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IAU Rules Pluto Still a Planet
scottyscout writes "NPR reports that Pluto has dodged a bullet.
An international panel has unanimously recommended that Pluto retain its title as a planet,
and it may be joined by other undersized objects that revolve around the sun.
Some astronomers had lobbied for reclassifying Pluto as its so tiny. And at least one major
museum has excluded Pluto from its planetary display. But sources tell NPR that under the
proposal, to be presented at a big meeting of astronomers in Prague next week for a vote,
Pluto would become part of a new class of small planets and several more objects could be
granted membership."
According to wikipedia:
-Earth's Diameter: 12,756.274 km
-Pluto's Diameter: 2306±20 km
-Jupiter's Diameter: 142,984 km
-Proportion of Earth to Pluter: 12756.274 / 2306 = 5.531
-Proportion of Jupiter to Earth: 142984 / 12756.274 = 11.209
Hmm... Jupiter has over twice the proportional difference with Earth as Earth has with Pluto. So I guess Jupiter wouldn't really consider Earth a real planet.
Personally, I think we should leave the little guy alone. Throw UB313 in there as well. Just give it a cool name that fits in with that whole "my very educated mother..." thing.
Like the well learned and professional scientist said: "We'll call them dwarf planets or something".
--
"A man is asked if he is wise or not. He replies that he is otherwise" ~Mao Zedong
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
... mickey, minnie, donald.
In other news, Pixar announces corporate sponsorship of IAU.
Why all the controversy anyway?
Why not fix the "official" number of planets at nine, including the largest, nearest, and most well-known of the Kuyper Belt Objects, and leave it at that?
Pluto's nature won't change either way, and our understanding of it won't change either way. This kind of legalistic controversy just for the sake of legalistic controversy is getting pretty annoying.
Traditionally, Pluto has been a planet. Now, I'm not saying tradition trumps everything, but I see no reason why it shouldn't trump meaningless debate.
Let me know if I've got it all wrong, and there is actually meaningful debate on this topic.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Hell, I can show you museums that show kind, gentle dinosaurs living in harmony with man. So what?
Click here or here.
Has Pluto put out a press release yet. Are it and it supports going to have a celebration party? Is Jupiter going to be there? I've got a 'thing' for gas giants...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Really now...this has already been settled! Pluto is a Class C Geoinactive planet I mean sheesh.....
People will debate Pluto's class until the end of the solar system. This is not a new story, in the sense that this is not the first time Pluto's status has been discussed. I think it should just be grandfathered in, if anything. Plus we have a bunch of other objects out there that could be considered planets too. Sedna, Xena, Quaoar, Varuna, Ixion... what do we do with those?
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
The real problem with Pluto is that it makes Uranus look huge.
I agree implicitly.. They should do something big with it- like name a cartoon dog after it or something.
The panel's recommendation is being reviewed by the International Astronomical Union's executive committee. In an interview last week, executive committee member Bob Williams said the definition proposed by the panel had some potential problems, and he was not at all sure if the astronomers voting in Prague this month would approve it.
"At this point, I don't feel confident enough to bet in favor of it," he said.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
Why not just call them planets? People keep throwing up the excuse that "if we call Pluto a planet then there's lots of things that would be planets.". So? Why should we readjust our definition just to keep numbers low? They don't care about some elite social status. If there's 9 in this system or 853, we should call them planets. If we want to nitpick on composition, then Earth and Jupiter certainly aren't the same type of thing either.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It's more than Pluto being tiny. Pluto has a highly elliptical, out-of-plane orbit that crosses over Neptune's orbit, AND its orbit is 3/2 in phase with Neptune, suggesting that it was captured by Neptune's gravity.
Is a "planet" something that was created with the solar system, or is a "planet" simply something that has a moon? Right now, we're using the latter definition.
If you want to see another example of scientific retrenchment, check out Phylocode. For years biologists have been classifying species on a Linnaean 2D grid, inheritance and time, as if God somehow keeps all his evolutions in perfect lockstep. Phylocode, tree-based, uses the inheritance dimension only.
Yep, I called it. Many moons ago I said if they rule it's a planet it means science is dead. Real science doesn't label something based on feel good social acceptance, but strives for as much exactness as possible.
As of now, the modern age is officially over and dystopic post-modern has begun.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Any object maneuverable enough to dodge a bullet can't possibly be considered a planet.
KeS
People seem to be mising the point. The problem here is not to vote on if Puto is a planet or not. The problem is to define what is a planet. Many people have proposed ways to define "Planet" but then what you apply the proposed definition to our solar system yu get undesired results. Almost every resonable proposed definition results in a solar system with either 8 planets or more than 9. Next problemis that you want your new definition to "work" outside the our solar system on the 100+ planets that have been discovered around other stars.
A number of years ago, the question of a definition of a planet was raised as a result of discoveries of "planets" outside of our solar system as well as a growing number of Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) discoveries in our solar system. The IAU Division of Planetary Systems Sciences technical committee wisely chose to delay a decision on a definition until a more significant body of data was obtained.
In the mean time, a well meaning but widely misunderstood suggestion from an esteemed Astronomer suggested that the planet Pluto also be given a nice round minor planet number (i.e., reserve the next multiple of 10000). His intent was to recognize the special nature of Pluto as a large member of the KBO (Kuiper Belt Object) family. He never intended to demote Pluto from planet status. However, the press took the phrase "making Pluto a minor planet" and blew the controversy way out of proportion.
An executive committee recommendation on Planet definition was formed to draft a proposal for a definition of a planet. Minutes from the IAU executive committee indicated that they favored definitions that were based on measurable physical properties over arbitrary values. For example, they signaled that they were NOT inclined to look favorably on proposals such as "limit the number of 9 planets", or proposals that set an arbitrary minimum size of a Planet.
Last January at the AAS conference, an IAU liaison announced that the IAU executive committee was scheduled to produce a report on its recommendations just prior to the IAU 26th IAU General Assembly in Prague (Aug 14 to 25, 2006). The liaison recommended that any final comments and recommendations be submitted to the exectuive committee at least a month prior to the IAU general assembly.
I was part of a group that submitted a recommendation that the definition of a Planet encompass a requirement that "it must orbit a primary fuser with sufficient mass to deform it into an spheroidal / oblate spheroidal shape". We realized that our proposal could result in redefining several bodies as planets including the large asteroid Ceres. We proposed that a new sub-class of Planets could be defined (again based on measurable physical properties) to acuminate these new dwarf planets.
We were told that a number of other groups had submitted similar of very similar proposals. I have not examined the executive committee report in detail, however it appears that IAU executive committee agrees, in principle, with such proposals.
On Tuesday 2006 August 22, 12:45-13:45 (local Prague time), in Forum Hall, executive committee recommendation on Planet definition will be presented. Based on the unanimous recommendation of the executive committee, I am hopeful of a favorable outcome form the IAU General assembly.
chongo (was here)
It's been suggested that the best way to decide what is or is not a planet is to determine if the mass is held together the force of gravity or electrostatic forces (like metal bonds).
If by gravity then it should be considered a planet. If by chemisty then it's just a hunk of rock.
This makes the most sense to me.
Don't we already say enough crap on here to scare off geek women? *rolleyes*
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
It's not a matter of adjusting our definition. It's a matter of having one, which we don't.
Various people (not generally astronomers) want a strict, reasonable definition of "Planet", but find that these either exclude Pluto, or include a vast number of things no one would really consider a planet.
Astronomers generally don't care. They know Plutos properties, and don't use "planet" as a terribly specific term. This is purely a laymans controversy. It's significant only because something you learned in grade school was an over-simplification. Experts understand the details, and exactly which over-simplification is better is not very interesting to them.
But since I'm a layman, my 2 cents:
Juptier and Earth aren't like each other. They also aren't like anything else in their repsective orbital neighborhoods. There's a whole lot of stuff that orbits the sun at roughly the same distance as Earth, and none of it is much like Earth. Ditto for Jupter and 6 other object whose names you know. There's a whole lot of stuff that orbits at similar distance as Pluto, and quite a bit of it is a lot like Pluto.
Somewhere in there is my own favorite over-simplification, which kicks out Pluto.