holy Grail of Physics.

Re:How could

[Limburgher]

It's interesting that my Mom is the sexiest neighbor you have. . .

Re:How could

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I mean I thought it was a long way down to the chemists, but thats just peanuts compared to space!

Re:How could

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm far more interested in what's around us then far away (except when there is life there)

Typical Slashdotter. Don't discount the local neighbourhood just because there's life there. Some of it might be friendly.

Re:How could

[M1FCJ]

Hubble is used regularly to observe planets... I can't make any sense of your post. Sorry.

Re:How could

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no. The reason Hubble can see distant galaxies is because they are BRIGHT and HUGE! This dinky little guy is small and does not produce its own light. Kuiper belt objects (which is what this and pluto are, NOT planets) also have a habit of being extremely unreflective of sunlight because they are made up of dirty ice.

Re:How could

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the Hubble used to look for new planets? That is what he is saying. Look too far, look too close. If you are not looking at where it is, you won't see it.

Re:How could

[mog007]

Well mister smarty pants, if space were so big, why is it that we can only see it at night time?

Re:How could

[kirkjobsluder]

There is also the problem that Hubble is the wrong tool for the job of finding planets, asteroids and comets. The way you find an object in orbit around the sun is not by getting lucky and snapping a picture of it, but by observing that an object is moving in relationship to background stars. The way this is done is by obsessively taking photographs of the same bits of sky night after night and hoping that you catch something moving when you compare images taken months apart. This is one of the reasons why comet hunting is an area of astronomy where amateurs can make new discoveries. Consistancy and obsession are more important than resolving power.

Re:How could

[r2vf]

I'll use Pluto for comparison, as others have today. This is what Hubble can discern of Pluto. They had the advantage of knowing where to look and... well the Hubble. Pluto isn't very bright at all. Its a magnitude 14 object (the higher the magnitude, the less bright the object). To give you an idea of just how bright that is (isn't), Sirius, the second brightest star in sky (Good old Sol is a bit brighter from our standpoint), is a magnitude -1.4 object (yes, NEGATIVE) and Polaris, the "North Star," a respectable 1.5. Suffice to say it doesn't stick out. Its reccommended of amateur astronmers seeking to observe Pluto that they tune in on its coordinates over the course of several nights and look for the little dot which seems to move over this time... which is kind of how it was discovered, if I remember correctly.

Now, we're talking about an object that no one knew the location or even the existence of and is about another third of this distance away AND its even smaller. I'm not sure I've conveyed just how improbable it is to pick out this little ball of matter accidently, but its also worth considering that even if it were observed, it might not have be seen for its significance. Uranus, for example, was several times mistaken for a star, until William Herschel got credit for its discovery.

Re:How could

[TrickyRick]

How do they know something is 13 billion light years away?

If you get on your roof and point your telescope at something in town you know how far away it is because
you have been there.

If your point a telescope out in space at a point no onw has been too how do you know it's 13 billion light years away?

Re:How could

[Artifakt]

Is that 15th counting from the left or right?

Re:How could

[Anonymous Coward]

Because galaxies are usually more than a trillion trillion times more luminous than this planet, so we can see even when they're trillions of times farther away they're still as bright in the sky as this object appears to be to us. Plus, there are maybe only a few such objects in our Solar System, whereas there are billions of galaxies distributed across the sky.

Re:How could

[thomasdelbert]

They deduce its distance by how fast it is moving away from us - the universe is expanding at a known rate and the farther something is from us, the faster it is moving away from us. The speed it is moving away can be determined by its red-shift.

- Thomas;

Re:How could

[TrickyRick]

Sounds like a theory based on a theory which doesn't prove anything.

I wonder what is so important....

[dealsites]

I wonder what is so important that NASA is going to wait until Monday. Maybe they will be unveiling something else at the same time?

--
Real-time deal updates

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[AnamanFan]

It's a standard rule of Public Relations. Never announce anything between Friday at 4pm till Monday at 8am.

The reason being that news outlets are not at full capacity during the weekends, so any news announced over the weekend won't get as much coverage. If NASA announced the news today, it will be covered on the Sunday evening news, and never again since that piece of news was already done, even when not many saw it.

You can notice this practice when someone famous dies over a weekend. There will be an immediate announcement saying that the person is missing or very ill or something of the sort, then make the announcement on Monday.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[derrith]

"Well, you know how the premier likes his surprises..." .

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[Tin Foil Hat]

I think it's likely that it's just SOP, that they just want to take the weekend off like everyone else. Besides, if they call the press conference for monday, they are more likely to reach a wider audience.

The real question though, is why are they calling a press conference for something that is not very interesting in itself? I don't think the fact that there is another planet or planetissimal is news to anybody. I mean, that's a no-brainer. Maybe NASA will address directly the question of what is and what is not a planet.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

You're looking at it the wrong way around - this isn't news, it probably won't even register on most people's radar. If it had been a substantial planet, Mars size or larger, then I'd expect NASA to kick up a fuss, but this? It's smaller than the moon, only twice the size of Ceres. Certainly not worth much airtime.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[gnu-generation-one]

"I wonder what is so important that NASA is going to wait until Monday. Maybe they will be unveiling something else at the same time?"

It's the monthly bug-report announcement. "A local root vulnerability has been found in the astrology community. NASA rates it as non-critical"

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[Bearpaw]

It's a standard rule of Public Relations. Never announce anything between Friday at 4pm till Monday at 8am.

Unless, of course, it's something you have to announce for some reason but don't want most people to hear. Then late Friday afternoon is the perfect time to announce it. Politicians do this a lot. It would probably be quite instructive to review Friday late-afternoon press releases from the White House, for the last two or three decades.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[Anonymous Coward]

You just know there's a "Stephen King is dead" troll hard at work somewhere taking that into account.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[Anonymous Coward]

It says decades...

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[dynoman7]

I wonder what is so important that NASA is going to wait until Monday. Maybe they will be unveiling something else at the same time?

Nope. The powerpoint slides were giving them fits all weekend. That is all.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Upon reading your post, I was instantly reminded of the following exchange:

Joe: Hi, Bob. How's it going?

Bob: I DO NOT BEAT MY WIFE!

I think you might have a little bit of subconsious guilt about something there...

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because they are confident that no one will turn to the Internet.

Holy cow, nobody has yet even mentioned 2004-DW as a candidate for Sedna nor posted any links. Here ya go:

story 1
story 2
story 3
website of researcher at CalTech

The diameter (up to 1880 km) of 2004-DW matches pretty nicely with the upper estimate of 2000km of Sedna. These reports find 2004-DW to comparible in size to Quaoar. (Note these stories came out when the data was fresh, better numbers should be handed out Monday.)

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[bmud]

I think you just gave me a topic for my capstone Communication Arts paper. Thanks.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[g1zmo]

On "West Wing" they call it 'taking out the trash'. Dumping all of the worthless stories to the press on Friday afternoon. Occasionaly they use that time to release something that they want to stay under the radar.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[Anonymous Coward]

Try learning the difference between years and decades before you start waxing political.

Re:I wonder what is so important....

[ArekRashan]

Please stop making the Republican party look worse than they are, you crank. If you can't take the time to read what you're responding to, keep your damn mouth shut and your fool ideas to yourself.

Go join the Raelians or something, so you can really let it all hang out.

Paranoid fanatics rarely have anything useful to contribute.

whew!

[odano]

Thank god I am out of elementary school. Memorizing 9 planets was hard enough, but 10! They have got to be kidding.

Re:whew!

[LostCluster]

And what about all those M-V-E-M-J-S-U-N-P mnemonics we learned. Those already had to be retrofitted to become M-V-E-M-J-S-U-P-N, now they need to extend to M-V-E-M-J-S-U-P-N-S.

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah really.

Does anyone remember that lymric of how to remember all the names of them?

Trust me, I'm going somewhere with it. :)

I remember the math one please excuse dear aunt sally.

Re:whew!

[Grave]

It's "please excuse my dear aunt sally". Clearly you don't remember it correctly.

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

My very educated mother just sent us nine pizzas, sucka - Mr. T

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pepper Sauces

Re:whew!

[Crash McBang]

From the Heinlein book 'Have Space Suit, Will Travel':

Mother - Mercury
Very - Venus
Thoughtfully - Terra (Earth)
Made - Mars
A - Asteroids
Jelly - Jupiter
Sandwich - Saturn
Under - Uranus
No - Neptune
Protest - Pluto

I forgot the dollar amounts used in the book (Terra was $1.00 - in AUs). Now we need to dream up an 'S' word to append to it, maybe something like:
Silly - Sedna (or whatever)

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

My Very Energetic Member Just Sprayed Umpteen Pounds of Nourishing Sauce

Re:whew!

[betelgeuse-4]

And remember: The Earth has 2 moons, not one.

Re:whew!

[UndercoverParrothead]

Clearly you don't remember it correctly. Try "Please REMEMBER my dear Aunt Sally."

Re:whew!

[Tablizer]

Thank god I am out of elementary school. Memorizing 9 planets was hard enough, but 10! They have got to be kidding.

I am fine with that as long as they don't include "Quaoar". I would have flunked trying to pronounce and spell it.

Re:whew!

[calibanDNS]

My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizza Slices.

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most
Virgin
Engineers
Masturbate
Jauntily,
Sp aring
Us
Neither
Penisflesh, nor
Sperm

Re:whew!

[Galvatron]

Of course, the beauty of the original mnemonic (My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas) is that it contains a checksum. Nine Pizzas = Nine Planets, so you know that you have the correct number. Since there is no planet name starting with T, there's no way to incorporate "ten" into the new mnemonic.

Re:whew!

[r2vf]

Those already had to be retrofitted to become M-V-E-M-J-S-U-P-N, now they need to extend to M-V-E-M-J-S-U-P-N-S.

Pluto reverted to being the planet farthest from the Sun several years ago. Now it will possibly be M-V-E-M-J-S-U-N-P-S

--

And to continue with the form of other replies on this thread...

My Variably Employed Mother Just Shot Up a Nice Philanthropist Sadly.

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tellus starts with a T. I hereby knight thee "Ignorant Fucktard."

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Many Vaginas Emit Much Juice So U Penetrate Nicer

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is a rxponent?

Re:whew!

[UndercoverParrothead]

It's ROOT. Powers & exponents is redundant.

Re:whew!

[Scrab]

Or for all the non Mr T's out there, My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizza Slices... Perhaps......

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

And a root is just a form of power and exponent. Good thing the P stands for parentheses. And it is excuse.

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch ot 4 Oscar n his heap of aples!!!!111!1 OMG WTF R0FL

Re:whew!

[cubic6]

P for Parenthesis.
E for Exponents
M for Multiplication
D for Division
A for Addition
S for Subtraction

As any quick check of Google for "pemdas" would tell you. Roots are fractional exponents, so they have the exact same priority. Get it right before you attack somebody else.

Re:whew!

[multipartmixed]

My Vax is Excellent, Microsoft Just Sucks. Unix Nerds Post on Slashdot.

Re:whew!

[ElderKorean]

We were taught one that was even related to planets.

My Very Easy Memory Jingle Seems Useful Naming Planets, Still.

Back to grade school for retraining...

[LostCluster]

The order of planets we all learned in 4th grade was out of date already because now Neptune is further away than Pluto. Now, I guess we're going to have to memorize another planent for the next quiz.

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[Professor_Quail]

Actually, they switched back in 1999; Pluto is again further away than Neptune.

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[thomasdelbert]

Correction - Neptune was farther from Pluto from January 21, 1979 to Feb. 11, 1999 but at this time Pluto is farther from the sun than Neptune.

Of course, there's debate as to whether Pluto-Charon is a planet with a moon, or a double planet...

- Thomas;

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[mark-t]

There is a simple way to decide if something is a moon or double planet. Look where the two focal points for the elipses that describe their orbits are.

If both focal points for the orbit are contained within the volume of one body, or if one focal point is contained within the volume of one body and the other focal point outside of both bodies, then the smaller object is a moon of the larger.

If both focal points are outside the volume of both bodies, or if one focal point is within the volume of one body and the other focal point within the other body, then the pair of objects should be considered a double planet.

So Pluto/Charon, following this reasoning, should be considered a double planet.

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[Anonymous Coward]

If both focal points for the orbit are contained within the volume of one body, or if one focal point is contained within the volume of one body and the other focal point outside of both bodies, then the smaller object is a moon of the larger.

If both focal points are outside the volume of both bodies, or if one focal point is within the volume of one body and the other focal point within the other body, then the pair of objects should be considered a double planet.

Yikes, I understood that!

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[NormalVisual]

Or put more simply, if the common center of mass lies within the larger body, than the smaller object is a moon of the larger. This always seemed to me to be a more reasonable and consistent definition than some arbitrary comparison of size.

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[Hao Wu]

What if smaller object weighs more massive like rock or iron, and larger object hugely round but made like a feather pillow or a beach ball?

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[Serious Simon]

if the common center of mass lies within the larger body, than the smaller object is a moon of the larger.

Following this reasoning, Earth and its "moon" are a double planet...

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[jvollmer]

If both focal points for the orbit are contained within the volume of one body, or if one focal point is contained within the volume of one body and the other focal point outside of both bodies, then the smaller object is a moon of the larger.
If both focal points are outside the volume of both bodies, or if one focal point is within the volume of one body and the other focal point within the other body, then the pair of objects should be considered a double planet.

Wouldn't this make the Earth and Moon a double-planet?

If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[ccady]

I call BS.

It is also more accurate to say that the earth and moon together revolve about their common center of mass, rather than saying that the moon revolves about the earth. This common center of mass lies beneath the earth's surface, about 3,000 mi (4800 km) from the earth's center.

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[Serious Simon]

Right...

I always assumed that the big distance between earth and moon would easily put the common center of mass out in space. But I did not realize that the moon's mass is that much smaller (1/81 that of the earth).

One is never too old to learn something new!

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[bcrowell]

Unfortunately you have no clue what you're talking about. There aren't two focal points, just one. They orbit their common center of mass.

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[mark-t]

Au contraire...

All cellestial bodies orbit their parent body in an eliptical orbit, not a circular one, and an ellipse has two focal points.

You are correct, however, that when looking at the the orbit of just one single object around one single other, particularly when their masses are very divergent, you can always ignore the focal point that is furthest from the heavier body.

However, when examining how multiple bodies affect _eachother_, it isn't quite as simple (it would be if orbits were circular, but they aren't).

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mercury: presumably a core of iron, exceedingly dense, very small.

Saturn: less density than water: if you had a bathtub big enough to fit Saturn in, it'd float. (Well, it'd probably dissolve first, but we won't get too nitpicky yet)

They're both planets.

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, Jupiter isn't a planet either - They're a double-star system. The center of mass of the Sun-Jupiter orbit is outside the photosphere.

Re:Back to grade school for retraining...

[mark-t]

Hrmm.... You are right.

Okay... here's a possible solution, compute both body's motions around their "center of mass" and plot the orbits. If the orbits do not intersect, then the smaller body orbits the larger. Again... following this premise, Pluto/Charon would be a double planet.

So... does that work?

Alf

[TheGreatAvatar]

was right after all!

Re:Alf

[Lord Kano]

We just discovered Alvin, how much longer until we find Dave?

LK

Nibiru!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Planet X! It coming to Earth to cause a pole shift and kill most of us. I heard it on Coast to Coast, so it must be true.

Re:Nibiru!!!

[sonhouse]

actually if you look close you see that sedna is actully Andes spell backwards. Therefore since they know it spells doom, maybe thats where it is calculated to impact:)

Re:Nibiru!!!

[Tongo]

It also tells us when. The winter solstice in 2012 is supposed to be the last day of the great Myan calendar.

What, no more Roman gods?

[YardgnomeUT]

Sedna, an Inuit god? Did they run out of Roman gods? I thought they had a good thing going there. Why mess with a good thing?

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[JeffTL]

I believe it's called "patronizing faux multiculturalism" -- if a Roman name for it becomes available, count on me to use it as much as possible.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[kaltkalt]

The whole naming scheme reeked of anti-non-Roman discrimination.

As a side note, doesn't "Sedna" sound like a nice name for a small, cheap car? Honda Sedna, Ford Sedna... or somethin' like that.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, since they're inuit, shouldn't we name the planet after their only true god, Lysol?

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually if you noticed, its Andes spelled backwards, maybe thats where they know it will hit-:)

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[JayBlalock]

Actually, yes. Thanks to them assigning minor moons the names of deities, they've pretty much run out of Roman gods, Greek alternates, and have even put a pretty good dent in the Norse pantheon.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Concerned Onlooker]

I don't care about the Roman gods much, but I am puzzled as to why they would pick a goddess of the sea when it doesn't seem likely that the new planet holds much water. Perhaps we should name the new planet Earth and rename our own rock Sedna?

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Jonathan]

Not only is Sedna not Roman, but we already have a planet named after a sea god -- Neptune. If they want to name a planet after an Inuit god, why not use one that isn't redundant?

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Concerned Onlooker]

So, you'll be patronizing "faux Roman culturalism" then?

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[JeffTL]

No, rather the multimillenial tradition of our standard, systematic way of naming planetary bodies within our solar system.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[meringuoid]

The hypothetical tenth planet already has a name, assigned to it by common consensus of SF authors. It's Persephone, the bride of Pluto.

That said, my classical mythology is rusty: I think Persephone was the Roman one, daughter of Ceres, and Proserpina was the Greek one, daughter of Demeter - but I might be wrong. Time to inquire of the Overmind we call Google, methinks...

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[pajamacore]

They might have chosen the name Sedna because the object is in the Kuiper Belt. If I recall correctly, the naming convention for Kuiper Belt Objects is that of creation deities. Sedna is the most important deity to the Inuit and plays a vital role in one creation tale, what with her parents chopping off her fingers and those fingers turning into various aquatic animals.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[eztcld]

Erm..wrong.
Plenty of minor greek deities left and
plenty of lesser known roman hand me down
divines of other than greek derivation.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[M. Baranczak]

Go ahead and bitch if you want - just be glad they didn't get into the Aztec gods (yet). Can you imagine a newscaster trying to pronounce Itzpzpalotl or Huitzilopochtli?

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[polemistes]

Well, they have already used gods from both the Greek and Roman pantheon; the Greek god Uranus was better known as Coelus among Romans, as far as I know. So widening the culture span further should really not be a problem, I think.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[AlecC]

Relying purely on fiction (Kipling, IIRC), being an Inuit Goddess, Sedna was a goddess of the frozen sea.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[M1FCJ]

I feel insulted. I'm an atheist and I don't like these stupid god names polluting skies. What's the matter with these people? Can't humanity grow out of its infantile and get rid of this gods&belief nonsense?

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Aerion]

I am puzzled as to why they would pick a goddess of the sea when it doesn't seem likely that the new planet holds much water.

The name was probably picked less for its association with the sea than for its prominence in Inuit mythology. A relatively big object should receive a relatively important name.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Jesus 2.0]

Why do you think it doesn't seem likely that the new planet holds much water? That is is a "rock"?

As far as I know, the new planet could be water. Hell, comets are mostly water - there are even currently postulated theories that Earth's water actually came mostly from comets.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Joe U]

I think the next god up is Jeff, the god of biscuits.

(With apologies to E.I. for stealing his line.)

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Mad Marlin]

I feel insulted.

Good. That was NASA's plan after all.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Stray7Xi]

You have them reversed. Proserpina is the Roman one.

Proserpina

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Fear the Clam]

why they would pick a goddess of the sea

Because a chicken of the sea would just be silly.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[ChrisMaple]

Pluto has given us a good point for derivation; the tenth planet should be called Goofy.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Turismo86]

Our own rock deserves the "goofy" moniker far more than any other planet. how about the irish Danu, mother of the gods, for that tenth planet.

Re:What, no more Roman gods?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any good Star Blazers fan already knows that the name of the 10th planet is/was Minerva, after the Roman goddess of Widsdom and War.

Well, we humans may not be as wise as we think we are, but it sure took a lot of knowledge and understanding of science to even discover this piece of rock, so I think it's pretty fitting.

Note to NASA: we have a naming standard going on here. Don't screw it up!

for comparison purposes:

[Anonymous Coward]

Pluto is 2300 km diameter, ranges from 4.3 to 7.4 billion km from the sun.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/pluto/stati stics.html

Re:for comparison purposes:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.windows.?????

Probably all made up or a numeric dump of a buffer overflow.

It's a Kuiper object...

[meringuoid]

... and the last I heard was that it was about the size of Charon. I doubt it will ever be recognised as a planet - we already have Quaoar out there and swarms of other little Plutinos.

Whether Pluto is 'really' a planet or just a big Kuiper object seems to be a silly argument. Even if it's not justifiable, we'll call Pluto a planet out of tradition.

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree--I say stop this silly argument about what counts as a planet and what is a planetoid.

Does it really matter if we have 8, 9, or 10 planets or 8 planets and 1 or two planetoids?

I say it's more important to know they're there, what their names are, and let people refer to them as planets, planetoids, Kuiper Belt objects, or whatever they want to call them.

I know there are various arguments that the word "planet" should have a precise definition, and that you can make arguments about Pluto not being one based on things like orbit. But reality is not precise--things don't come in discrete mass sizes.

I say leave the distinction between planet and planetoid fuzzy, and focus on the objects themselves.

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[ookabooka]

Exactly, some yahoo found pluto in the 40's and called it a planet, so even though we know now that it is just a KBO (Kuiper Belt Object) along with millions of others, we call it a planet simply out of tradition, not because it meets the criteria of being a planet (if it did, we would have to memorize millions of planets. . . yeesh!). This new "planet" has not been a planet it the public's eye, people dont have it burned into their heads as a planet, so why add it in? Is it truely another planet that is just way out there, or just another KBO.

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[Gutboy_Barrelhouse]

No. Charon is slightly smaller than Quaoar.

Sedna is over 4 times the size (volume) of Quaoar.

Whether it's a planet is a silly argument, but even so, "we already have Quaoar" is really irrelevant.

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[dg41]

Duane Kuiper?

(obscure)

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether Pluto is 'really' a planet or just a big Kuiper object seems to be a silly argument. Even if it's not justifiable, we'll call Pluto a planet out of tradition.

Lots of other stupid traditions have been fixed. I wish they'd fix this one. You say it's silly to complain, but the best reason to fix pluto is this story itself. Every yahoo wants to call the new KBO they found a planet, so they can say they discovered one.

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's actually a song about that argument.

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[RobertFisher]

The question becomes even more convolved once we move outside the solar system, since we now know of a wide diversity of systems, of which our own solar system is only one particular instance. (And perhaps not even typical at that.) We know that there are objects extending all the way down from massive stars (around 100 Msun) to hydrogen-burning stars like our sun to brown dwarfs to planets. Clearly any definition of a planet must apply not only to our solar system, but also to these extrasolar systems. Some of these systems are much like our own (for instance, they may contain a brown dwarf orbiting a star, or a planet orbiting a star), and some (including a few systems of low enough mass to qualify as a planet) are "free-floaters" -- just sitting out there by themselves in space.

I think ultimately the question is whether there is a single continuous "initial mass function" of isolated objects or not. The best idea as to how stars acquire their initial mass is that turbulence in the interstellar medium, which exists on all scales, establishes a power-law distribution of initial masses. Every once in a while, you get a very strong shock which passes by inside a giant molecular cloud and forces the collapse of a large region which then goes on to form a massive star. But more typically, you form stars more like our sun. And just as rare as massive collapses are very small mass ones which go on to form isolated brown dwarfs and free-floating planets. If this model holds up to be true, then we are all mincing words in our definitions of isolated systems, since they are all manifestations of the same universal formation process.

However, to avoid the difficult question of formation mechanisms, an IAU working group of some of the most respected people in the field established a working definition to define by fiat what it means to be a brown dwarf, and a planet. Extrasolar "planets" are those objects orbiting a star which are beneath the deteurium-burning limit -- regardless of how they are formed. "Brown dwarfs" are defined to be those which burn deuterium but not lithium, and "sub-brown dwarfs" (NOT free-floating planets!) are defined to be those isolated objects which do not burn deuterium. Even the working group itself admitted that this definition was not satisfying to a single member of the group, and so it is likely it will be replaced at a later time with something more physically-motivated. The "planet/planetismal/KBO" distinction was pushed back to our own solar system, since it will be some time before anyone sees anything that small in another system.

Also of interest is the following link, which gives a history of previous claims for additional planetary members of our solar system : SEDS.

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[jdunn14]

things don't come in discrete mass sizes

I've got some friends in quantum mechanics who may differ with you on that one, but that's probably not the scale you're refering to.

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[Anonymous Coward]

DAMN YOU, HERETIC!

Re:It's a Kuiper object...

[Mr_Icon]

for instance, they may contain a brown dwarf orbiting a star

This is what happens when you ask a ranger to toss you, silly dwarf.

trans-neptonian objects..?

[opello]

wasn't there something quite a while back about "trans-neptonian objects" not qualifying as planets, but that the organization that determines such things stated that pluto/charon would get included, but anything else was out?

What happened to the naming convetion?

[Snowspinner]

I thought planets were Roman gods. It's not even like we've run out of them. We can still find Vulcan (Mulciber if you want to avoid rabit Trekkies), Juno, Minerva, Apollo (You can call this one Phoebus if you want to avoid confusing it with space probes), Diana, Vesta.

And that's before you start getting slightly obscure ones like Janus, Bacchus (Or Liber), Fanus, Quirinus, Pomona, or Vertumnus.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[simcop2387]

i for one will refuse to call it sedna, instead i'll be calling it Rupert...

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Snowspinner]

Just to mock my own typos, I'd like to note the absurdity of calling a planet Mulciber instead of Vulcan to avoid "rabit Trekkies"

Though the notion of a horde of rabbits wearing Spock ears and communicators storming NASA with joy demanding a manned mission to Vulcan is going to give me much pleasure as I think about it for a few minutes.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Limburgher]

Janus is already a moon of Saturn, IIRC.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[hobbesmaster]

IANAAP, but Vulcan is already reserved, it was a theoretical planet in the early 20th century that would be closer into the Sun that Mercury's orbit that would account for irregularities in Mercury's orbital path. There was actually no planet and Mercury's behavior is proof of the special theory of relativity (IIRC).

I'd presume that for historical reasons Vulcan would be reserved. Also recall that theres lots of trans pluto pluto sized objects that have names, I forget what the naming mechanism is for them, but I think they're roman.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Sqwubbsy]

Wasn't 'Apollo' considered the sun. Remember, this wasn't just a 'naming convention' but actual mythology. Apollo drove the chariot of the sun across the sky. Mars, the god of war, appeared in certain places at certain times, same with Venus.
Now that Roman mythology isn't really considered religion (outside of Berkeley) it can be a nice tradition. I mean, it's not lik the Inuit have really contributed to Western Culture except for, I guess, hockey and lacrosse.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Hmm

You just gave me the final idea needed to complete the story for a CG animation I've been dreaming about for a year now. Thanks.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[volsung]

The precession of Mercury's orbit is explained by the general theory of relativity, not the special theory. The special theory explains the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

avoid rabit Trekkies

That is RABID, as in foaming at the mouth angry people, much like computer people that argue Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux.

Rabit is too close to rabbit, so that would include a connotation that they multiply rapidly, but any look at a 'Trek convention's attendance would show that they mostly aren't getting any sex, much less children.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[SlashdotLemming]

Usually in Greek/Roman the sun is the god Helios/Sol. Helios is usually the dude in the chariot. Not always though, this stuff is all kinda flaky. Depends on whose make-believe you want to believe.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[geeveees]

"so that would include a connotation that they multiply rapidly, but any look at a 'Trek convention's attendance would show that they mostly aren't getting any sex, much less children."

This comes from a guy who's last name is "DeMaagd" (dutch for "TheVirgin")?

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Andrew Cady]

Uh, duh, apollo is the moon. Hence, the Apollo mission...

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[I don't want to spen]

Vesta has already been used.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[brokenbeaker]

Apollo was actually responsible for giving humans fire... so he's considered to be an engineer/scientist type. (Also rebellious, since he wasn't supposed to give fire to humans..)

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Ralph Yarro]

I thought planets were Roman gods. It's not even like we've run out of them. We can still find Vulcan (Mulciber if you want to avoid rabit Trekkies), Juno, Minerva, Apollo (You can call this one Phoebus if you want to avoid confusing it with space probes), Diana, Vesta.

I'm not sure about those ones, but I believe that "Caligula" is still available.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Snowspinner]

That would be Prometheus, but thank you for playing.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Snowspinner]

Sol is the sun, which is being pulled via chariot by Apollo, who is the God of the sun. (As distinct from the God that is the sun.) Apollo can also be called the Light god if you want to be technical. But, at that point, you're probably being more technical than the myths themselves.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Mex]

And Odin, the god of Popcorn, and ... As Eddie Izzard says:

"And then the Romans came along with their gods that they had borrowed from the Greeks. They invaded Greece and conquered them and ? and stole all their gods?and renamed them with Roman names. Cause the Roman gods before that were kind of crap, you know ? Jeff, the god of biscuits. And Simon, the god of hairdos. And uh, you know, they had the god of war, the god of thunder, the god of running around and jumping and stuff and uh, ?Oh, let?s get some of those! Thank God they?ve got some gods, cause we have these crap gods, you know??"

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Snowspinner]

No, Apollo is the God of the sun. Which is distinct from the sun itself. Diana would be the moon.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[tokul]

I thought planets were Roman gods. It's not even like we've run out of them.

run internet search for "asteroid" and names, that you are suggesting.

Vesta, Juno, Diana are asteroids.

list of some gods

P.S. There is bunch of satelites too.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[cnoocy]

I know people who worship Roman gods, and I don't live in Berkeley or even California. Maybe you should get out more. :)

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[SlashdotLemming]

Sol is the sun, which is being pulled via chariot by Apollo, who is the God of the sun.

Depends on who you ask. 1 2. Different authors often wrote conflicting accounts of the same heroes/gods. It's luck as to which ones win out. It's alot like history ;)

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[bergeron76]

I have a theory...

What if each of the planets are getting sucked into the sun one by one and new ones are formed at the end of the line. They start small, but then they accumulate mass over the millenia.

It's just a hunch, but if true it would mean that we should look for life on Venus before Mars. I think that 3rd planet from the sun is just the position that has the most favorable living conditions.

Long after we're gone, Mars' bacterium will start to develop, ice caps will melt, water and bacterium will merge into primordial ooze, fish will walk on land, evolove, and people will flourish again.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[STrinity]

What if each of the planets are getting sucked into the sun one by one and new ones are formed at the end of the line. They start small, but then they accumulate mass over the millenia.

No, no, that's only true of Venus, which was belched out of Jupiter several thousand years ago.

Jebus, doesn't anyone read Velikovsky anymore?

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[PBPanther]

If I remember correctly it is Minerva that was intended to be the next planet. It might be astrologers that have spoken about this. They need 12 bodies (sun, moon and 10 planets excluding earth) to match the 12 star signs.

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[corngrower]

Probably mostly Baccus -- The god of alcaholic drink .

Re:What happened to the naming convetion?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck is this not a troll?

Mod -1 fucking stupid. And to think someone with such a low UID would do something as egregious.

Lets get this over with...

[Den_onda_kotten]

I for one welcome our new Sedna overlord.

In Soviet Russia, Sedna discovers you!
1) Discover Planet
2) ????
3) Profit!

Etc, etc, etc...

Re:Lets get this over with...

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU STOLE MY THUNDER! curse you...

Re:Lets get this over with...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine too, damnit.

Re:Lets get this over with...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the former Sovi ... acckk ... ackkk ...sssttttooopppp cchhhoookkkiinng mmmmeeee ackkk ...

Re:Lets get this over with...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagina a Beowulf cluster of Sedna's...

10 is good

[kaltkalt]

Ten is a nice, round, pretty, happy number. Yay for ten.

Re:10 is good

[and by]

What about those of us who prefer base 9? You're messing up our already perfect "10." =)

Didn't Pluto just get demoted?

[mikewas]

Isn't Pluto being called a planetoid or planetisimal now? So this newest find may planet number 9, or number 10, or maybe we won't count it at all?

Re:Didn't Pluto just get demoted?

[Llywelyn]

Some people get way too hung up on semantics.

Some people are refusing to call Pluto a planet, saying that they stop at Neptune, and are using other terms to describe it. Frankly the entire argument is worthless.

Re:Didn't Pluto just get demoted?

[benna]

exactly, who cares if its called a "planet" or not. It is what it is no matter what we call it. We humans are way to fond of using symbols to describe things.

I claim it

[AbstracTus]

Please email resident applications to me.

Re:I claim it

[kaltkalt]

Yea, well, I copyright and patent it. I win.

And if you think you can't copyright or patent a planet billions of miles away... you haven't been reading slashdot enough lately.

Re:I claim it

[thomasdelbert]

Please email resident applications to me.

Give me a reason I would actually want to live there and I might consider it.

Re:I claim it

[s20451]

You can only call interplanetary dibs if you can see the planet as you call it. Just like calling shotgun.

Re:I claim it

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a flag?

We don't need a bloody flag. This is our planet, you bastards!

No flag, no planet, you can't have one. That's the rules... that I've just made up.

Re:I claim it

[Anonymous Coward]

Which I will now back up with this lovely riffle >, that I got from the National Riffle > association.

Re:I claim it

[JimE G]

Yes, but I think you miss one of the finer points of interstellar law. If someone else calls blitz and then can get there first, then they get it. Unless the astronomer called no blitz when he saw it. But I see no evidence of that. Let the new space race begin!

They

[chadseld]

They should call it rupert.

Re:They

[Anonymous Coward]

I Hear it has 42 moons.

Re:They

[Anonymous Coward]

no offense, but i wish there were a mod option "-1 Stupid"

Re:They

[eupheric]

no offense, but i wish there was a mod option "-1, hasn't read Mostly Harmless"

There could be a lot of stuff out there

[mbone]

Out in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud there are thought to be as many as one trillion objects - most small 1 to 10 km chucks of ice.

The really interesting question is, what is the mass distribution ? (I.e., how does the number of objects scale with their mass ?) This is basically unconstrained by real data. All such cosmic mass distributions are steep, but many (for example, planets in the Solar System, Asteroids in the Asteroid belt) are dominated by the most massive bodies.

If this holds true in the Oort cloud, in particular, there could be some pretty big objects. Even a Jupiter sized object might be able to hide from the Infrared surveys (the best way of detecting such an object).

Re:There could be a lot of stuff out there

[mikerich]

If this holds true in the Oort cloud, in particular, there could be some pretty big objects. Even a Jupiter sized object might be able to hide from the Infrared surveys (the best way of detecting such an object).

Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto performed an exhaustive search for Planet X for several decades. From his results he concluded that there were no undiscovered Jupiter-sized bodies within 470AU of the Sun, and no Neptune-sized objects with 210AU. (Pluto is never more than 50AU from the Sun).

The Oort Cloud is believed to have been populated by planetismals thrown out of the early inner part of the Solar System by the formation of Uranus and Neptune. They would have slungshot smaller bodies into the outer darkness into orbits that match the hypothetical orbits in the Oort Cloud. They would not have been able to shunt anything larger out that far - at least not without disrupting their own formation.

A further problem is that planet formation models run into trouble this far out. Distances between the planetismals that made up the proto-planets would have been so great, and relative velocities so small that its hard to see how they would ever have collided to built up a bigger planet.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:There could be a lot of stuff out there

[juanillodgn]

A Jupiter-sized object would hide from the Infrared, but its gravity, surely would not.

Re:There could be a lot of stuff out there

[jsebrech]

And how would you go about detecting gravity? Last I heard we still hadn't even observed gravitons in controlled circumstances, let alone out in the wild.

Re:There could be a lot of stuff out there

[catfry]

You would try to observe the gavitational effects of your theorized planet on visible objects. Just like astronomers have done for hundreds of years with non visible planets/heavenly bodies.

Re:There could be a lot of stuff out there

[juanillodgn]

Because of its influence over other bodies orbits.

Remember that Pluto was discovered, because some anomalies were detected in Uranus and Neptune's orbit. I think the official discovery was made once they had some photographs of a moving body over the starfield.

Gravitational influence made W. Clyde Tombaugh aim his camera towards the right direction. He already knew where to search.

It such a small planet like pluto can modify in a measurable way, the orbits of two giant planets, just imagine what a Jupiter-sized planet could do.

Re:There could be a lot of stuff out there

[Anonymous Coward]

*bzzt* Sorry, thanks for playing though.

Pluto was discovered by looking where the anomalies pointed, but it turned out that Pluto doesn't have nearly enough mass to have affected the outer planets.

Pluto was, basically, an accidental discovery. The orbital deviations were actually just our lack of knowledge of orbital mechanics of the time. Pluto's a happy coincidence, not the reason for the deviations.

Needs a better name!

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the tradition of naming planets after Roman gods and goddesses? The Inuit god of the Sea? I realize the planet is probably damn cold, being as far away from the Sun as it is, but can we keep with tradition?

I suggest the planet Ninnle.

Speculation

[slycer9]

Is that the reason this is so special, is there is something about the composition of this planet that makes it special. IE: Liquid water due to the close proximity of a heat source (not saying that's it...just an example).

I'm anxious to see the conference myself...been a long time since something this interesting has happened!

Re:Speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Where have you BEEN?!?! Rock solid (pun intended) proof of ancient flowing water on mars?!?!

Re:Speculation

[slycer9]

Maybe I phrased it badly. I used the water example specifically BECAUSE of the news from Mars.

(Water = newsworthy)

I just changed it around a bit to mean, 'what if we found LIQUID water there...'

Poor choice of wording on my part I guess.

Basically I just meant that it seems like they're making a big deal out of it because there's SOMETHING extraordinarily newsworthy about it.

We should name it otherwise!

[ampoz]

We should name it rupert... It's been predicted by the HHGTTG

Question is now is there life..

[Business King]

Given that Europa is a ice world, and it might contain life under it's icy floor, we might find life there in a 100 years.

Second, these ice planets could make for good hydrogen fuel source when we finally venture out that far.....

Re:Question is now is there life..

[kaltkalt]

I doubt there will be life here in 100 years.

Re:Question is now is there life..

[Anonymous Coward]

"All these worlds are yours, except Europa.

Attempt no landings there."

--AC Clarke, 2010.

Re:Question is now is there life..

[kaltkalt]

Well, it's the southerners who are most certainly stupid enough to re-elect him. I'd like to think most Yankees will be voting for Kerry. Of course, one must never underestimate the stupidity of American voters. Sadly enough I see 4 more years of this guy.

Re:Question is now is there life..

[mikerich]

Given that Europa is a ice world, and it might contain life under it's icy floor, we might find life there in a 100 years.

Europa is only kept molten by the tidal forces induced in its orbit around of Jupiter. Its internal heat sources from radioactive decay are far too small to keep the interior hot.

So unless we can find one of these bodies in a tidal relationship there is no prospect of finding life.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Yuggoth found--details and photos at 11.

[sudog]

I for one welcome our new Mi-Go masters!

Re:Yuggoth found--details and photos at 11.

[DurendalMac]

Dammit, you beat me to it! Let the Old Ones come!

Re:Yuggoth found--details and photos at 11.

[sudog]

Ia, ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn!

Edna ?

[bushboy]

Whooooo ?

Edna ? - whooo's Edna dear ?

You whot ?
Sedna ?

I'll give er a bit o' planet I will ! Serve her bloody will rite !

The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...does it run Linux??

WTF, /.

[andy55]

Mod this down, but is there no end to the "stories" that are being posted as news here? These days, over half of the main stories are a waste of time to look at. In the last day alone there's a LOTR musical, the hotmail outage, and now this. If stories like these continue to show, "News for Nerds." should be changed to "News for Nerds and people who have too much time on their hands." If it's a slow news day, then so be it! -- let's not post stories just to fill the absence of good stories.

/RANT

Re:WTF, /.

[MasterSLATE]

Aren't nerds people with too much time on their hands? :P

I know I sure am...

Re:WTF, /.

[andy55]

Aren't nerds people with too much time on their hands? :P

I don't think so at all... It's seems more common to see an umimpressive person doing something mindless than a "nerd"/"geek" doing something industrious and/ot enriching. Think about all the crap TV, crap film, spam, ecards, hallmark products, shoe stores, beanie babies, and talk shows--a lot of people are buying.

Re:WTF, /.

[SurgeonGeneral]

He kinda does have a point. News on slashdot should require that you RTFA. If you dont have to RTFA to get a complete understanding of what the newspost is talking about, its not deserving of slashdot. This isnt Newsbites for Nerds.

Now compare this to fark, which gets a bazillion submissions a day and posts just about all of them (if they arent dupes). They sum up the articles in one sentence, and after visiting fark for a few weeks/months, one finds that you should NEVER click through the link because it contains no useful information. Its almost ALWAYS a waste of time to click through on Fark. The news posts there are just little notes about things that happened, and following through the links gets u no extra info.

That is not slashdot.

An article like this is, admittedly, important, but its also something on the front page of EVERY NEWSPAPER WORLDWIDE.

I dont need slashdot to remind me that this happened, UNLESS : the link contains some information that I, as a nerd, will find of greater value than the general public. Simply posting a link concerning the standard newspaper fair, linking to a standard newspaper article is NOT news for nerds and should not be posted.

News for Nerds means News for Smart people, so if the headline of the article tells me all I need to know, then what the hell is it doing on slashdot.

Mod me down just like the parent, but I dont care. I dont want slashdot turning in to fark. Slashdot articles should contain useful information and not just quick notes.

Re:WTF, /.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are looking for kuro5hin.org.

Re:WTF, /.

[Tony Hoyle]

An article like this is, admittedly, important, but its also something on the front page of EVERY NEWSPAPER WORLDWIDE.

What *have* you been smoking...

On the frontpage of every newspaper worldwide we have:

1. The carnage in spain + todays elections
2. The russian elections
3. Suicide bombers in israel (again)

The #1 science story on the bbc news is:

1. Fishing is harming albatross stocks.

Definately what is *not* #1 is

1. Some americans find a rock, call it a planet.

In fact I haven't been able to find *anywhere* that mentions this story except slashdot (confirmed by google news, which lists a single source for this story... slashdot).

Re:WTF, /.

[Anonymous Coward]

But I dont read ANY FUCKING NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD!
I also dont watch TV. I am a NERD, therefore I get my news from SLASHDOT.
I am also in love with astronomy, and greatly welcomed this article. Just because you hate something doesnt mean everyone else does too.
And if you dont like it here, leave. I, for one, think slashdot posts way too few articles, and it wouldnt hurt to have a couple of "normal" news sections along with it.

Re:WTF, /.

[Mikeydude750]

Well...that can be explained by the newspapers only caring about non-scientific(a.k.a politics and entertainment) topics.

Re:WTF, /.

[transient]

Er, I saw it on BBC News before I saw it here. It's the #1 science story. It's right below the defeat of the Spanish government, and next to Putin's victory.

Re:WTF, /.

[OzPixel]

It was on the front page of The Age website this afternoon (afternoon Melbourne time, your time may differ :-) ).

Here it is, assuming the link doesn't change by tomorrow ...

Re:Uranus

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine is.

Closer to home

[Mr. Piddle]

If people continue gaining weight, then there are millions of new objects about to get added to the astrological databases.

Re:Closer to home

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, and they're getting less and less heavenly all the time.

Political Correctness

[schnarff]

I think I can answer all of the people on here who are asking "Why didn't they go with a Roman name?". It's real simple: political correctness. After all, Roman names were given to the planets by a bunch of old, dead white men, and are a vestige of a conquering, warfaring civilization. This new Inuit name represents one of those poor, marginalized, powerless indigenous tribe types. It's like affirmative action for planets.

Personally I think we should have just stuck with the Roman names and kept a consistent system...but then again, I am a middle-class white male. ;-P

Re:Political Correctness

[ruda]

You are an american! What do you know about romans?

Latin power! Hooray!

Re:Political Correctness

[BW_Nuprin]

"Lets not waste a good Roman god on a tiny little asteroid of a planet... Give it one of those, whatcha call 'em? Inuit? Sure, give it one of THOSE names!"

Re:Political Correctness

[Anonymous Coward]

or we ran out of names because we assigned roman names to all the moons as well. i read it further up top ^^^

Re:Political Correctness

[UserGoogol]

As Arthur C. Clarke predicted in "Rendezvous with Rama," we're running low on Roman gods.

Re:Political Correctness

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I thought the Roman and Greek gods probably had an olive complexion. Either way, they were more likely to be wops than WASPs.

Re:Political Correctness

[xigxag]

I think we should have just stuck with the Roman names and kept a consistent system

First of all, what's this talk of consistency? Is there some utility to naming this planet after an old Roman god? It's not like Sedna is any harder to remember than Bacchus or some of the other names that have been floating around this topic. I think it's a good name because it brings forth images of "sediment" and "sedentary," thoughts that go well with a cold, dark planet.

Secondly, what do you mean "we," white man?

Re:Political Correctness

[sql*kitten]

This new Inuit name represents one of those poor, marginalized, powerless indigenous tribe types. It's like affirmative action for planets

Exactly. We use Greek and Roman names because the Greeks and Romans made huge advances in astronomy. Many of their discoveries and theories, even the names of the individual astronomers, are still commonplace 2000 years later! How many cultures - even our own - can/will still be relevant in 2000 years?

I have a copy of "Inuit Scientific Discoveries" on my bookshelf - it's right next to "French Military Victories"...

Re:Political Correctness

[Artifakt]

Right - Like there have been a large number of craters and other non-terrestrial terrain features, asteroids, and such named for deceased SF authors in the recent past, but not a lot named for romance or mystery authors, or "Literary" authors. It's not because the naming bodys all want to be Lit critics, or a blanket assertion that Isaac Asimov was a better writer than James Joyce, it's a tribute to someone who encouraged the ongoing process of discovery.

Re:Political Correctness

[evilviper]

How many cultures - even our own - can/will still be relevant in 2000 years?

In about 4,000 years, there will be archeologists looking at our remains, and saying that the big craters (caused by atomic explosions) were a result of hundreds of millions of slaves, dragging out dirt on a sled.

Traveling to the future would be fun, if one to see what they believe about us when we are a long lost civilization.

Re:Political Correctness

[Anonymous Coward]

You know something, it could be MUCH MUCH worse. It could have been named by the same naming geniuses that gave us the great "Red Spot" (on Jupiter).

Here's a consiracy theory for ya! (might be O.T.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Art Bell & George Noory MUST BE the creators of the tin hat.

I'm surprized they don't plug it like Paul Harvey plugs Bose.

Re:Edna?

[Anonymous Coward]

For a good time EDNA 3444

(it's a nerdy joke, if you don't get it, get off the fucking moderator button)

MOST INSIGHTFUL THING, EVER!

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the laugh.

Sedna?

[Kirth]

Well it might be nice to use a inuit-goddess, but this totally breaks the namespace. You have to use roman gods and godesses exclusively, for Jupiters sake!

We still got plenty left, by the way:
Juno, Apollo, Diana, Cupid, Minerva, Ceres, Proserpine, Vulcan, Bacchus, Vesta, Janus, Maia and Flora. Some of them might not be such a good idea, Ceres, Vulcan and Apollo are already taken in some sense. And Proserpine is the goddess of the Underworld.
--

Re:Sedna?

[0x0d0a]

Diana,

Diana is associated with the Moon already.

I think it'd be great to have a planet called Bacchus, though. :-)

I believe "Proserpine" should be "Prosperpina".

Re:Sedna?

[Kirth]

Yes, and Apollo is associated with the Sun. Leaves us with Prosperpina, Juno, Cupid, Minerva, Vulcan, Bacchus, Maia and Flora. If all fails we'll just take one of them Caesars who declared themselves gods. ;))
--

Re:Sedna?

[mikerich]

We still got plenty left, by the way:

Apollo is a name given to a class of asteroids - besides since he was associated with the Sun, sticking him out in the darkness wouldn't be fair - and Apollo was not a god you wanted to piss off. :)

Apollo is his Greek name, to the Romans he was Phoebus which I think is still free.

Juno, Diana, Cupido, Minerva, Ceres, Bacchus, Vesta and Flora are all asteroids.

Janus is a Moon of Saturn.

Vulcan was reserved for an intra-Mercurian planet postulated in the 19th Century to explain eccentricities in the orbit of Mercury. It does not however exist.

Proserpine and Maia appear to be free though.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Need a patch for Celestia

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like I'll need to download a patch for Celestia, the excellent GPL'ed 3D solar system/galaxy simulator.

Re:Need a patch for Celestia

[core plexus]

Or, you can do it yourself. "One of the best things about Celestia is that it provides ways for you to add many astronomical objects that are not included in Celestia's distribution kit. Once you learn how they work, I'm sure you'll find creating Addons to be a lot of fun. They're a lot of fun to look at, too." I will make some add-ons when I am through exploring.

-cp-

Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets

Re:Need a patch for Celestia

[ewhac]

Found on USENET:

"Sedna" "Sol"
{
Class "asteroid"
Texture "asteroid.jpg"
Radius 1000.0

EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2453200.5
Period 311.82711
SemiMajorAxis 531.6576335
Eccentricity 0.8574338
Inclination 11.93041
AscendingNode 144.49288
ArgOfPericenter 311.82711
MeanAnomaly 357.88147
}

RotationPeriod 300.0

Albedo 0.55
}

Original post

Schwab

Somone's gotta say it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things... Oh yeah I guess that would be the Kuyper Belt.

yow

[Zareste]

Crap, man, *finally* NASA has begun producing some interesting stuff (citing also the confirmation of water on Mars). Just assuming this is all true of course.

Next comes the inevitable slew of the generic unfounded theories.
"_blank_ took three-hundred bazillion trillion years to form, proceeding the quadrillion gazillion-year formation of _blank_ and _blank_ out of dust and and debris and cucumber peelings in order to build into..." and so forth, never explaining anything but randomly throwing out gigantic meaningless numbers to create anything that exists. Then it's our job to believe them, by golly.

Coincidence theory. Gotta love it. Anyway I guess this is still a nice find if it's true.

10th planet is more fun so it is in

[SmallFurryCreature]

Screws up astrology and that can only be a good thing. Lets add one every 2-3 years and watch them squirm.

Anyway something 2000km in diameter is hardly small. Aren't astoroids that could kill earth just a couple of kilometers accross?

Anyway excluding it is sizeist. Can't have that. If you are going to classify keep it simple. Object larger then a rock orbetting the sun and being close to round. I think that is what most people consider a planet.

So welcome sedna.

Re:10th planet is more fun so it is in

[TomHandy]

Hrmm, I agree screwing up astrology is always a good thing. But what if this HELPS them? What if now astrologers defend all their false "predictions" by explaining that it was in fact Sedna's influence that skewed the results?

-Tom

Re:10th planet is more fun so it is in

[Spolster]

How big's a rock?

Re:10th planet is more fun so it is in

[NormalVisual]

Then one simply replies that there is not enough known about the outer solar system to definitively say that astrological predictions carry any pretense of accuracy, since there are possibly all kinds of large objects still lurking out there that could be futzing with things. If Sedna was skewing results, we should see more accurate astrological predictions from here on out, but somehow I don't think the astrologists' batting average will improve significantly.

My personal favorite retort regarding astrology is to note that the obstetrician exerts more gravitational influence on a child at birth than do any of the planets.

Re:10th planet is more fun so it is in

[SamSim]

What right do "most people" have to determine what is and isn't a planet, compared with considerably more knowledgeable astronomers? Someone - someone who knows more about this than I do - needs to name a mass/volume/approximate radius to be used as the planet/nonplanet borderline, then we can start taking names.

Re:10th planet is more fun so it is in

[abonin]

Anyway something 2000km in diameter is hardly small. Aren't astoroids that could kill earth just a couple of kilometers accross?


Yeah! That's 1 242.74238 miles or a whole 9941.93908 furlongs for those of you still using a tribal measurement system :)

(*Comon guys its just a joke. *)

Not a problem yet

[SiliconEntity]

It won't be an issue until they find a Kuiper object that is bigger than Pluto. Then they'll have an awkward situation. Making Pluto a planet when this bigger object isn't one doesn't make sense; nobody wants to add a new planet, because in retrospect it was a mistake to make Pluto a planet, and adding another Kuiper object would just compound it; and removing Pluto from the list of planets offends tradition.

Everyone wants to push this off as long as possible, so if the new object is really smaller than Pluto, they'll breathe a sigh of relief and go on with things as they are.

Re:Not a problem yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Its 2000Km across and orbits the sun

So's your mom!

Re:Not a problem yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're right, but would only add that, if anything, finding a very large Kuiper-Edgeworth Belt object would convince me that that object should be considered a planet and not Pluto.

I'm already bordering on convinced that Pluto should be considered a very large Plutino, not a rocky or gas planet.

But remember that many arguments for declassifying Pluto as a "planet" per se revolve around Pluto's orbital characteristics. What happens when you find an object that's larger than Pluto but has an orbit similar to that of the other planets?

But then again, there's the acceptable argument that all objects orbiting a star that don't burn certain material be classified as a planet.

It's just wierd to think that the scenario you described might actually highlight why Pluto shouldn't be classified as a planet, but the hypothesized object might.

Re:The Ninnle question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only Ninnle.

I wish NASA was better at PR..

[Awptimus Prime]

First off, I was really pissed off at NASA and the media outlets for the scant coverage of the mission results concerning water on mars. All we got was a 4 minute introduction and one panelist into the release and it was back to the CNN/FOX 30 minute cycle of endless Pro-Bush news bits and Iraq coverage. Luckily, I have the NASA TV channel on satellite, so I was able to flip over -- but for the >95% of americans without NASA tv, they missed out on an hour's worth of enlightening details of Mars, straight from scientists and not tabloid writers with no understanding of science.

Now, this release isn't even going to be televised. The only initial outlet is a conference call for reporters only.

I'm ashamed of NASA and I am ashamed of our media coverage of science. When I was a kid, every space shuttle launch was televised. Taking 10-30 minutes of time out of my day to watch the occasional launch helped inspire me to think above the quagmire I was born into, to know there was something greater. Kids today get MTV and 24 hour news spin channels in 30 minute loops.

But hey, at least they get a nice, fast Internet and ~225 national channels of garbage via satellite.

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[0x0d0a]

Dude, *how* can you possibly blame NASA for insufficient coverage?

They put out an entire *channel* of content and have an extensive website with tons of goodies. They have been fighting like mad to get more media coverage to ensure that they get continued funding.

If you want to blame someone, blame our current media sources or people's interests. NASA is the *least* guilty party involved in trying to expose people to information about space.

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[Awptimus Prime]

If you want to blame someone, blame our current media sources or people's interests. NASA is the *least* guilty party involved in trying to expose people to information about space.

So NASA could put the next release on NASA TV instead of just having a conference call with reporters. Like you say, the station is there 24/7. It's fully funded to run programming 24 hours a day, so to broadcast their findings won't cost anything.

Have you watched the NASA channel? When there's not a news release, it's 0 budget programs that appear to have been put together by students at the Hunstville summer camp. Very, very lacking and outdated programming. Then there are those 5-6 hour stretches of being able to see a NASA reporter interviewing other news networks but unable to hear the audio from the other side of the feed. Kind of like pointing your dish to random sattelites and capturing raw feeds. Totally lame, I tell you.

Now, how much do you think it would cost for them to do a Science Guy or Mr Wizard type of show? They could recruit scientists internally and make the audience and participants students from the space academy summer camps. The benefits to education and bringing more science to the masses would out-weigh the associated costs. Especially when you are penetrating households with very young kids. They soak up PBS and educational programming like little sponges. Mind you, if you don't get their attention early, they won't care nearly as much about these things later in life.

My solution: Put me in charge of NASA with the exact same funding it gets now. I'll grab a camcorder and interview employees and scientists, broadcast all the public domain educational media I can find, and work with colleges to get special assignments for students to help run the gig. It won't be Fox News, but it would be better than it is now. :)

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[!Xabbu]

i always just flip over to Discovery and watch it on Daily Planet up here... they almost always report on space missions/finds.. Tis a lot more enjoyable and informative then the sensationalist attitudes of many of our main media outlets.

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[Gldm]

Kids today get MTV and 24 hour news spin channels in 30 minute loops.

Wait, you mean there's a difference between these two? I can't recall the last time I heard any music from MTV.

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[Awptimus Prime]

Yeah. Even MTV2 has sold out. I used to leave my living room's entertainment center tuned to MTV2 when idle, since it was a good source for constant videos. Now, it's just seems to be used for Beavis and Butthead and other mid-90's reruns.

I swear, it feels like a big conspiracy to make people stupider.

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[sivax]

Anybody with an internet connection can watch nasa news briefings at cspan.org. Just that most people don't try to find this stuff, which is sad. Nasa search at CSPAN

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[ratsnapple tea]

I understand the sentiment, and I was a little disappointed too, but how could you really expect CNN and Fox to broadcast the whole hourlong panel? It's not their format to focus on a single thing for more than ten minutes, at least not until it's dark outside. Like other posters have said, all the information is available online for those of us who want more.

On a side note, how exactly is CNN pro-Bush? Especially now that Lou Dobbs, on his sad little jihad against free trade, has become the channel's halfhearted answer to Bill O'Reilly. I hope you didn't mean CNN was anti-Dean, because that's anti-Bush too. Oops, I smell a flamewar coming... seeya!

yours

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[jelle]

"I'll grab a camcorder and interview employees and scientists, broadcast all the public domain educational media I can find, and work with colleges to get special assignments for students to help run the gig."

Good idea, but shouldn't you be constantly calling and emailing NASA scientists, managers and PR-people instead of posting it on /.?

Re:I wish NASA was better at PR..

[TwistedGreen]

Yeah. Even MTV2 has sold out.

Big surprise there.

Insert Obligatory "Rupert" Joke Here...

[johnthorensen]

Now that NASA's press release giving the PHONE NUMBER for "reporters only" to call in and listen to the briefing has been Slashdotted, the same is sure to happen to said phone number.

Too bad, I'd have liked to hear about it from some reputable news sources instead of reading a comment in some tard's blog that says, "I WAS ON TEH PHONE WEN NASAW ANNOUNSED 10th PLANAT! LETS NAME IT RUPART!!!"

:)

-JT

No, this will _revolutionize_ Astrology!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why there have been, like, all these errors, dude!

Stick an extra planet in, with all the like, vibes it will set off and stuff, and you could actually, like, predict stuff really accurately!

Stock tip: buy shares in companies that print astrology materials, they're all being "revised" as we speak...

Re:Uranus

[Anonymous Coward]

Bob? is that you?

Sedna?

[ScrewMaster]

And, no doubt, the inhabitants of this fine, albeit frigid world will be called the Snaidni Sedna.

name change

[Lord Dreamshaper]

I'm all for including other deity names from other cultures, but for the sake of consistency, the new object (planet, comet, asteroid, whatever) should have a Roman name...it's not like there aren't enough objects elsewhere to be culturally sensitive...

Planets and Pigeonhole Brains

[G4from128k]

Why do people get so worked up over silly categories? Because "Man was the animal with the pigeon-hole brain," said my college biology professor.

The idea that there must be some hard cut-off between planets and non-planets seems ludicrious to me (IANAA). Its not unlike the taxonomy debates over species and genera -- artificial categories that don't stand up to the bizzare spectrum of possibilities that are out there. I'm sure when the solar system formed, it formed a wide range of objects of different sizes. The cut-off is just an arbitrary number that lets professors write papers and get tenure.

I will admit that categories are a very useful approximations for the world. Categories help us create knowledge at the Class level that can be inherited by all reputed instances of that category. But its only an approximation as the membership functions are often not binary.

That would be 11th!

[Vo0k]

Quaoar (though some claim it's too small for a planet...)

Alf predicted them both!

Re:That would be 11th!

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I was going to say, "how many '10th planets' do we need?"...

I mean, first it was Charon, then this funny Q-word one, and now Sedna...

At this rate, we're going to end up with as many conflicting "10th planets" as the US government has conflicting federal police agencies...

Kind of interesting, but kind of sad too...

[miketang16]

I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm kind of let down by the fact that our most interesting space story for awhile now is that we MAY have a 10th planet in our solar system. Scientists should stop arguing over what constitutes a planet and instead work on exploring space. There's so much out there, we need a government that's willing to go find it.

Re:Kind of interesting, but kind of sad too...

[smoondog]

I find it kind of sad that you think that the discovery of a chunk of mass (rock, ice or whatever) 2000 km thick rotating around our sun isn't interesting and that you find it sad.

Redundant?

[ScrewMaster]

Remember, this is NASA. "Redundant" is their middle name.

That's really far...

[FrostedWheat]

I've often wondered just how far from the Sun these objects have to get before the Sun is little more than a bright star and the objects are in constant darkness. Would telescopes even be able to detect these dark planets?

I'd imagine it's really dark out where Pluto is, and this new object is much further.

10th Rock from the sun

[myownkidney]

10th Planet discovered for the billionth time

That's how the headline should've read. Once all the initial Euphoria dies down, you will find that this is just Media Sensationalism all over again.

(It could be also an Alexander Lavrynov conspiracy. But that's another story)

Depending on how you define a PLANET, our sun has 8,9,1 million, 1 billion, or possibly 1 trillion planets orbiting it. Now if this 10th planet was at least as big as our moon, then I think we have cause for celebration. But the sad fact of the matter is, it is not. It is just lump of rock orbiting earth.

As for the name, Sedna is Andes in reverse. It's almost as if April 1st is a daily ritual in the media circles.

Re:10th Rock from the sun

[sonhouse]

So now Sedna/Andes is orbiting the Earth? I didn't hear about the slight shift in its presumed orbit:)

Forgot the most obvious one

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Gore discovered Sedna

NASA plans change ?

[TuxGrep]

I vote we should go to Sedna before we go to Mars !

What?

[travdaddy]

Sedna? What happened to the reserved name for the 10th planet, Rupert? We could even pass it off now as being named after America's favorite Survivor!

Umm...Mars?

[0x0d0a]

don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm kind of let down by the fact that our most interesting space story for awhile now is that we MAY have a 10th planet in our solar system.

Umm...what? The past few months have been *spectacularly* exciting from a space point of view. We have two probes that successfully landed on Mars and have found strong evidence that Mars had liquid brine at one point. We have a ton of pictures from the surface to look at, and are expecting tons of findings, papers, and theories based on probe data that's been returned.

And while, yes, the classification may not be interesting, the fact that we discovered a new, sizeable chunk of matter in our solar system is not small stuff either.

Re:Umm...Mars?

[twray]

IDEA! (probably a bad one!)

Let's send a probe, with a booster engine to Sedna. With enough time/fuel/thrust, we could condense it's orbit so that it crashed into Mars! Since Sedna is probably ice and rock (let's get the details first), the ice would be melted by the impact temperatures, thereby increasing the mass of Mars (more earth-like gravity), AND providing it with water. I shall call my idea: TerraForming!

Now, where's that phone number for the galactic pantents office....

PS: See any holes in my theory? Don't critisize ME, fix THEM.

Re:Umm...Mars?

[twray]

The brain-waves keep coming!

Have the booster rocket (see parent) just bring Sedna into orbit around Mars. Then, mine the ice on Sedna and deposit on Mars. No dangerous impact ejecta...Mars gets water (life-sustaining)...and a moon (earth-like tides)

Bullwinkle: This time FOR SURE!
Rocky: Now here's something you'll REALLY like.

sedna: its all in the name

[sonhouse]

So anyone notice that Sedna is Andes spelled backwards? What aren't they telling us?:)

Persephone!

[devphil]

In every science-fiction novel or short story I've ever read involving a tenth planet, the name was Persephone. There's a long-standing convention that will be horked up by NASA if this thing qualifies as a planet.

Fortunately, it probably won't. *whew*

Re:Persephone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Feh. It's a "long standing tradition" among teenaged geeks, physically adult geeks who failed to mature socially into (relatively) "normal" adult geeks, and hack authors who enable such people.

Re:Persephone!

[molafson]

t's a "long standing tradition" among teenaged geeks, physically adult geeks who failed to mature socially into (relatively) "normal" adult geeks, and hack authors who enable such people.

Heh. But don't forget where you are. The is Slashdot, where socially underdeveloped geeks fight to be recognized at the head of the pantheon of geekier-than-thou. I mean, these guys buy LEGO, watch anime, and probably attend furry conventions. Your barbs do not affect them.

Re:Persephone!

[argent]

I don't know about NASA but astronomers have often referred to the potential planet beyond Pluto as Persephone, and the potential planet inside Mercury as Vulcan, almost since Tombaugh discovered Pluto. The only real debate was over which of Charon and/or Persephone would be reserved for the first moon of Pluto, and since Charon got that...

(SF authors don't pick these names from thin air, they actually talk to astronomers on occasion...)

Re:Persephone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Persephone is only one of the more common names given by sci-fi writers. But I prefer one of the following:

Robert Anton Wilson --> Goofy
Douglas Adams --> Rupert

If I remember

[bigattichouse]

There was a formula for predicting orbital paths that was related to Fibbunaci's sequence, I wonder if sedna falls into the sequence?

Boon to NASA

[cgenman]

I see NASA has already found a client in UPN for its ad-supported astrology program. With a little luck and a significant orbit change, they can land the Microsoft account too.

Hey,

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to Nemesis, which was supposed to doom us all?

Astrology = Syncretic Religion

[handy_vandal]

Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology.

Astrology doesn't work that way.

Astrology is syncretic religion -- it readily (and inevitably) incorporates new influences.

Like an amoeba, astrology engulfs everything it touches.

In this sense, astrology is rather like paranoia: everything pertains, everything is part of the Big Picture.

Sedna won't fuck up astrology. On the contrary, astrologers will eagerly seize on the idea of this new planet, treating Sedna as one more vacuole in the amoeba.

-kgj

Non-Roman? Okay, community protest time!

[pla]

Sedna? No. Plenty of people in this thread have complained about two facts - One, our planets have names derived from the Roman, not Inuit, panthon. And two, we already have a planet named after a sea-god, ie, Neptune.

So, I propose that in protest to such a blatant attempt at PC Multiculturalism, we as a community refer to the tenth planet as Nox, the Roman goddess of night. Since it lies the furthest from the sun, that actually fits it, in a descriptive sense.

Sedna... Whatever. Remember, we hear about this stuff months before your typical Fox news junkie, and people tend to respect us as sources of information. So spread the word - We have a new, tenth planet, named Nox. Sedna? Nope, they must have heard wrong. Nox. Nox? Nox!

I think Lectra would be a far better name...

[bpd1069]

for obvious reasons...

Re:I think Lectra would be a far better name...

[Chris Tucker]

Where are my mod points when I really need them!

"Where are we going?"

Re:I think Lectra would be a far better name...

[jelle]

Nah, obviously something like "F150" or "Camry" would sell much better.

Re:I think Lectra would be a far better name...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Lectra would be a far better name... (Score:4)
by bpd1069 (57573) on Sunday March 14, @01:15PM (#8562288)
for obvious reasons...

Starting Score: 1point
Moderation +2
100% Underrated
Karma-Bonus Modifier +1
Total Score: 4

What? All moderation underrated? Does nobody get this joke?

Re:I think Lectra would be a far better name...

[vinlud]

Maybe I'm just stupid but whats the obvious reason? :)

some of those are already taken

[drewness]

Vesta, Janus, and Ceres are all already taken at least. I bet most, if not all, of the rest are too.
Oh, Janus is a moon of Saturn. Ceres is the biggest astroid in the belt, and Vesta is the third largest astroid.

Kuipier Belt

[nartz]

This is probably just another minor planet (asteroid) like the many others in the Kuipier Belt (what pluto was first considered).

on being a planet or something less...

[joebeone]

My former advisor here at UC Berkeley, Gibor Basri, has a neat way of discriminating between planets and the lesser (comets, asteroids, etc.). His idea is that if the object has enough self-gravity to force it into a spherical shape, it's a planet... if it doesn't (like Mars' "moons"), it's something less.

Here's a snipet:

How can this be resolved? A consensus is slowly developing (I believe) for the following solution. We can first define what we mean by "planetary mass", and base this only on physical characteristics. Then we can include circumstance into the definition of "planet". I propose the following three definitions:

FUSOR - an object that achieves core fusion during its lifetime.

PLANEMO - a round non-fusor.

PLANET - a planemo orbiting a fusor.

[...]

read on for his full article.

The following is a draft of an article now published in the Nov/Dec 2003 issue of Mercury. Draft of Mar. 20, 2003.

Defining "Planet" by Gibor Basri Univ. of California, Berkeley

Even before they were civilized, people looked into the sky and recognized different celestial objects. The Sun defined daytime, and the stars provided a fixed background of faint, twinkling lights at night. Among them moved the Moon, and a few special steadier lights. The Greeks called those which moved "planets" (it is worth noting that the Sun and Moon were originally included, since motion against the stars was the defining characteristic). Most cultures have an analogous word for these "wanderers". Both the stars and the planets were thought to revolve around the Earth.

After the Copernican Revolution, we recognize the Moon as the only body that orbits the Earth. The Sun is a very nearby example of a star, and the visible planets are other large bodies that orbit the Sun. We see them by reflected sunlight, while stars produce their own visible light. This understanding yields the dictionary (lay public) definition of the word "planet": a large heavenly body that shines by reflected light and orbits the Sun. In the past century we gained much understanding of our Solar System, and even visited most of the planets robotically. Yet today, professional astronomers find themselves unable to agree upon a succinct definition of "planet". Replacing "the Sun" with "a star" is obviously necessary now that many extrasolar planets have been discovered, but the problem goes well beyond that.

Two recent controversies that found their way to the popular press illustrate further difficulties. One is the "Pluto controversy". This arose because of the discovery of a large belt of icy objects beyond Neptune. They are the outer remains of the original protoplanetary disk. This "Kuiper Belt" is a natural outcome of incomplete planet formation in the outer Solar System, and is the source of some of the comets we see. As Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) were discovered in increasing numbers in the 1990s, including a population of "Plutinos" which share Pluto's orbital characteristics (somewhat different from the other planets), some astronomers began to suggest that Pluto itself (which shares many properties with, but is the largest KBO known so far) does not qualify as a planet. The recent discoveries of Varuna and Quaoar (which are KBOs half the size of Pluto, like its moon Charon) may presage the time when we find another Pluto-sized KBO.

The current situation is much like that in the early 1800s, when the first asteroids were discovered. Ceres was originally hailed as the fifth planet, particularly since one in its position was expected from "Bode's Law" of planetary spacings. It lost its status within a few years, when other members of the asteroid belt began turning up. Herschel, who had been the only person to have discovered a new planet before then, aided the effort to demote Ceres. The arguments against its planeta

Re:on being a planet or something less...

[Flakbait]

My former advisor here at UC Berkeley, Gibor Basri, has a neat way of discriminating between planets and the lesser (comets, asteroids, etc.).

Someone from Berkley coming up with ways to discriminate? Stop the presses, we've got a live one!

In all seriousness, I must say that the classification system he's got there seems pretty much idiot-proof and well thought out. Thanks!

Nancy Lieder and Planet X

[Anonymous Coward]

Nancy Lieder's world view can be found here.

planets and KBO's

[VanillaCoke420]

I'm leaning towards defining Pluto as a KBO, the other eight ones are planets.

That's one hell of a space shuttle

[Jesus 2.0]

From the Australian article:

SCIENTISTS have found a new world orbiting the solar system - more than 3 billion kilometres further away from the Sun than Pluto and 40 years away from Earth in a space shuttle.

Forty years away from Earth in a space shuttle that somehow mysteriously made it away from Earth in the first place?

You might as well say it's 200,000 years away from Earth by unicycle.

Re:That's one hell of a space shuttle

[cranos]

It's a point of reference for the plebs. That's all, nothing more. Logic has nothing to do with it.

Re:That's one hell of a space shuttle

[Tackhead]

> > SCIENTISTS have found a new world orbiting the solar system - more than 3 billion kilometres further away from the Sun than Pluto and 40 years away from Earth in a space shuttle.
>
> Forty years away from Earth in a space shuttle that somehow mysteriously made it away from Earth in the first place?

Gotta hand it to the engineers in old-school NASA, though. Cramming a 2000-mile diameter ball of ice and rock into a space shuttle is a pretty impressive accomplishment. Especially considering they did it five years before the first Moon landing!

What about atmosphere?

[Rick the Red]

What we need is a simple rule: If it orbits a star and has an atmosphere, it's a planet. If not, it's not. I.e., things orbiting other planets are moons, even if they have an atmosphere. Things orbiting a star are asteroids (or whatever) if they don't have an atmosphere, no matter how large they are.

Pluto has an atmosphere, so it's a planet. What about Sedna? Does anyone know, or must we wait until Monday?

Re:What about atmosphere?

[Jesus 2.0]

This proposed definition strikes me as being arbitrary without purpose.

Who cares if a body orbiting a star has an atmosphere or not, when it comes time to decide whether it is a "planet" or an "asteroid"?

And if you do care about that, that is, if it's so incredibly important for something orbiting a star to have an atmosphere or not, then why in the world would you not care about whether something orbiting a "planet" (or, frankly, a "ridiculously humungous asteroid") has an atmosphere or not?

Re:What about atmosphere?

[mog007]

I believe that Mercury does not have an atmosphere due to its proximity. So we're down to 8 planets now?

Re:What about atmosphere?

[beeplet]

The presence/absence of an atmosphere is not as clear-cut as you might think... Both the moon and Mercury have comparably thin atmospheres. Are they both planets or both asteroids? Pluto may currently have an atmosphere, but it may freeze to the surface as the planet moves away from the sun. Will it cease to be a planet?

Re:What about atmosphere?

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP's definition stands up to your lax scrutiny.

The Moon orbits the Earth. Mercury orbits the Sun.

Re:What about atmosphere?

[Rick the Red]

OK, OK, I give up! Let's just call them "rocks."

Re:What about atmosphere?

[jc42]

The presence/absence of an atmosphere is not as clear-cut as you might think... Both the moon and Mercury have comparably thin atmospheres. Are they both planets or both asteroids?

Indeed. One useful way out of this is, as some astronomers have proposed, to divide celestial rocks up somewhat more precisely. First, simply define "planet" to mean something big enough to be a spheroid by self-gravitation, but not shine due to internal fusion (which would make it a star).

Then, divide the planets into three classes, and maybe establish single names for all of them:

1. Airless planets. The trace atmosphere is too thin to have weather that effects the surface significantly. Mercury, Luna, Io, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, etc.

2. Airy planets. The atmosphere is thick enough to have weather that can reshape the planet's surface. Venus, Earth, Mars, Titan, Triton.

3. Gas giants. The atmosphere is most of the bulk. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus.

And admit right up front that there are borderline cases. Pluto and Charon are apparently in class 2 now, but class 1 for most of their orbit. Several asteroids are nearly spheroids, but with visible defects. We don't know about this new planet.

As many atronomers have observed, both Earth/Luna and Pluto/Charon are double planets, sharing an orbit.

The term "moon" is something rather different, meaning a body in orbit around another that isn't a star. So the four planets orbiting Jupiter are also moons. Saturn and Neptune both have a single planetary moon. However, as someone else has observed, Earth doesn't really have a moon. Luna is more accurately described as orbiting the sun in the same orbit as Earth.

Of course, until astronomers publish an official set of definitions, where "official" means ratified by a major astronomical society, all of this is just an interesting discussion that can't possibly be settled. You don't decide technical nomenclature issues by asking the media or the general public what they think. If you do, you get things like astrology and creationism (and computer science ;-) defined as science.

Re:What about atmosphere?

[Artifakt]

"However, as someone else has observed, Earth doesn't really have a moon. Luna is more accurately described as orbiting the sun in the same orbit as Earth."

I bet you don't want to count Cruthne either, (probably for roughly similar reasons). Some people are just picky:
Near-Earth Asteroid 3753 Cruithne

http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~wiegert/3753/3753.h tm l

Re:What about atmosphere?

[Swarfega]

Of course, until astronomers publish an official set of definitions, where "official" means ratified by a major astronomical society

Actually, "official" means ratified by the International Astronomical Union

Re:What about atmosphere?

[Conch]

Actually the rule for being a moon is that the common centre of gravity for the moon and the planet must be inside the plane, otherwise it is a bi-planetary system. The earth and the moon is in astronomical terms actually a bi-planetary system.

Re:What about atmosphere?

[dillon_rinker]

Astronomical science can be neatly divided into two categories:

1. Physics (developing mathematical models of physical phenomena)
2. Stamp collecting (categorizing physical objects)

The stamp collectors are nice people, but the physicists do the heavy lifting in the field. Quite frankly, I don't care WHAT you call Pluto. It is more accurately described by measurements of its physical characteristics.

Re:What about atmosphere?

[jc42]

Actually, "official" means ratified by the International Astronomical Union

Yes; of course. However, as with most scientific terminology, ratification by the IAU does tend to be a formality after it has been hashed out by the appropriate scentists in discussions (private and online), committees, and publications. This most happens when there are technical reasons to standardize the classification. Right now, there may not be such technical reasons. In the real universe, there aren't actually distinct things that correspond to terms like "asteroid", "planet", "star", etc. There is a continuous spectrum of objects with no natural boundaries. Such terms are only rough approximations, and to be specific, you give a longer description that includes the specifics.

Also, for example, Luna and Io are about the same size and shape, but they are radically different kinds of planets in many ways. Similarly with Venus and Earth (and you might want to add Titan to this set). So the term "planet" isn't technically very useful.

It's probably just as likely that the IAU will never decree technical definitions of such terms, on the grounds that there's no need. They are fuzzy terms mostly for public and media usage; in tech circles they are little more than slang. It may just stay that way indefinitely.

Another possibility is that astronomers could decide on some strict definitions, but the public and media wouldn't notice. There is much precedent for this. Thus, several decades ago biologists pretty much decided the answer to the century-old "Are birds dinosaurs?" question, and the International Zoological Conference officially reclassified the Aves as a suborder of the Dinosauria. But we still hear talk of, for example, the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Ornithologists tend to smile when they hear this. "What do you mean? Dinosaurs aren't extinct. There are around 8000 species alive today. There's one outside the window sitting on that branch right now." But it doesn't matter much. The media and the public can change their terminology if and when they like; in the meantime, we know the technical meaning of the terms.

(Similarly, the computer industry still uses "hacker" in its technical sense, despite the media's redefinition of the term to imply criminal activity. )

(And people who speak Arabic stubbornly continue to use "jihad" in its everyday Arabic sense, despite the repeated mistranslation in the English-speaking world as "holy war". )

(And the really bizarre one: Geologists are constantly bemused by the media's insistence that a magnitude 5.7 earthquake be reported as "5.7 on the Richter Scale". That scale was replaced by the moment-magnitude scale decades ago, and nobody but the meda uses the Richter scale now. But what can ya do? ;-)

Re:What about atmosphere?

[jafac]

By that logic, comets are planets.
And Pluto has an atmosphere today, but in a few more years, it's orbit takes it farther away from the sun, and that atmosphere will condense.

I think the best solution is to consider "Planet" to be an imprecise, layman's term. And use the term "object" when referring to "objects".

Frankly, "planet" shouldn't even include Uranus and Neptune - because they weren't included with the set of objects in the night sky that astronomers (and astrologers) referred to as "planets" for many, many centuries. If you're going to be pedantic about it - then that's the benchmark I'd use.

Next up, American Goddesses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just an idea...

Stick this up Uranus

[Phidoux]

I was born with Sedna in my Scorpio so stick that up Uranus.

planet spacing

[drewness]

I don't know if Sedna does or not, but remember that the formula doesn't alway work. Jupiter's gravity fouled it up between Mars and itself, and where there should be a planet we have the astroid belt. And the astroid belt has gaps at points where there would be certain resonances with Jupiter's orbit. But at how far out Sedna is there probably aren't many gravity effects like that. It's pretty much a plutino or Kuiper belt object.

There are Mnemonic considerations you know...

[Joey7F]

Now what the hell is My Very Educated Mother going to Serve us?

I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say "aww... boo"

--Joey

Re:There are Mnemonic considerations you know...

[Anonymous Coward]

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickle Sandwiches.

Re:There are Mnemonic considerations you know...

[Chris Tucker]

It's obvious.

Pizza and Soda.

Do no be fooled!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Death Star! And it's headed right for us!

Planet is not a useful category.

[AlecC]

The concept of Planets should no longer be regarded as a formal (as opposed to colloquial) classification. We have four rocky inners, four gassy outers, and a vast number of planetismals. Forming a group of the first two classes, with or without a few of the last, is a false classification.

Re:Planet is not a useful category.

[stwrtpj]

We have four rocky inners, four gassy outers, and a vast number of planetismals.

Jupiter: More beans, Mr. Saturn?

Saturn (waving its rings in Jupiter's direction): I'd say you had enough!

Picture of new planet:

[big_groo]

Here----> .

Re:Picture of new planet:

[Anonymous Coward]

.
Green's a color.

Re:Picture of new planet:

[MoeBot]

Could this thing be 2004 DW (it's a recent discovery by Mike Brown, the Caltech guy mentioned in the article)? If so, you can find a real picture here.

At the time that page was typed up, they weren't thinking of it as a planet.

The passcode is "objects"

[Sitnaltax]

...So this is Security by Hoping Readers Don't Read The Whole Page. Could be the next big thing!

Inuit Contributions

[Vagary]

Hockey was invented somewhere in Europe or European North America in the 19th century. Lacrosse was invented by Indians near the St. Lawrence and is played on grass rather than snow, so I doubt the Inuit were involved.

Inuit inventions include snowshoes, toboggans, dogsleds, kayaks, toggle harpoons, and various other tools for hunting and travelling in the North as well as snow and ice civil engineering techniques. Pretty impressive, I'd say, for a culture with almost no wood, rock, or metal. They've probably contributed as much as any other non-Eurasian colonialised culture, and they make some really cool art.

Sedna????

[Unknown Poltroon]

I claim the planet ERIS for all discordia!!! I am off now to meet with its ambassador Fnord.

Re:Sedna????

[TwistedGreen]

This tenth planet is UNDENIABLE PROOF of the Law of Fives! 10/2=5! Praise Eris!

-><-

who's to say...

[ShadowRage]

who's to say what's a planet and what's not a planet?

we still dont know a lot about space and how it came to be, most of it is guesstimates and theories.. not stone cold facts...

come on, we call two asteroids that are orbiting mars that are slowly coming closer every year moons... I say, anything that is spherical and retains a good chunk of gravity (enough to attract things to it to some good extent, at least could hold down a ship, probe or human) is a planet..

"Rupert"

[quantaq]

I say in honour of Douglas Adams, and someone's parrot, we name it Rupert. At the very least, let's subtitle it that. Kinda like Titan A.E.'s "Bob."

Obligatory Buckaroo Banzai Quotes

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are we going? PLANET TEN!

When are we going? REAL SOON!

John Emdall must die.
Lord Whorfin must live.

It's not my damn planet, understand monkeyboy?

HOWTO: Decide if it is a planet...

[jd]

1. If it looks like a planet, and quacks like a planet, you've been drinking too hard.
   
2. If it is in an elliptic orbit, within the limits found for other planets, in terms of:
   
   • The extent of ellipse
     
   • how close to the "axis" of the solar system it travels
     
   • The direction it is travelling in
     
   
   

THEN it is very clearly a planet, and the objectors should shut up and edit the school teext books.

This will be handy for sysadmins...

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

This will be handy for those short-sighted sysadmin types that name their servers after finite sets like planets.

Now they'll be able to buy up to 10 servers before re-thinking their naming strategy.

Re:This will be handy for sysadmins...

[RaymondRuptime]

You were, of course, teasing--and fairly so. I just thought I'd mention that we've found it occasionally necessary to remember approximately when a server was purchased; and a handy way to do that is to use a finite set of names related to the number in purchase (or, at least, to only pick that number from the set).

So, for example, a set of 4 servers purchased at the same time, from the same source, in order to explore a new model of Suns were named after the first 4 American space explorers: ride, resnick, sullivan, and lucid.

fine print

[klaricmn]

NASA releases also are available via CompuServe using the command GO NASA.

This just seems about a decade old

You want a worse name?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Nibiru? That would really energize the new-age nutcases...

So where is heaven?

[Sophrosyne]

So where the does that put heaven? we keep finding these stupid planets- and keep pushing heaven back.... think of all the logistical issues involved with getting souls.
Sorry im in a trollish mood. :)
Praise be to be Jeebus

Re:So where is heaven?

[SHEENmaster]

Jesus said, "If those who lead you (plur.) say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in heaven,' then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. But the kingdom is inside of you. And it is outside of you...."

If NASA says the kingdom is in outer space, then the space aliens will precede us.

Re:So where is heaven?

[RaymondRuptime]

And if you're scoring at home today, that citation came to you from the gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

And don't worry about the space aliens getting there first: our High Epopt, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, is already in contact with the space bankers, as was foretold.

Yeah, but

[niom]

what isn't pure gold to the conspiracy community?

Re:Yeah, but

[daniel23]

easy: pure gold.

Re:Yeah, but

[niom]

Or rather, what The Man would like you to believe it is "pure gold" ;-).

Rote Nonsense

[fm6]

That sort of rote memorization is stupid anyway. Sometimes you have to do it (like when you're learning the grammar or vocabulary of a foreign language). But making small kids memori8ze arbitrary, meaningless facts about a subject is a sure way to destroy their interest.

I've never had trouble remembering the names of the planets, and I totally suck at rote memorization. I just read some interesting stuff about them at an early age and it stuck.

In Sixth Grade, the teacher decided we all had to memorize the names of the presidents and recite them in class. I just couldn't do it. Interesting thing: the current president had just gotten re-elected, and everybody insisted on saying his name twice. I tried to point out that this didn't make sense, since nobody said "Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Roosevelt". But I wasn't allowed to have an opinion, since I hadn't even done the assignment!

Re:Rote Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember state capitals in elementary school... Teachers would ask me the capital of, say, North Dakota, and I simply didn't care. :-)

Re:Rote Nonsense

[tverbeek]

So you got tired of them saying "Clinton, Clinton"? :)

Did they recite Cleveland's name twice (non-consecutively)? It's always annoyed me that he's given two instances of "Nth President" (22nd and 24th), rendering the value of N assigned to every subsequent president factually incorrect. For example, GWB is referred to (even in official government documents) as "the 43rd president" despite the fact that there were only 41 people to hold the office before him.

ObTopic: M-VEM-J-SUN-P.S. (a variation on the mnemonic I learned) seems to me like a good one. It groups the planets logically, putting the three (roughly) Earth-sized ones in a syllable together, the three mid-sized gas giants together, and the two little rocks way out in the cold as... a Post Script.

Re:Rote Nonsense

[fm6]

So you got tired of them saying "Clinton, Clinton"? :)

I'm older than that.

Monday's announcement...

[The Lynxpro]

So, what is NASA going to announce? They've made contact with the Annunaki? Are those alien charlatans going to return an equal amount of gold they pilfered from the Earth to supposedly fix their atmosphere? Are we getting reparations for the enslavement of humanity's ancestors? Sweet. Just in time for the election, the President announces he's secured the gold financing to pay off the national debt! How convenient! Did Halliburton secure the deal? That's it, we've traded Iraq's secretly hidden WMD for all of that... :)

ps. I vote to name the tenth planet "von Daniken" or "Kirk"... :)

Definition of a Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's so large we cannot destroy it, it's a planet. If we think we could adequately remove any trace of the body having ever existed, it's just an asteroid.

revised planet mnemonics

[konkani]

My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets! Shucks! My Very Extravagant Mother Just Sent Us Nine Parrots, Sweetheart My Very Early Model Jaguar Just Smashed Up Near Pierre's Saloon

Re:revised planet mnemonics

[konkani]

My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets! Shucks!
My Very Extravagant Mother Just Sent Us Nine Parrots, Sweetheart
My Very Early Model Jaguar Just Smashed Up Near Pierre's Saloon

Re: The Sun's 10th Planet... Sedna

[Anonymous Coward]

My very educated mother just served us nine pickle sandwiches.

The Ultimate Answer

[buckhead_buddy]

Perhaps Nasa will announce that they have discovered a mysterious 10th planet at coordinates xeno=9, yako=9, zabo=9 with the use of an old space simulator in use since 1982. While the name is currently under debate the current favorites are Brittish, Antos, and Minax.

NO!

[fm6]

But then we can't nitpick bad TV science fiction that doesn't know the difference between "interplanetary" and "intergalactice"!

Re:NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Intergalactic planetary, planetary intergalactic... Another dimension, another dimension. What's the big deal?

Re:NO!

[fm6]

If you have to ask the question, you couldn't understand the answer!

Urethra

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey we have a planet called Uranus. Why not one called Urethra?

Why Astrology Isn't Science

[handy_vandal]

[astrology] also doesn't work period :)

Agreed -- although I'll cut astrology some slack as a form of psychology, e.g. a collection of archetypes.

[Syncretic religion] Sorry, but: So would be Judaism, Christianity, et al. syncretic does not seem to involve active incorporation.
On the face of it, the more 'syncretic' a religion is, the more it was designed.
...Usually, IMHO, to be palatable to potential followers.

It's a question of degree ... some religions (e.g. astrology, vodoun) are strongly syncretic; others are somewhat syncretic (e.g. Christianity); some tend to resist syncresis (e.g. Islam -- the Koran exists *in Arabic*, thus cannot be "translated"), etc.

I can't think of a totally non-syncretic religion -- they all tend to incorporate -- nonetheless, it's a question of degree.

The predictions that involved the Zodiac cannot be both true now and at points in the past... [etc].

All good points. Personally, I have little or no use for astrology -- I'm not interested in defending its dogma, only in characterizing its role in society.

Oh, in fairness, without astrology we wouldn't have astronomy- or at least not nearly as much of it.

Just as modern chemistry owes a debt to alchemy.

-kgj

Re:Why Astrology Isn't Science

[mynameis (mother ...]

It's a question of degree ... some religions (e.g. astrology, vodoun) are strongly syncretic; others are somewhat syncretic (e.g. Christianity); some tend to resist syncresis (e.g. Islam -- the Koran exists *in Arabic*, thus cannot be "translated"), etc.

That is undoubtably the more accurate accessment.

Just as modern chemistry owes a debt to alchemy.

Also true. In retrospect, I now realise I misinterpreted the tone of your comment.

At least I posted some stuff that was valid, almost interesting, in my misguided reply. Proving once again: While I'm may not always right, Im never wrong. :)

Sir, Im afraid my Karma just ran over your Dogma

Pluto

[DiracFeynman]

Actually, the debate continues whether or not pluto classifies as a planet (as vague as the definition is). Of course, Pluto is the only planet discovered by an American...and I have read that the American's are the most vocal when it comes to keeping Pluto's planet status...

Why Call Kuiper Belt/Oort Cloud Objects Planets ?

[reallocate]

Using size as a determinant of an object's planet status ignores location. Why not decide that Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects are not planets, regardless of their size? If objects located in the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud were comparable to traditional planets in terms of composition, number, behavior and location, it's doubtful that either the Belt or the Cloud would be considered discrete regions.

A decision based on Science, or Politics?

[geoswan]

Is this a decision based on Science? Or is it based on Politics and emotion?

Did you know that in 1998 Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, got his State's largest Lake, Lake Champlain, to be reclassified as the 6th Great Lake? At least as far as the awarding of researh grants. Being considered a "Great Lake" made the academic institutions in his constituency eligible to apply for certain research grants.

There is talk of sending a probe to Pluto. Is it possible that it is easier to sell a probe to "planet Pluto" than to send one to Kuiper-belt object Pluto?

I remember, back in the days when I tuned in to debates as to which newsgroups should be created, the big debate as to whether a new group should be talk.acquaria, rec.acquaria or sci.acquaria.

In Leahy's defence, these were environmental research grants, and I should probably assume he added this line to the bill to protect his constituent's natural environment -- not for the petty partisan purposes.

Re:A decision based on Science, or Politics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Politics is the first thing I thought of when I saw this article. I don't know what Dubya's camp is up to with all this space exploration/Mars stuff, but it just seems fishy to me.

First they spend (waste, IMO) billions sending probes to Mars (right after wasting millions or billions on a war), now NASA is making a big deal about something that's really not news among people that are knowledgeable in these areas.

My theory is that either this space stuff is an attempt to focus our attention away from the imaginary WMD's in Iraq, or something big is coming up that's going to require US citizens' backing in the area of space exploration (and it's going to cost a lot of money).

Re:A decision based on Science, or Politics?

[wideBlueSkies]

Buzzwords baby. That's the ticket.

What's more ikely to get funded in the corporate environment, a distributed networked(yawn) application or a J2EE(!!$$!!) application?

wbs.

Re:A decision based on Science, or Politics?

[Eric_Scheirer]

There's still a lot of lingering hostility left over from that aquaria debate. For those that weren't tuned in to Usenet the first time around, check out the thread starting here. It's astonishing how worked up gardeners get.

Re:A decision based on Science, or Politics?

[some guy I know]

I don't know what Dubya's camp is up to with all this space exploration/Mars stuff, but it just seems fishy to me.

First they spend (waste, IMO) billions sending probes to Mars (right after wasting millions or billions on a war) ...

As opposed to the previous administration, which didn't send any probes to Mars, and didn't spend any money on war?

(Note: I am not defending either Clinton or Bush on their war records; I'm just saying that you shouldn't dump on one without dumping on the other.
(My suggestion: Dump on both.))

Re:A decision based on Science, or Politics?

[hymie3]

I remember, back in the days when I tuned in to debates as to which newsgroups should be created, the big debate as to whether a new group should be talk.acquaria, rec.acquaria or sci.acquaria.

Excellent analogy. It would certainly be more prestigious to say "I discovered the 10th planet" than to say "I discovered a very large chunk of orbital rock, one of the Kuiper-belt objects."

In practice though, I don't believe that there is much done in science that is actually based solely on Science. There is a lot of politics and emotion that comes into play. Witness arguments over who discovered a new element, whether or not it actually is a new element, and even what to name it.

call it planet x

[soimless]

that way conspiracy pepole have to think of a new name for there randomly comeing impending doom planet

In response to parent and sibling posts...

[Cyno01]

'The Sun' is Sol, and 'The Moon' is Luna. Simple enough.

naming convention

[jd142]

Doesn't this violate the naming convention of using Roman god names for planets and then appropriate names for the moons. For example, Diemos and Phobos were children of Mars, Jupiter is surrounded by moons named for his lovers. Should this planet follow a similar convention and stick with a Roman god or goddess? Perhaps Proserpina, because she's close to Pluto (although really that would be an appropriate name for a moon if Pluto can grab a second one). Perhaps Janus, as god of doorways and bounderies would be appropriate to mark this orbit as the boundary of our solar system.

Re:naming convention

[towatatalko]

Why should one naming convention, based on one mythological tradition, be established for all time? As we expand our understanding of the Solar system and the universe there's a need for more names and it is appropriate to include other traditions as well.

Re:naming convention

[falsification]

Because Ancient Greece is the foundation of Western Civilization. If other civilizations want to call it something else, that's their right.

If you don't like Western Civilization, please feel free to pack your bags and join another.

Re:naming convention

[kalidasa]

If they've named it Sedna, which follows the KBO naming convention, that means they're going to define it as "not a planet." Otherwise they would have named it after a Greek god (they might go with Persephone rather than Proserpina, as Persephone is the better known version, and is I think sometimes found in Latin). This (Sedna) is much bigger than the largest non-planet (Ceres) that's not a satellite (but smaller than the Moon, the four Galileans, Titan, or Triton), so it's pretty important, but probably still a bit smaller (by a few hundred kilometers diameter) than Pluto and half the size of Mercury.

Re:naming convention

[kalidasa]

Sorry, I meant "Roman god." Not that there's very much difference.

Re:naming convention

[towatatalko]

"If you don't like Western Civilization, please feel free to pack your bags and join another" - hmm, so, that supposed to be some kind of rational argument? I don't see Western civilization as exclusively responsible for scientific progress. In fact much of the Greco-Roman tradition was inherited from other sources. Just ponder upon the following example. Most European languages (98%) are part of a larger family of Indo-European branch. So, the inclusion of other cultures and traditions is inherent even in the way we talk and express our ideas.

Re:naming convention

[falsification]

That is all true, but Western Civilization has its own unique identity.

If the Blankians want to call the planets something else, let them. Here in Western Civilization, we name them after the mythological Greek gods.

You really are opposed to Western Civilization, and that's why you are criticizing it--not for its errors--but for being a civilization at all. That is unfair and I hope you rethink your position before you lapse into outright bigotry.

nomenclature

[jrg]

don't these astronomers read lovecraft?

should this not be called, "yuggoth"?

Bush

[macdaddy]

Just thank your lucky stars (no pun intended) that NASA isn't calling it Bush.

Re:Bush

[RaymondRuptime]

Because the naming convention for politicians is that the use has to be ironical--hence the naming of our national airport after the president who fired all the air traffic controllers, Reagan. So why not name it after the president who killed the Apollo program?

Oh, that's right: we already have a planet named Uranus...

Kuiper Belt Objects

[nrlightfoot]

This new ice ball is another Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), just like Pluto and all the other giant iceballs orbiting beyond Neptune that have been discovered lately. It is estimated that there are at least 70,000 of these objects with a diameter of greater than 100km. We only call Pluto a planet because it was discovered 20 years before the Kuiper Belt was theorized.

Escape velocity

[geoswan]

Without their host planets, they would float off, wheareas the moon would continue orbiting the sun quite contently.

I have been interested in Astronomy since I was about six years old. Just over forty years. I have heard what you suggest before -- but only in the last few years. And I don't understand it any more this time than I did on the earlier occasions.

Frankly, I strongly suspect it is a false factoid, like that the internet was built to survive a Nuclear War. I strongly suspect it is a bullshit meme that keep being repeated because it sounds cool, but is completely false.

Pray explain what you mean when you say the other 138 moons would float off ?

I am trying to do the "thought experiment" of silently, quietly erasing the principals of those moons, mass and all. I am finding this difficult to do. I don't believe there is any way this could occur, in our Universe.

So, instead I imagined doing something to accelerate a moon, any moon, to the escape velocity of its principal. What happens then? Well, the object accelerated to just beyond a planet's escape velocity will assume an orbit very similar to that of the Planet it just escaped from. Sometime in the last couple of years ago there was a flap about a small object that seemed to have been temporarily captured in the Earth-Moon system. But it turned out to be NASA space debris. It appeared to be the discarded upper stage of an Apollo moon shot.

Re:Escape velocity

[r2vf]

Frankly, I strongly suspect it is a false factoid, like that the internet was built to survive a Nuclear War. I strongly suspect it is a bullshit meme that keep being repeated because it sounds cool, but is completely false.

I wish I could cite my source, but its just something which has been kicking around in my head for some time. I'll see if I can find a more "reputable" source when I conclude writing this reply.

Pray explain what you mean when you say the other 138 moons would float off ?

Sure. Orbit around a sperical body can be thought of as "falling" towards it at the same rate as the "ground" drops with the body's curve. Now, if the death star were to zap Saturn into oblivion (and somehow make all its matter cease to exist), its 31 known moons will no longer be subject to its gravity (no longer "falling"), hence they will continue on in whatever direction they were previously moving. I suppose its not truly "floating off," as they would still be affected by the second most significant source of gravity, the sun, which would result in some eccentric orbits, the pretty much as you described

I would think the best way to describe the moon's situation would be as a body orbiting the Sun which is in turn also orbiting the Earth. So, Emperor Palpatine and Dr. Evil have a great meeting of minds and Earth is no more. The moon continues its approximate orbit, disturbed due to the lack of Earth, though still not different nearly to the degree of the previous scenerio.

Hell, maybe I should just do the math...

Re:Escape velocity

[Anonymous Coward]

I am trying to do the "thought experiment" of silently, quietly erasing the principals of those moons, mass and all. I am finding this difficult to do. I don't believe there is any way this could occur, in our Universe.

It is easy to imagine the planets going outward if the Sun "disappears", as often presented in animations on gravity. Why is it so hard for moons?

The simple case: if the angular momentum of the moon when the planet "disappears" sends the moon directly toward the sun, it will crash and burn (or rather burn and crash).

In the opposite case the moon is sent away from the sun. Most probably it will slow down, stop and come back toward the sun; this depends on the moon's mass and speed, it may just escape (but I doubt it).

And there is and infinite amount of in between cases and exceptions (moon was not in the planet/Sun plane, will be captured / crashed on another planet, and so on), but generally the moons will not simply start orbiting the sun as if nothing happened, removing a planet breaks an equilibrium 4 Billion years in the making of our solar system affecting the other planets and even the rocks in the asteroid belt.

Re:Escape velocity

[kalidasa]

It means that the orbit of the moon is ALWAYS concave to the sun. I believe this is unique among satellites. But IANAA.

Re:Escape velocity

[2short]

Unless I'm mistaken, your source is Isacc Asimov's "Of Time and Space and Other Things". In which he calculates what he calls the push-me-pull-you factor: the ratio of the gravitational force exerted on a moon by the sun to that exerted by it's principal. Most are around .1 or so, a few of Saturn and Jupiters Monns that astonomers suspect are captured planetoids get close to 1. Earths Moon is over 2.
We talk of the moon orbiting the earth, but it might be more acurate to say its orbit of the Sun is perturbed by the Earth. The Moon and the Earth are much,much closer to being equal partners than any other principal and satelite in the system.

Re:Escape velocity

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the claim is that execpt for the Moon all moon would escape from the sun and wouldn't come back ever

Re:Escape velocity

[Anonymous Coward]

TCP/IP _were_ designed to continue to successfully route packets if large portions of the network were destroyed, such as caused by a nuclear strike.

As long as a "physical" route remained somewhere between point A and point B then packets were going to flow between the points.

The Internet started its life as a DARPA (U.S. military) project.

Re:Escape velocity

[Doomdark]

false factoid, like that the internet was built to survive a Nuclear War.

Perhaps it's a typo from your part -- original Arpanet was certainly designed such that a network could be built that would survive effects of parts of network to be completed wiped out; something that could happen as a result of nuclear strike. I don't think Arpanet infrastructure itself was more than a (eventually large-scale) prototype (physically, I mean; protocols were certainly engineered correctly), and thus neither it, nor Internet later on, was built to be as tolerant as what protocols would allow.

That Arpanet was designed to survive catastrohic (yet not completely destructive -- there still has to be at least one route between nodes that want to communicate, obviously), is not an urban legend , and should be easily verified from various accounts by its creators.

Re:Escape velocity

[geoswan]

I was fortunate enough to attend a very memorable and informative lecture, by Len Kleinrock, one of the creators of the Arpanet, in 1977. He spoke about the redundant paths, the ability to re-route, and so on, and the kinds of disasters they were meant to cope with. And that was things like back-hoe operators digging up communication cables, fires, power failures, rodents chewing through insulation. I also read the book, "Where Wizards stay up late: The origins of the Internet".

Yes, I am aware that a single highly speculative paper had been written, imagining a network that could survive a nuclear war. But, I believe, the guy who wrote it was not one of creators of the Arpanet. I specifically chose the word "built" as opposed to "designed" in anticipation of questions from those who heard an echo of this early paper.

The reason I mentioned this meme is that it is so entertaining that it is often repeated in the more entertaining form, that, "the internet was built to survive a nuclear war". I mentioned it as an example of an example where the falsehood has more power than the truth -- because it is entertaining.

Re:Escape velocity

[ElderKorean]

I would think the best way to describe the moon's situation would be as a body orbiting the Sun which is in turn also orbiting the Earth. So, Emperor Palpatine and Dr. Evil have a great meeting of minds and Earth is no more. The moon continues its approximate orbit, disturbed due to the lack of Earth, though still not different nearly to the degree of the previous scenerio.

Don't forget that there are many others whom have planned the destruction of the Earth, and some have apparently even succeded.

The Vogons succeded in destroying the Earth. Emperor Ming had a go too, though I don't think that he succeded. The Daleks have tried quite a few times too.

There are many people we should thank that the Earth is still here....

The Mice would be pissed to have gone to all that effort just to have it destroyed.

Re:Non-Roman? Okay, community protest time!

[thebatlab]

" and people tend to respect us as sources of information"

What people would those be?

Finding the Common Ground

[handy_vandal]

In retrospect, I now realise I misinterpreted the tone of your comment.

I could have been clearer in my original post. On the one hand, I wanted to rebut the original poster's comments about Sedna fucking up astrologers; on the other hand, I wanted to poke a bit of fun at astrology ("amoeba", "paranoia"), demonstrating that I'm not actually a sympathizer.

Yes, I'll cut astrology some slack, as a catalog of archtetypes. Archetypes are useful for understanding ourselves, our place in the cosmos, the nature of heaven and earth. Astrology (like tarot, the I Ching, etc.) does a good job of anthologizing those archetypes.

But frankly, those of my friends who are astrologers, while I love them dearly, I think they could be making a lot better use of their time ....

At least I posted some stuff that was valid, almost interesting, in my misguided reply. Proving once again: While I'm may not always right, Im never wrong. :)

Your comments were interesting, relevant, cogent. The two of us are basically talking the same language. It's this damned interface that gets in the way ... but then, it's this damned interface that makes the conversation possible in the first place ... :)

-kgj

Planet X

[JeffTL]

And that's pronounced "Ten." 'Course, you can always use the Classic mode to get your old mnemonics working.

Bode's Law

[Gorimek]

That would be Bode's Law. It is wiewed as more of a coincidence than a law these days.

According to my hung over calculations Sedna is 67 AUs out, which is not that far off from the 77.6 that Bode predicts, but not really close either.

uhh.. i always thought...

[Cynikal]

if it revolves around a sun, its a planet, if it revolves around a planet, its a moon, and if it flies through space out of any orbit, its an asteroid?

Re:uhh.. i always thought...

[ChopsMIDI]

Comets revolve around the sun, but are not planets.

The asteroid belt also revolves around the Sun, but we don't call them a buncha small planets.

The big question is how big does something that revolves around the sun need to be to be considered a planet.

There goes...

[Anonymous Coward]

...my favorite mnemonic device.

"My very educated mother just showed us nine planets."

Oh well. I can still use the one I made up for the electromagnetic spectrum.

"Return my incredibly violent ultra x-ray gun."

The Inuit myth of Sedna

[Futaba-chan]

If I recall correctly, the naming convention for Kuiper Belt Objects is that of creation deities.

Sedna isn't actually a creator goddess -- she was born mortal, and became a goddess when the spirits of the air and the moon decided to reward her for her suffering in her mortal life, as she was drowning. Two accounts of the Sedna myth may be found here and here.

In any event, aren't you glad that they're naming it Sedna, and not Uinigumasuittuq?

Re:The Inuit myth of Sedna

[pajamacore]

You and I have learned different versions of Sedna's story. It's kind of like the two versions of Aphrodite's birth and the two creation stories in Genesis, I suppose.

Isn't mythology great?

Re:The Inuit myth of Sedna

[TrickyRick]

Where do you get that there is two creation stories in Genesis?

Re:The Inuit myth of Sedna

[ambisinistral]

From a book called the Bible. Read the first two chapters of it and compare them. Quite clear they are two different creation myths.

Re:The Inuit myth of Sedna

[TrickyRick]

I disagree with that see this link

http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_05_03_03.html

Re:Non-Roman? Okay, community protest time!

[Some Dumbass...]

So, I propose that in protest to such a blatant attempt at PC Multiculturalism

I'm guessing that you're joking. Still, for those people (including some of the moderators, apparently) who are taking this seriously, lighten up!

I mean seriously, wasn't it Steven Hawking who joked about how astrophysicists are "no longer limiting themselves to Greek"?

Besides, lots of objects in the solar system have names, for example the larger asteroids (e.g. Ceres, which is an obscure Roman name). Are you sure that all the Roman names haven't been used up for asteroids and comets already?

If, after these arguments, you all are still "outraged", then at least take comfort in the fact that the article called "Sedna" a "provisional" (read: temporary) name.

Re:Non-Roman? Okay, community protest time!

[ccnull]

Regardless of the name, it shall be known as Rupert, right?

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (search for "Rupert")

doesn't matter

[LBArrettAnderson]

This discovery has apparently reignited the debate as to how big a solar object must be in order to qualify as a 'planet', but it is significant nonetheless.

I don't think people should spend much time classifying things as "planets" or "asteroids." It does not matter what you classify it as, it's not like it will change anything about the rock itself.

perhaps a good definition would start with

[the_2nd_coming]

that a planet must be a spheroid in orbit around nothing but the sun.

then start debating the size.

Re:perhaps a good definition would start with

[BCW2]

Wow! An intelligent and simple idea. And here of all places.

Actually that is a good definition because anything not mostly sphericle should have broken off something else (no matter the size) and is an asteroid.

false hope on astrology

[tinkerton]

the mathematically oriented astrologists use the 'ephemerides', a book with coordinates of planets. Since the numbers in the book are not affected, they can stick to their conclusions where it is suitable. Also, the focus is on visible planets, not Pluto.

Apart from that, a new planet is an opportunity for new excuses, rather than a problem.

Disproving astrology is like convincing an paranoic that he's not being watched. ..He said bitterly.

Technically, the moon is a planet

[MickLinux]

The moon's orbit is everywhere concave towards the Sun. Therefore, the moon is a satellite of the Sun, and not a satellite of the earth. As such, perhaps it should be called a member of a binary planetary system.

Re:Technically, the moon is a planet

[jeisner]

The moon's orbit is everywhere concave towards the Sun. Therefore, the moon is a satellite of the Sun, and not a satellite of the earth. As such, perhaps it should be called a member of a binary planetary system.

Here are pictures and discussion of the moon's orbit about the sun.

Re:Technically, the moon is a planet

[HoserHead]

The best part about that page is its "this page was last modified on" blurb:

Last modified: 5 October 103.

Re:Technically, the moon is a planet

[leg_br]

Actually a moon's orbit is more likely described as a sinoid-like curve over a very large circle (or eliptic). The planet orbit is mid-way between the peaks of the sinoid.

If you try to print a scaled-down acurated moon orbit around the sun, it will be just like the planet orbit. It is something like comparing Mt. Everest with the whole Earth circunference

Islam's Qur'an already predicted - 11 Planets!

[deunan_k]

Taken from this website - > Full Article

While you're at it, read this Article too regarding the eleven planets!

How many Planets - 9 ? or 11?

Ancient Greeks wrongly included head of the solar family and moon, our earths satellite. They counted planets as follows : 1) Sun, 2) Moon, 3) Mars, 4 ) Mercury, 5) Jupiter, 6) Venus and 7) Saturn. Indians till date include two more : Rahu and Ketu, mere shadows of earth and moon. To the five genuine planets modern astronomy added the Earth after being (identified with planet class in the medieval age) and latest discoveries of Neptune, Uranus and Pluto (as late as 19th century). This brought back the count to 9.

This received a jolt a decade or two ago. Indian astronomer J.J Rawal in 1978 found that the farthest planets Uranus and Pluto were making significant deviations from established orbits and explained them in terms of gravitational influence of two as - yet unseen planets, whose sizes and orbits he estimated. It was only in 1988 his proposal got due publicity when NASA confirmed possibility of Rawals outermost planet (or the 11th), by analysing their own data gathered through their various space missions. NASAs computations of mass and orbit tallied with Rawals with refinements and additional details. Nevertheless, NASA could not guess his 10th planet. Early this year (1999) NASA brought the 11th planet to the limelight again among astronomical community and general public. However, both the planets of Rawals still remain unconfirmed optically.

Has Quran anything to say about the number of solar planets? Yes, indeed!

When Joseph said unto his father : O my father! Surely I saw in a dream eleven planets and the Sun and the Moon....... (Yusuf: 4)

One may note the following points of immense significance.

* Quran does not confuse the planets (kawakib) with stars (nujm).

* Quran excludes Sun and Moon clearly from planets. They belong to a higher and lower order respectively. Such clear demarcation was achieved only by modern astronomy which is but a few centuries old.

* The number of planets are given as 11. We mumins have absolutely no doubt that it is a matter of time that modern astronomy will reach this count. Science is now in the process of gathering evidence for what it has already made indications.

Incidentally, when in 1988 news of NASAs findings broke out concerning Rawals prediction of two extra planets this author published an article titled New Planet Discovered - As Prophesied by The Quran? In Islamic Voice (March, 1988) quoting this Quranic verse now under discussion. He sent a copy to the astronomer which reached him exactly on the day he returned from lecture tour from US. On the very same day he wrote back expressing his amazement at the Quranic prophecy and remarked that he would thenceforth quote the particular verse whenever he lectured on his discovery.

The author would also like to express his regrets that many translators of Quran in English as well as languages use the word stars in this verse instead of planets which Allah specifies. They are either unable to distinguish between these two different classes of heavenly bodies or are under the mistaken impression that planets are merely a subclass of stars or vice-versa.

Re:Islam's Qur'an already predicted - 11 Planets!

[falsification]

How many Planets - 9 ? or 11?

Islam and the numbers 9 and 11. Hmmm. Quite an association.

Re:Islam's Qur'an already predicted - 11 Planets!

[deunan_k]

Maybe.. But it's just a coincidence... 11th September 2001 (Or September 11th 2001, as the Americans prefered style) happens on 22nd Jumaada al-THaany 1422 A.H. as per Islamic Calendar. It's the 6th month, call it 6 22 then.

Yeah, terrorist did it. Let's not further confuse that particular fact..

Re:Islam's Qur'an already predicted - 11 Planets!

[STrinity]

Lovely. And why should I give the Koran any more weight than the outrageous scientific claims made in the Bible (like bats being birds and insects having four legs), or even Nostradamus?

Re:Islam's Qur'an already predicted - 11 Planets!

[deunan_k]

I suppose you did read the Bible and/or Nostradamus

Did you read the Qur-an? That is, before you came to the conclusion that they're all cut from the same cloth (or paper)...

Some links, that can help you or anyone interested

Qur-an, Islam and Science Qur'an and Sceintific Knowledge

Re:Islam's Qur'an already predicted - 11 Planets!

[STrinity]

I suppose you did read the Bible and/or Nostradamus Did you read the Qur-an? That is, before you came to the conclusion that they're all cut from the same cloth (or paper)...

I've read every religious scripture I can get my hands on -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu. Even Scientology. Nothing in the Koran is more believable than the others; just a bunch of supernatural and pseudo-historical stories, moral parables, vague prophesies, and rules disguised as divine commandments.

Some links, that can help you or anyone interested Qur-an, Islam and Science Qur'an and Sceintific Knowledge

I can point to equally "reliable" sites that "prove" some of the claims in the Christian Bible. Again, that doesn't make it scientific.

Obligatory Transformers reference...

[Channard]

So why does that extra planet have horns, and is eating Pluto?

IS IT ROUND?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought if an object could be made round under its own gravity it was considered a planet?

Sedna

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~chad/sedna/

This is the Scoop!

Full Details...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~chad/2004dw/

Sedna means something else

[tinkerton]

Actually , Sedna has several meanings in innuit, the most common being "unhospitable place where those who survive the cold, are bored to death."

I would suggest an english translation, but i don't want to offend the people who live there.

It's sometimes used to indicate a date who has little competence in bed.

No...All wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the tenth planet was supposed to be named Rupert?

Have we forgotten our Hitchhikker's Guide trilogy so quickly?

"Sedna"?

[xihr]

The name is unofficial -- it takes a while for the IAU to grant official names to asteroids -- and just because it's sizeable (larger than Charon, but smaller than Pluto) doesn't mean it's sparking new controversy over whether it's a planet or not. Practically the only "controversy" about planethood that's ever taken place is among the media and amateurs. Professional astronomers have rarely cared over the details of whether you call Pluto (say) a planet or not; they know that the nomenclature was invented by humans and so the celestial bodies themselves don't feel any compulsion to fit into our little arbitrary lines of demarcation.

Very odd

[Orion Blastar]

why not keep the Roman Gods and Godnesses naming convention of planets? Why switch it now?

Still better than calling it Phred. :)

Re:Very odd

[abonin]

10$ says its gonna be Planet Microsoft! Remember they are looking for some nice political donations right about now :)

I don't know about that name...

[jejones]

It just doesn't have the same ring to shout

Where are we going? SEDNA!
When are we going? REAL SOON!

Terminology matters.

[gumpish]

Does it really matter if we have 8, 9, or 10 planets or 8 planets and 1 or two planetoids?

No, but...

I say leave the distinction between planet and planetoid fuzzy, and focus on the objects themselves.

While it doesn't matter whether or not our system has 10 "planets", having a meaningful vocabulary to describe the universe does matter.

By taking your reasoning to it's extreme, we shouldn't bother making a distinction between "liquids" and "solids" or "hot" and "cold" and just "focus on the objects".

We outnumber them?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Unless I missed something this is just a matter of size and little else. It doesn't even really matter. Yes sedna is exactly the same as pluto except a few kilometers less so one is a planet and the other just a piece of rock?

come on. Live a little. We can have another whole planet. It is not like it is going to change anything. After all it always been there. We only discovered it recently. Not like it decided to join in orbit yesterday.

planetsedna.com is unavailable.

[Anonymous Coward]

planetsedna.com is unavailable.Domain registration. Backorder Now. Damn you Internet!

Sedna myth

[FlyingOrca]

Uinigumasuittuq? Never heard that one before - I've always liked Sedna/Nuliaiyok's story by any name, though. I'm not familiar with the air/moon spirit bit, either - if you can post a source, I'd love to read that version. Cheers!

Cool!

[coopaq]

Two places you never want to go:

1) Sun's 10th Planet
2) Sun's iPlanet

Then again maybe the 10th Planet has a future.

Space shuttle +5 underrated!

[linoleo]

40 years away from Earth in a space shuttle.

Wow, and I thought the space shuttles could only go to measly LEO! So, can we send Bush to Sedna on one of them? Soon? Please? There could be a problem in that Sedna's orbital inclination might not match that of the ISS, but for this worthy cause we should really make an exception. NASA, are you listening?

Re:Space shuttle +5 underrated!

[BCW2]

Why don't we send you instead?

Uninformed Astronomers...

[-kertrats-]

Doesnt anyone remember that the tenth planet is called Rupert? Enough with this 'Sedna' business.

Re:Uninformed Astronomers...

[geoswan]

At least it is something that we can pronounce.

Bumped up, isn't it?

[irokitt]

roughly 10^8 objects that no self-respecting astrologer would omit Now it will have to be 10^8 + 1, won't it?

Re:Who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole arguement is a waste of time-if it floats around in space and has its own (however small) atmosphere it is a planet!

Re:Non-Roman? Okay, community protest time!

[galen]

(e.g. Ceres, which is an obscure Roman name)

An obscure Roman name? You've got to be kidding me. In the ancient pantheon, Ceres/Demeter was the goddess of fertility and agriculture. In other words, she was the mother goddess. Every year she mourns for her lost daughter Persephone and forsakes her duty. During this period all living things on the earth wither and die; thus we have winter.

If such an important goddess has really become "obscure" then maybe I'll go into mourning, though I doubt anyone will notice.

~~Galen~~

Re:Non-Roman? Okay, community protest time!

[Anthony Boyd]

I propose that in protest to such a blatant attempt at PC Multiculturalism, we as a community refer to the tenth planet as Nox, the Roman goddess of night. Since it lies the furthest from the sun, that actually fits it, in a descriptive sense.

Wow, It's too bad you weren't the one to name it originally. I think your choice is far superior.

Suck on THAT, Arthur C Clarke

[Flakbait]

...So they're going out of their way to do the Inuit deities before doing the Hindu pathenon?

Guess we won't be calling anything "Rama" for a while.

Shouldn't it be named

[Anonymous Coward]

Rupert?

I, for one...

[zaba]

yada yada yada welcome our overlords blah blah blah sedna.

Did I forget anything from the ObSimpsons quote?

It's Mandos

[Sabalon]

The Tenth Planet - home of the cybermen!

Re:It's Mandos

[meringuoid]

Mandos, the Quendi god of the dead. An appropriate companion for Pluto, I think...

Re:It's Mandos

[MonTemplar]

s/Mandos/Mondas/

Alert UNIT! Find the Doctor! We are in grave danger! :)

-MT.

Stargate Problem

[bill_mcgonigle]

Stargate is too popular for Nox to get support. Remember, if it's in current SciFi it's uncouth.

Re:Stargate Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, it would be Noctornus anyway - which, while a little cheesy, would be a rather fitting name.

Solar disc theory out the window?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Back in grammar school we learned that the solar system formed from a dust cloud that gathered into a disc as it spun. The spinning segregated the elements roughly based on atomic weight - the lighter elements were less affected by gravity and wound up further away before they coalesced into planets, giving us gascious planets out far and rocky planets in close.

From this model, Pluto was formed differently and isn't a planet, which seems about right.

Re:Non-Roman? Okay, community protest time!

[Some Dumbass...]

An obscure Roman name?

Sorry man, but the name "Ceres" didn't sound familiar. I know who Demeter is (I took a class in Greek Myths in college), but I had no idea that "Ceres" was the Roman name for Demeter.

Everybody knows "Jupiter" (in part because it is the name of a planet), most people have probably heard of "Minerva", but I'm pretty sure that "Ceres" is obscure enough that most people won't know who that is.

P.S. Note the use of quotes. The name may be obscure even if the thing being named is not.

Thanks a NOT, The Australian!

[attercoppe]

So where is this Sedna, anyway?

more than 3 billion kilometres further away from the Sun than Pluto

Reference, please? How much further doesn't really help, if I don't know how far Pluto is. Is this twice as far? Three times? One and two-ninths?

40 years away from Earth in a space shuttle

Yeah, okay, that helps...

10 billion kilometres from Earth

Again, not much help...I guess now I could calculate how fast the space shuttle goes in interplanetary space...

I would rate myself as an upper-mid level science geek, with perhaps a slightly below average 'space' focus for a similar group...but I don't know offhand how far Pluto is from Sol. I know Earth is 93 million miles, i.e. 1 AU. Even reporting Pluto's and Sedna's distance in AUs would be informational, and help with visualizing just how far away Sedna is. Perhaps using AUs would be too confusing for an AUstralian paper...or maybe everyone in Oz has a much firmer grasp of our solar system's scale than I?

Re:Thanks a NOT, The Australian!

[Anonymous Coward]

That was easy mate! Get your calc handy!

Pluto's maximum distance from Earth is 7,676,691,980 Km while Pluto's average distance from the Sun is 5,913,520,000 Km. That makes it about 9,000,000,000 for your first lazy question at 225000000 kms a year in a shuttle. Google for more....

Re:Thanks a NOT, The Australian!

[geoswan]

10^10 kilometers, when light travels at 300,000 km / second? About 10 light hours I make it. The Earth is about 8 light minutes from the Sun.

Just to nitpick...

[jesterzog]

What if Jupiter had a moon bigger than Earth? That's not unimaginable; would Earth then not be a "planet"? In fact, would then nothing be a "planet" except Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune?

Just to nitpick and sidestep your point entirely, tthe word "planet" is derived from the Greek word for "wanderer", referring to those stars that appeared to wander between the other stars that stayed fixed. I suppose that under its original definition, Earth was never a planet to begin with because it wasn't understood as one of these wanderers among the stars.

modded ooy!

[mynameis (mother ...]

I love this wonderful moderation system. :)

Moderation -1
100% Flamebait

Whoever did that speaks volumes in favor of 'pure democracy.' Read the whole thread first next time...

Quaoar

[Krellan]

This reminds me of Quaoar.

Both are small Kuiper Belt objects. Quaoar was mentioned on Slashdot before.

It's nice to find these mini-planets and give them names. The area beyond Pluto is fascinating, all the more reason why the New Horizons probe should be launched. I hope that Bush's single-minded fixation on Mars doesn't cause this project to be scrapped....

Re:Quaoar

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the board game IQ2000 already had a name for the planet past pluto...

Size doesn't matter

[kkerwin]

Perhaps, to avoid all possible arbitrariness as you say, a new standard should be proposed.

Instead of measuring the distance across an object, as this seems to lead to some problems in our definition, perhaps we should look at it's mass, in respect to the force of gravity between it and our sun.

Newton came up with a very simple equation to figure this out:

f = GMm/r^2

Where f is the force of gravitation between the two objects; G is the universal gravitation constant, 6.67 * 10^-11 Newton*Meters^2/kg^2; M is the mass of our sun; m is the mass of the object in question, and r is the (average) distance between the two.

The smaller the force of gravitation, the less likely that object is to become captured within the sun's gravitational pull. By setting a limit on how low f may drop before the object is no longer considered a planet, we very clearly define what may be considered a planet, what an asteroid, and what just space junk.

This throws into question not relative size, or diameter of the planet, but rather it's average density in respect to the density of our sun, and the distance between the two; ie, the force of gravity between the object and our sun.

Google for universal gravitation for more specifics.

- Kris Kerwin

UPDATE: Images of the planet released

[myownkidney]

You can find them here

And the planet is much bigger than expected too

Another Quote

[Geek of Tech]

I hereby claim this planet...... Trumania.... of the Burbank galaxy...

Nox, pre-Fox on (TV)Box in socks !

[jtjammer]

Nox, pre-Fox on (TV)Box in socks !

It's about the ORBIT, not the OBJECT

[Ayaress]

There was an old theorem on the distances of planets from the sun. Mercury to Saturn all match their orbits quite closely, and Uranus and Neptune are very close.

Pluto's about a billion miles off, has a highly eccentric comet-like orbit, is composed of the same material as all comets, has a very highly tilted orbit, and is in fact rivaled in size by at least tw other Kuiper objects - and our list of Kuiper comets is still pretty short.

It's a pretty damn big comet, but it exists in a region that we've increasingly found to be home to pretty damn big comets.

The object that struck Earth and helped to form the moon is estimated to have been almost as large as Mars. It's called an asteroid, though, because it didn't occupy one of the planetary orbits. It'd be a fucking huge asteroid, and it would probably set off a panic if one half that size popped in on us today, but it's still an asteroid.

The only exception to the orbital slot rule is the fifth slot, which is occupied by the asteroid belt. There's just too much crap in there to call any of it a planet.

Re:It's about the ORBIT, not the OBJECT

[Twistor]

The only exception to the orbital slot rule is the fifth slot, which is occupied by the asteroid belt. There's just too much crap in there to call any of it a planet.

Well, all of it used to be a planet.

Size

[jonney02]

And they say "Size does not matter!"

Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus other:

[deathcow]

If it's big enough to assume spherical shape by the action of gravity, it's a planet.

nasa press release

[infocat13]

please notice the nasa press release has a webite URL for todays press release of the pics.this "world" must have been discoverd with the new telecope in orbit at the L-1 point.

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

as for nomenclature any world that has enough mass that forms a spere should be a minor planet. objects below this are asteriods(rocks)
assuming that they follow independent orbits around the sun.(or in interstellor space)or(another star)
any object larger then pluto is a planet.

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[daeley]

By that logic, Anna Nicole Smith qualifies. ;)

That's not what was meant

[donscarletti]

I don't think that was meant by accurate, all the grandparent poster meant that the predictions are done in a precise method with careful plotting and calculation, not that the results are accurate.

Astrology is one of the stupidist beliefs out there, but the methodical way that serious astrologers observe the positions of the planets in the constelations of the eliptical (a.k.a. the zodiac) cannot be faulted in most cases. Astrology's weakness lies wholly in its assumptions that planet positions effect anything on earth except the tides. Astrology is false, but very accurate, they are two seperate issues.

By the way, if you dislike Astrology as much as I do you may like this page by the very popular (and very manly) maddox.

Off-topic, I know... but...

[gumpish]

Won't be life here in 10 years, if you Yanks are stupid enough to re-elect Shrub!

But don't you see, in order to be "re-elected", you must first be elected. Therefore no possible outcome of the 2004 race will result in the re-election of Bush.

What discussion about this would be complete...

[Art Tatum]

Without some Brunching Shuttlecocks?

A Brief Conversatoin with the Planet Pluto

Another Brief Conversatoin with the Planet Pluto

Get to the asteroid sooner.

[DunbarTheInept]

The key to preventing an extinction-causing asteroid impact is simply to NOTICE it early enough and have a fast means to get a vehicle there. The reason the asteroid-defeating plans are so hard to create is that we have to wait until the asteroid is near us before we can reach it. By then it's too late. If we can affect it sooner, then exploding it into parts could work really well because the parts would be imparted with enough velocity to spread apart so most of them miss the Earth. Even if an object is headed to strike the earth dead-center, then you only need to deflect it far enough to move it a little more than one earth-radius of distance to the side by the time it gets here and that will make it miss.
(You do need to go a little more than one earth radius because gravity will pull it in - you need to get it far enough out so it will at least slingshot around earth instead of striking it.)

To put this in perspective, if the asteroid was blown up 40 days before impact, that would give us 960 hours for it to move. In 960 hours, an object can move an entire earth radius by going a mere 4.1 miles per hour. So as long as the explosion can impart a velocity of a little over 4.1 miles per hour perpendicular to the course of the asteroid, then the asteroid bits will veer far enough off course to miss. So exploding the asteroid and sending it's parts off in different directions *can* work, if your explosion is big enough to impart that much velocity, and (this is the hard part) you can get a vehicle carrying the bomb out there 40 days before the impacyt.)

The best defense against such an asteroid is a better space program, with faster vehicles that don't require months of prep time to launch. That gives us the time for a simple solution to actually work.

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't Ceres and Vesta both gravitaionally spherical(ish)

You should also include that the body is massive enought to reatin some form of atmosphere. Pluto and Mercury manage this, the asteroids don't as far as I am aware.
Andy

Stupid names

[Anonymous Coward]

Who comes up with these names? Sedna, Quouor (sp)... Obviously not scientists. If it were up to scientists the names would something cool like "Trogdor"

Whar happened to Vulcan?

[Anonymous Coward]

This planet is called Sedna... What happened to Vulcan??

nasa press release passcode?!?!

[Jack Schitt]

My favorite thing from that press release is "The passcode is: "objects.""

Thats 4-11-17-15-22-21-8 on my Nasa(tm) Decoder Ring

Re: Primary orbits

[some guy I know]

If a uniformly round object's primary orbit is an orbit of our sun and meets X size requirement, it is a planet. This excludes moons that way since its primary orbit is not around the sun.

Then our own moon (the Moon) would be considered a planet if it meets the size requirement, because its primary orbit is an orbit of our sun.

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[Anonymous Coward]

Anna used to anyway, if you havent seen the "New" Anna you need to take a peek, she looks friggin fine dude. Huge Winnebagos and mucho slimmer than before. 63 pounds lost.

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[baadfood]

So if an asteroid is made of jello, its a planet? Given everything else in physics was ultimately water based - perhaps a planet should be dfined by constructing a thought experiment to figure out the mass of the smallest blob (mass) of water that would hold itself together under its own gravitational field. (with the stated assumption that the water mass in the thought experiment is in a temprature equilibrium with a nearby energy source (sun) maintaining a constant (Average) surface temprature of 22 degrees C.

What the qualification of a planet should be

[voss]

Something of sufficient mass to achieve a spherical shape consistent with planetary masses that is not a moon and has its own regular orbit. atmosphere is not a qualfication...otherwise mercury wouldnt be a planet

Pluto is a planet, so is Sedna...Quroar? The name is too weird(everyone beats up Quroar...steals its lunch money and gives it a wedgie) ;)

Picture of Earth from new Planet:

[conan776]

.-You Are Here

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[Jonathan Platt]

Not even the earth is completely spherical... whoops looks like we all now live on the moon.

Isn't Earth-Moon a double planet system?

[Lorem_Ipsum]

This would mean that Pluto counts and that Sedna is technically the 11th planet.

Re:It's Mandos? No . .

[vortexau]

No, actually, its Mongo:
"All creatures of Mongo will make merry... ...upon pain of death!"
.

Re:What happened to Vulcan?

[vortexau]

> This planet is called Sedna... What happened to Vulcan??

Nothing as yet! They send out an occasional Scout ship to our solar system, on the lookout for any signs of the use of Warp Technology.
.

Comet Orbiting Sedna

[stomer]

NASA later discovered a comet orbiting Sedna
Picture Here----> ;

Please learn how to use links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn how to use links.

<a href="http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~wiegert/3753/37 53.html">Near-Earth Asteroid 3753 Cruithne</a>

yields: Near-Earth Asteroid 3753 Cruithne

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[merlin_jim]

If it's big enough to assume spherical shape by the action of gravity, it's a planet.

I'd like to point out that no planet is perfectly spherical; maybe there's a certain amount of deviation that needs to be factored in?

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest asteroids are close to round. You can't have something that big in some arbitrary rock shape.

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[FreeUser]

By that logic, Anna Nicole Smith qualifies. ;)

So that's what has been perturbing earth's orbit!

Oxymoron there!

[McLae]

'self-respecting astrologer' is in there with 'military intelligence' or 'compassionate conservative'. Astrology has more to do with fortune telling that with the actual universe.

New NASA Pictures...

[authenticgeek]

...From the telecon are up here: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2 004-05/telecon/

Whatever happened to Quatoar

[mdbelt]

If you all recall in 2002 they pulled the same PR stunt and called it Quatoar. It is still buried in Nasa's site at:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/07oct _neww orld.htm

Re:Whatever happened to Quatoar ... correction

[mdbelt]

Oops. I meant to say Quaoar.

Orbital inclination?

[geoswan]

I read the NASA stuff. Its orbit is very elliptical. But I haven't read whether it orbits in the same plane as objects in the inner Solar System.

Isn't the very elliptical orbit the most noteworthy thing about this object?

the 10th planet

[the smooth criminal]

hahahhaha, oh this is brilliant, so astroligy is now defunct yes no? will they need to do tonnes of work to add it in, a new star sign perhaps. also the names crap they should have called it rupert after the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy

Mods can suck it

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow - after I even guided you to mod me Off-Topic if you felt compelled to mod me down...

It really should be +1, Informative.

But then I guess this mod thought it was flamebait because they wanted to flame me after reading it.

Well, when Asscroft orders everyone to have an anal camera installed, don't come crying to me, bitch.

Re: Primary orbits

[Loconut1389]

Maybe its a terminology issue, but at least the way im thinking of it, the moon orbits around the earth primarily and then that group of objects rotates around the sun.

Re: Primary orbits

[some guy I know]

Please check out the link that I provided.
The Moon's primary orbit is no more around the Earth than the Sun's is, although it may look like it from here.
(For example, we also say that the Sun "sets", even though it really doesn't.)
The Earth and Moon do orbit each other, but the primary orbit of each is around the Sun.

It is a terminology issue in the same way that defining what a planet is is a terminology issue.

You could change the definition to say that the largest (or heaviest?) body in a group of star-orbiting objects is the planet, and that the others are moons.
This would make the Earth a planet and the Moon a moon.

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

I think a good rule should be if it can hold enough of our lifeform (Size) to guarantee that the human race can successfully breed into the future then it should be called a planet. If it cant hold the amount of humans required to breed, breed & breed with success, then it shouldnt be a planet??

hmmm

[astrolger]

yes, i am an astrologer, and as such i have a great deal of interest in planetary news. I've been tracking "Sedna" for some time now.....at least the orbital period sounds correct....and i could go into all sorts of detail about how this only comfirms astrology and how this is an exciting time for us here, (whenever new planets are discovered, it represents a revolution in consciousness, ie Uranus, planet of thought independent thinking and electricity,discovered at the time of revolutions worldwide breaking away from the "rules" and also the time of harnessing the power of electricity, ty b franklin. or neptune, planet of the unconscious, and leader of psycho-analysis and mind altering drugs, a neptunian trait....) anyway, i'll prolly get flamed, but....anyone know what part of the sky i can find this new planet? relative to fixed stars preferably. Oh, and i absolutely consider pluto and charon dual, is there any question =) (saw that topic come up up above) i don't care if you think astrology is worthless, we're both paying attention to the same planets, so let's work together (sponsored by your local astrologer)

Re:Here, a rule that I propose.. planet versus oth

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is a much better definition - as written by the people who discovered Sedna

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/

If it's more massive than all other bodies in the same orbit (same closest approach to the sun): it's a planet.

So Earth is, Ceres (the largest asteroid) isn't, Pluto isn't, and neither is Sedna.