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The Tenth Planet Shrinks Under Hubble's Gaze
starexplorer2001 writes "An object called the 10th planet by some astronomers is not as large as previously thought. New images of 2003 UB313 (aka Xena) were delivered by the Hubble Telescope and showed up as only 1.5 pixels! Now, some are calling to demote Pluto and kill Xena."
This has to be another sinister plot by Aries! Xena should have killed him when she had the chance!
how exactly do you represent or see half a pixel? i thought pixels were supposed to be atomic...?
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Maybe it's all black except for a bright white spot.
Forget Xena, the planet should be named Marvin.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
New Face discovered on Mars
Ah, I still remember fondly the first time I saw a slashdot thread climb to a few hundred posts of argument about 'what makes a planet a planet?'. If ever a term was crying out for a rigid, ostensive definition from astronomers, it's 'planet'. From the ancient greek word for "wanderer", if we don't tighten it up some, the argument will come trotting out every time someone finds a rock doing laps about the sun. Stays within 10 degrees of the ecliptic, say 3,000km across...that works for me.
"New images of 2003 UB313 (aka Xena) were delivered by the Hubble Telescope and showed up as only 1.5 pixels! "
1.5 pixels on what scale? A pixel is not a unit of measurement for size, it just denotes the smallest distinct unit in a picture. Yes, it appears sensational to say that a 'planet' appeared to be 1.5 pixels (100 exclamation marks), but that's just as stupid as saying that my backyard appears to be 5 pixels wide on Google Earth. Gives no information unless you say that the resolution is 1 pixel = X metres.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
...post a link to the image?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
As every Dr. Who fanboy knows, the tenth planet is named Mondas. http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_2d.htm/. What is slashdot coming to?
As George Carlin said pollution; Earth will be fine. We might be fucked; but the earth will be A-OK.
So, how do you get half a pixel on a screen? I too was under the impression that an individual pixel was either all on or all off...
Do you guys know the concept of "resizing a ditital image"?
Subsampling of a pixel can be done by knowing the intensity values in the neighboring 8 pixels (or greater). In other words, you can derive the intensity value at the pixel boundary by taking the mean value of the intensity values detected in these two pixels.
In this case, the measured size is derived based on mathematical characterization of the apparent point source.
I ought to be able to say this in a simpler term, damn it...
It's because the word planet isn't really a scientific word. There's no hard point where something becomes a planet and where it's not a planet. Words like planet are really just our own convienent language definitions. Arguing about whether something is a planet or not is a little like arguing whether something is a chair or not. It only matters based upon useage.
AccountKiller
It can be derived with trigonometry:
(angle)*distance_to_the_object == size_of_the_planet
which are
(1.5pixel*0.025"/pixel)/(60*60*57.3radian/") * 100AU * 1.5e8 km/AU ~ 2700km.
If you read the article, you'll find that the size is only 1400km, though.
The difference results from the fact that the measured size of 1.5 pixel
includes the size of its point spread function for the HST/ACS/HRC (i.e.,
even a true point source show some finite size in optics...something we
cannot beat).
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. The only sensible definition for a planet is an object that is spherical due to its own gravity, orbits a star, and is not itself a star. But these bozos keep saying "But Pluto is so different from the other planets, we can't call it a planet!" Well boohoo. So it's freaking different! Earth and Jupiter are somewhat freaking different from each other, last time I checked, but we call both of those objects planets! "But then there will probably be a thousand planets in the solar system!" they say. I say, get over it! This is not a big problem unless you're an astrologer! I honestly don't give a rat's ass about Pluto's legacy as being called a planet, if we are going to continue calling it a planet then we also need to call this other object (and several others) planets as well. The problem is, we keep being told that this needs to be controversial because defining a planet is somehow difficult, what I think is happening here is that there are a group of scientists who have an emotional problem with there being a thousand planets in the solar system and are preventing the IAU from adopting the obvious definition.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
NASA secretly discovers disturbing facts about the nature of the tenth planet, and decides the news is too shocking for the wide audience. A plan is created to announce the news in several manageable bites:
:)
1. tenth planet not as big as previously thougth, it's more like a small planet, but hey it's a still a friggin 10-th planet, right!
2. tenth planet not a planet as previously thougth, it's more like a moon of Pluto.. but it's still a friggin planet, if not THE 10-th planet...
3. new moon not really a moon, turns out it's more like a really big meteor, so big, it's kinda as big as a moon, almost, but not exactly...
4. big meteor kinda smaller than big, more like, medium meteor, still there though! xena, the medium meteor!! Yei!
5. ok maybe it's not that of a medium, more like a small meteor, little warrior meteor thingy.
6. hey what did you know! that little meteor thingy noone really friggin cares about, was a smudge on the Hubble lens system! huh, sh*t happens, but it's not like we confused it to be the 10-th planet in the Solar system, I mean, cut us some slack, come on
7. hey watch us drink cola in zero gravity. wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble!! lol!
Well, what kind of a name should that be anyway? Xena is not a roman god or goddess, not even a small one like Luna, Nike or Pluto.
So if this object should be called a planet, here's the proper list of names to choose from:
Acca Larentia, Alemonia, Anna Perenna, Carmenta, Carna, Consus, Dea Dia, Feronia, Flora, Fons, Furrina, Maia, Nike, Ops, Pales, Pomona, Portunus, Robigus, Silvanus, Veiovis, Vertumnus, Volturnus
everything else is not acceptable.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Don't forget it's a reversed (negative) image, so Xena itself is dark and the background of space is white.
I think if you look very closely you can see a few faint stars in the background...
" "...kill Xena"
...
I thought network television did that..."
You are wrong, she came back as a Cylon
All the Pixels around it were black except for one that was white, and one next to it that was grey, 1/2 white, 1/2 black. The pixel averages everything in the space it covers. I don't know if they actually use black or white or not, but that's how it works. Does that simplify things?
Someone save me from this sanity.
I bet they're looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope. If they turn Hubble around, that thing'll turn out to be HUGE!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I've been reading a book recently (The Geography of Thought) on the differences between how Western and Eastern people think. One of the main theses in the book is that Western thought (since ancient Greek times) is oriented toward objects and their classification, whereas Eastern thought (since ancient Chinese times) focuses more on continuous substances and the relationships between them. Another thesis (or corrolary of the previous one) is that Western thought avoid contradictions, whereas Eastern thought invites them.
So I wonder if this is a case (debating the classification of a "planet") where Western-style thinking misleads us. Although this kind of thinking is great for science, at the same time insisting on logic can be irrational: simply wasting time on an issue that is inherently complex and not either-or.
Unless the greenhouse effect is runaway, like Venus, and all the water is evaporated away. Then we're all fucked.
I did some scary back of envelope calculations today about Venus. It's closer to the sun, and receives about 1.9 times the sunlight as Earth. But its atmosphere is so reflective (which is why it's so bright in the sky, the albedo is almost twice that of Earth), that only half the amount of sunlight gets through the CO2 and SO2 clouds without being bounced back into space.
Venus receives less energy from the sun than Earth does.
I try not to think too much about that, it scares the living crap out of me. Something went terribly terribly wrong with Venus. We need to figure out what that was.
It's likely that earth has a corrective measure that will throw the planet back into a severe ice age if CO2 levels rise too high. Our history is dominated by ice ages. Still I like my planet the temperature it is now, not severely hotter or colder.
The reasons are simple. Even Mike Brown says there is no scientific basis for calling 2003 UB313 a planet. Here is what he said last year:
I will not argue that it is a scientific planet, because there is no good scientific definition which fits our solar system and our culture, and I have decided to let culture win this one.
He's using Mike Brown's acceptance of the generally accepted cultural view that planets are 'anything pluto sized or larger' as a way of discrediting 2003 UB313. In fact, Mike Brown had felt previously that the definition of Planet was unsatisfactory and threw out some ideas on how the definition could be altered. http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/index.htm l#planets links to the text in question. Mike Brown has since come to the conclusion that culture is going to decide what defines a planet, not a bunch of scientists. So basicly, unless the scientists who want to change the definition of a planet can convince society to listen, it's going to be like a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it. Sure, it happened, but who cares?
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
I'm an astronomer (in a different sub-field), and I'm pretty happy with the situation as it stands. The whole is-it-a-planet-or-not debate gets people interested in astronomy, but it's of essentially no significance to us. It's only a name, we care about the reality of things and not the invented names given to them.
This is a cynical way to put it, and maybe some other astronomers care more than I do. I'd certainly like it if people were more interested in cutting edge research (or detailed politics, computer technology...) than naming stuff: a name is the ultimate in empty media-friendly soundbites. Still, everyone is comfortable expressing an opinion in this debate, it's nice like that.
If you really want to scare the pants off you and the shit outta you (preferably in that order, otherwise you'll have to change) read Bill Bryson's "A breif history of just about everything."
In it he explains how much of an anomoly we are, not only that life appeared on this planet, not only that it evolved to multicellular organisms, not only that it evolved into inteligent beings, but also that it survived all the many catastrophes that might have occurred throught that process, and how, at any minute, any number of things could completely wipe us off the planet.
He talks about how as greenhouse gasses build up in the atmosphere one of a couple things could happen, either the heat is trapped on the surface and continues to build rapidly, boiling the seas and creating more greenhouse gasses (a neverending cycle, it'd never end without some outside influence), or the gasses would reflect the heat from the sun causing the climate to initially heat up (shrinking the ice caps, and causing more evaporation) and then (relatively) suddenly getting very cold, creating more and more ice, which reflect more and more sunlight.
We're really kind of walking along a tightrope when it comes to this kinda thing, and we're dancing around mindlessly with a bowling ball in our hand, it's a total fluke that we havn't fallen yet.
Oh, and we're technically still in an ice age just at a short high point in temperature, normally the tempareature is either freezing cold (ice covering most of the planet) or swealtering hot (tropical just about everywhere), mostly freezing cold though...
and that's just the temperature, I didn't get into the potential extraterrestrial bombardment (now that doesn't mean aliens, it just means things not from Earth), supervolcanos (Yellowstone), disease, etc. Not to mention things that we've done, are doing, and may continue to do, to ourselves.
I highly reccomend Bill Bryson's book, it tells you we're doomed in a way that'll keep you laughing the entire time.
According to the TV show CSI, they can take that pixel increase the image size and then enhance it enough to make out all the different geographical terrian on the planet/object in space. I tried it in Photoshop and it just doesn't work.
Can I bum a sig?
Maybe it's because Hubble giggled...
No. Does it have something to do with enlarging a thumbnail image of breasts?
Just click on it instead, buddy. Chances are it goes to a full size picture.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Its not a damn 10th planet, its just a large kuiper balt object. So's pluto for that matter. Theyre not really planets, its just that UB313 isnt cool sounding enough to be on a headline. I highly doubt the story "Kuiper Belt object UB313 found to be of different size than previously ascertained".
The classes of object in the Solar System (according to shared features) are:
- Gas Giants
- Rocky Planets
- Asteroids
- Comets
- Kuiper Belt Objects
- Oort Cloud Objects (only Sedna yet observed?)
And then there are some asteroid-like bodies that have wandered off (Apollos, Jupiter Trojans, etc) and some kuiper-like bodies (Centaurs) that have wandered off. Moons are a bit trickier to classify, but we'll ignore them since they're not Sun-orbiting.Planet is most sensibly defined to be the combination of the first two classes. They share such features as: circular in-plane orbits, large mass, common formation. The most important feature of these two classes is that they are small; four bodies each. A definition of planet that included thousands of objects would not be useful.
Since Pluto and 2003-UB_313 fall into the KBO class (sharing such features as: eccentric orbits, resonance with Neptune, icy composition, medium mass), they are not planets. Pluto was originally mistaken for a Gas Giant-type body; it's not, so it should have been declassified as a planet. However, the KBO class was unknown at the time, and Americans liked the idea of an American-discovered planet, so it got inappropriately included. As for 2003-UB_313, it's hardly surprising that the discoverer thinks that it's a planet, but his opinion should clearly not be taken seriously.
Xerxes
Still I like my planet the temperature it is now, not severely hotter or colder.
Being a resident of inland Canada, I ask the global community to keep polluting! Milder winters, earlier spring, it's not so bad.
...the Roman goddess of bleeding men dry. I'm not divorced, but I think my less fortunate brethren might want to skip over this one.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?