Strange Mini Solar System Found

starexplorer writes "In 1990, Penn State's Alex Wolszczan found the first exoplanets. But he never got much credit from mainstream researchers, because his planets (3 of them, roughly Earth-sized) orbit pulsars and hold no chance for harboring life. Now he's found a 4th object on the outskirts of the system, SPACE.com is reporting. Call it a planet, call it an asteroid, Wolszczan says, but call the setup a dark, eerie twin of the inner half of our solar system. Also in the same story, news of a brown dwarf just 15 times the mass of Jupiter that has a planet-making disk of stuff around it. Together, more problems for astronomers, who still don't have a basic definition for the word planet or a firm idea of what separates planets from stars."

Comments

It shouldn't be that hard.

[Corbin Dallas]

problems for astronomers, who still don't have a basic definition for the word planet or a firm idea of what separates planets from stars.

It's not as sexy as having a word like "planet", but all this confusion could be eliminated with a basic classification system that took into account distinguishing characteristics besides just it's mass.

As an example, one could define these objects through two primary attributes: The body's mass and the mass of that which it orbits. As I don't have exact mass data at hand, this example will use the following over-simplifications:

S = Solar Mass
G = Gas Giant Mass
R = Rock Planet Mass
M = Minor Mass ( appx Phobos to Pluto )
A = Asteroid Mass
D = Debrit ( 1m or smaller )

Of course, the real system would use exact scientific measurments rather than these crude examples.

Earth = SR ( Rock Planet Mass orbiting a Solar Mass )
Jupiter = SG ( Gas Giant Mass orbiting a Solar Mass )
Pluto = SM ( Minor Mass orbiting a Solar Mass )
Titan = GR ( Rock Planet Mass orbiting a Gas Giant Mass )
etc
etc

You could even create a symbol to represent the galactic center, which could be used in relation to stars and other free roaming bodies. Binary stars can be represented using SS, since they're orbiting each other.

Anyway, the point is that you can not come up with solid definitions of these bodies on mass alone. Take into account other major factors as this example does.