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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."
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)
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
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
G-Force music visualization
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.
;-P
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.
How To Get Humans To Mars
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...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
May we never see th
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
-kgj
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!
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:
read on for his full article.
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.
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.
A Jupiter-sized object would hide from the Infrared, but its gravity, surely would not.
what isn't pure gold to the conspiracy community?
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
Gotcha. Yeah, I don't buy into the tree of life matching with planets. Doesn't make sense.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
[astrology] also doesn't work period :)
...Usually, IMHO, to be palatable to potential followers.
... 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.
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.
It's a question of degree
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
-kgj
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
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.
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.
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.
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).
(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~~
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
(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.))
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
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.