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Geologists Angry About New 'Pluton' Definition
An anonymous reader writes "According to a story over at Nature, some geologists are ticked off at the International Astronomical Union for using the word 'pluton' to describe a round object orbiting the sun with a period more than 200 years. A pluton, it seems, is a common type of rock formation that exists in most Geology 101 curricula. IAU head Owen Gingerich is quoted as saying that he was only peripherally aware of the definition, and because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important."
IAU head Owen Gingerich is quoted as saying that he was only peripherally aware of the definition, and because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important.
In other news, the US Congress voted not to move to Linux, after Senator Binghaman discovered that MS Word's spell checker doesn't recognize it.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
If Microsoft had only had added a word that every geology noob knows, then the astronomy guys would have been better prepared at the conference.
...please help me, who shall Slashdot rant on first?
Or....maybe we should be angry at the academics who obviously are not running OpenOffice on Linux.
I've heard of "pluton" and "plutino".
A word with more than one meaning? The horror!
Life's EULA: shit happens.
This is far from the first time that a term has been overloaded. It happens all the time across fields, sometimes even within (I'm looking at you computer science).
There's nothing worse than when rock geeks, and rocks in space geeks get into argument over vocabulary. ;)
Error 407 - No creative sig found
For example, nanite is not in the spell checker. But I guarantee you, it's a very important word.
this is confusing on so many levels... scientists are actually checking their spelling now? word is considered to have a list of all the "important" words in the english language? we need a definition for planetoid-ish objects that take 200 years to orbit the sun? how fucking often do you talk about "plutons" other than to debate what they should be called and how to define them? does it actually merit a new word?
1. n. some rock thingy that noone* cares about.
2. n. some astromomical thingy that nooone* cares about.
* by weight, not intellectual capacity.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Today, the UFC brings you: Scientist Cage Match! My money's on the geologists. Despite their tendencies towards excessive beer consumption, at least they run around outdoors occasionally.
Geologist goes postal against Ballmer, fights back, actually throwing his chair at him (oh the irony) for not including the world pluton in the ms word spellcheck.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Plutrino
Plutonite
Mini-Pluto
iPluto Nano
Context should be sufficient to tell what kind of 'pluton' is being discussed. It's not like plutons pluton through the atmosphere and become plutons all the time.
Seriously though, the word 'nucleus' has several different definitions in different branches of science, and I've never had problems with it.
because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important.
Well next time, maybe the IAU should check Wikipedia just to be sure. There is some really good info there. . .
Way to go Owen.
/* somewhat functional - fix later */
Pluton eh? Six letters long, good chance of annoying at least two groups now. Now I know what to call my next game. ;)
Skipping for the moment implications of inadequacy on the part of both MS and this scientist, clearly there is a problem when people base their work on expectations of intellectual integrity on the part of corporate IT products like this, especially those not easily accessible by reviewers. There is a Japanese character dictionary built into Windows too but I have no idea how a reviewer could grade it against commonly used print versions.
Besides, geology seems to be one of the most highly leveraged sciences in planetary studies, if you consider most of what the Mars robots were doing was geology. For a planetary scientists to miss this is bizarre.
In future, when they need to check possible prior uses of a word, perhaps they could find someone who has access to the Internet and check the Wiki, answers.com, or even Google.
They should have googled it.
Sheesh, those astronomers sure are lacking in the geekiness department.
... at least the world's medical researchers had the conscientousness to check if the word 'Asteroid' was taken.
OpenOffice.org advocates, this is proof we need.
Walt Disney Productions sued the IAU for infringing its trademarked term for the excreta of Mickey Mouse's dog.
So... What is a Planet Again?
i'm basically saying that as we discover more and more exotic extrasolar orbital arrangements out there, the meaning of "planet" will come under ever-increasing fluidity
so basically i am saying:
1. anything round with an atmosphere is a planet. in other words titan is a "planet of saturn"
2. anything round without an atmosphere is a moon. in other words mercury is a "moon of the sun"
3. a gas giant should come to mean something different than a planet... something more akin to a star, since gas giants really are nothing but stars not massive enough to start fusing. a little more mass and we'd be in a binary star system, with jupiter shining bright
4. anything non-round=asteroid
my basic point is that the "what it is made of" should come to mean something different than the "what it orbits", and the "what it is made of" should be more important in our nomenclature than the "what it orbits." is mercury more interesting than titan? no. so why is mercury amongst the pantheon of planets and titan relegated to lowly moon status along with captured asteroids and other forlorn rocks?
titan certainly is more interesting to us than mercury, simply because it has an atmosphere. and our nomenclature should reflect that. why is something as complex and interesting as titan just a moon, like deimos and phobos, which aren't really "moon"s either, but just captured asteroids? and why is mercury a planet? it could never be as interesting as titan. having an atmosphere means something significant, MORE significant than orbital focus
look: elephants eat plants. so do ants. is that a valid system for classifying elephants and ants together, and keeping elephants apart from lions? not at all. lions and elephants are mammals, ants are insects. elephants should be classed closer to lions than to ants, because the "what it eats" is LESS important than the "how it is designed" in zoology. and this makes obvious sense. why should planetary classification be any different?
just like with planets and moons: the "what it is made of" is more interesting and important to us (titan is more important than mercury is to us) than the "what it orbits", mercury is just a moon. titan is a planet
our nomenclature should focus on composition over orbital focus. and our current system of placing orbital focus over composition will be shown to be more and more broken as our catalogue of satellites grows and grows as we discover more and more exotic extrasolar arrangements
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have a bachelor's degree in Geology and this never crossed my mind before, I'm sort of embarrased that this never never happened. Now that someone has mentioned that "pluton" refers to both an intrusive igneous body and a type of planet, I think that the IAU was pretty stupid. Then again IIRC, in Geology "pluton" may be deprecated because I don't recall too many of my professors using it. The perferred word, in Geology, may be "intrusion", but what do I know?
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
1. anything round with an atmosphere is a planet. in other words titan is a "planet of saturn"
2. anything round without an atmosphere is a moon. in other words mercury is a "moon of the sun"
Even our moon has an atmosphere. Is it really a planet?
If you set an arbitrary "value" for minimum atmosphere, what do you do with planet/moons that fluctuate with their orbit? Do they change categories when they warm up and get more of an atmosphere, and then return to being a moon when they freeze again?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
look: elephants eat plants. so do ants. is that a valid system for classifying elephants and ants together, and keeping elephants apart from lions?
Yes, in fact it's done all the time. There are many classification systems for most things, and you chose the one relevant to the phenomenon which you are interested in.
KFG
Actually, in Greek, Pluto is Plutonas, if anyone cares.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20000718& mode=classic
pluton |plotän| noun Geology a body of intrusive igneous rock. ORIGIN 1930s: back-formation from plutonic .
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
"Pluton" IS Pluto, transliterated... Uran, Neptun, Pluton are three last planets in Russian, or whatever they are called now. I had to stop reading and give myself some time to parse (in lexical, not synctactic way! :-) ) the announcement to realize that what they are talking about is just a "pluto-ish" object!
Paul B.
Which means the term "planet" has very little meaning and is realistically only useful as a means to determine research funding.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
and in fact, pluto has a tenuous atmosphere as well, so pluto is still controversial
i'm not saying that this classification system i'm talking about is absolute and noncontentious and without any fluidity or controversy
NO system is
i'm just saying that the trade off in arguments from "is pluto a planet because it is so puny?" to "does pluto have an atmosphere worthy of consideration?" is a valid trade off in arguments.
that the atmosphere arugment is more highly contrained... not more arbitrary... not like we suddenly have 53 planets like we do today, simply because something is round and orbits the sun
i say that's bullshit
i say we have 4-6 planets (titan, earth, venus, mars, maybe another two)
4 gas giants
and a heck of a lot of moons and asteroids in our solar system
and that focuses our mind to the objects that are really interesting on our solar system: a calssification system that does the job it should do: provide some scientific rigidity to focus our minds on "what is interesting" and "what are things made of"
that's more important than simply orbital focus
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First, the obligatory "think of the children" remark: it could be confusing for students to deal with two definitions for the same word. sure, there are numerous times that this problem comes up, but adding one more, while pointing to the examples of others does not help - just one more thing to possibly confuse.
The second point is that judging from TFA, it does not appear that the word has even been defined a second time (yet.) that means that there is all this debate not about changing the meaning of a word, but about what word to assign to this new class of objects. Since it is out in the open now, it is as easy as finding a new name for the "plutons", and using that.
I would also like to jump in on the MSword bashing. While this is a good way to test for common use words, any freshman (or highschool student even) should know from typing their pappers that spellcheck does not reconize just about any scientific terms.
There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
I've got a few:
Morons
Pylons
Nylons
Klingons
No, not the planets - the scientists. Astro-types can be morons, geologists shall be klingons...
I figure if we give them names they can waste their time arguing about that instead of winding the mainstream media up into a frenzy of "Pluto's not a planet" stories.
Who's with me?
I am a leaf on the wind
I agree with you, if I can change the definition of "agree" to mean "you can't change definitions of words just because you don't agree with what they should classify!".
A planet's a planet's a planet, a round (which implies large enough to form rounded under its own gravitation pull) object orbiting a star. If you want some other way of classifying objects, make up new words (or annoy geologists by nicking more of theirs).
If you start redefining words, you all of a sudden have to take the extra time to make sure that all parties of a discussion agree to use the same one, otherwise you can be talking about completely different things, and the whole purpose of language goes out the window.
We're a world gone mad!
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
...that someone said Disney would be the one getting angry over this matter. Who would have thought it would be the geologists? Is Disney not doing everything they can to protect their "character's" trademark? I never even had guessed that Microsoft would come into the picture. Oh well, I guess I still haven't seen everthing. :)
It doesn't spell check on my Mac, but if I right-click and do a "Look up in Dictionary", voila, there it is. Go figure.
It's like Mozilla Firebird vs Firebird SQL all over again!
of course there are many classification systems
it is also true, in any field of study, that one classification system comes to rise above the other as the most common shorthand for the most useful measurement of interest
this system comes to dominate, as well it should, as it is most useful to our minds
it doesn't stop the other systems form being used, in certain more rare situations, but that one dominant system comes to be most useful for introducing students to a discipline, etc.
let's say we find a new extrasolar planetary system
we have 20 atmosphereless rocks orbitting the star, and one gas giant
and that gas giant has 10 rocks orbitting it, 2 of which are spherical and have significant atmospheres
guess which objects will be of most inerest to us?
those 2 spherical rocks with atmospheres
i say those 2 are the "planets" in that system. the rest are moons, asteroids, and a gas giant
and i say this system of classification makes the most sense, as it dovetails directly along with humankinds natural lines of investigation
in any other classification system, those two "moons" with atmospheres would still be the most interesting and widely studied objects in that system
but in that other system, natural interest does not match classification
therefore, that system is less intrisincally useful, and therefore inferior
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I mean really, who cares? Glazer said, "It would be amazingly confusing." Come on. Code (password, PIN, etc.), code (source code), and co-ed (awesome) are pretty easy to keep apart, it's called the rest of the sentence. I doubt anyone would confuse the two definitions of pluton in context.
www.blueapples.org
Oh! OH!!! OH!!!!! So Microsoft spell check is how you tell who and what is important huh?!! Look your own name up in it you fucking asshole! OH!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
extrasolar
protoplanetary
protostar
Seyfert
blazars
Kuiper
Just to name a few. Apparently they've been using this method of naming for a while now.
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." -Isaac Asimov
I am firmly of the belief that, in a subject like Astronomy, isolated definitions which have no broader context and no reason that can be backed by some combination of pure maths and/or pure physics are fine as personal labels but useless as categories in a science.
In science, you produce a hypothesis that can be tested in a manner that is repeatable by anyone. A test for gravitational rounding is problematic, as it is a continuum and not an on/off switch. A test of orbiting a star is just as problematic, as it immediately prohibits planets that reach escape velocity from remaining planets. The object hasn't changed, only the relative velocity. If such a planet is recaptured by another star, without slowing down, then it becomes a planet again. This time, all that has changed has been the force exerted by another object entirely.
When the definition of A depends on the characteristics of B, you've a lousy definition. A cat remains a cat, even if a dog walks down a street backwards.
The IAU's definition, then, does NOT meet any quantifiable standard whatsoever, it is merely political window-dressing. The choice of Pluton, on the grounds that it wasn't in a spell-checker, is further evidence that the IAU themselves never took the definition seriously. Do you think the IAU would consider it acceptable for an astronomer to claim something was peer-reviewed, if Grammatik or some other grammer tool didn't complain? Of course not! If it's not a refereed paper in a credible journal, then they would use the astronomer's guts for fishing bait. Then why accept any less from the IAU themselves?
It is a pity that there has been so little adverse reaction to the decision, and that those of us who are opposed to the new definition have no voice in the issue. It is not acceptable, IMHO, for a major international organization to behave in a manner that is clearly harmful to the credibility of astronomy in particular but also the scientific community in general. I doubt they'll be ashamed of themselves - I doubt they'll even care until they run into so many contradictions that the definition is totally untennable, and then they'll whine that they could not possibly have forseen it happening, and how were they to know?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
there is no magic lord of all language who decides what word means what. meanings drift all the time
go back a century or two and i think you'll find the word "gay" (happy) meant something different
that "imp" was a plant offshoot... then a child... then a little evil thing
that "cannibal" used to mean a native of the caribbean
how many more thousands of examples do you want?
and so as we discover more extrasolar objects, we could start calling things "planets" that orbit gas giants, simply because they hold our interest the most
even though, technically, by todays meaning, it should be considered to be a "moon"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
bozons. Weak bosons....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
a "planet" should be anything mostly earthlike in size/ atmosphere, etc... where the cutoffs are on the various qualities of course would be contentious, but i think we need, more than any other classification system, is to qualify and clarify which objects in any planetary system are most earthlike, and therefore of most interest to us
and those are the "planets", REGARDLESS of what they orbit
and that classification system, and that meaning of the word "plaent" makes the most sense
"what is it made of" is more important to our minds than "what does it orbit"
titan is way more interesting to us than mercury
mercury is just a moon
titan is a planet
who cares what it orbits, that is less important to our natural interests
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I want to know how so many idiots get out of bed each morning?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
whatever.
This space available.
but i'd like to throw a monkey wrench at your nascent definitions with these examples:
How about a tertiary star system orbiting a common gravitational barycenter, each star with it's own planetary system... and one planet that, via natural harmonics between the three stars, switches orbital allegiance every now and then? Unlikely but possible. Well, what do we call such an object then with a nomenclature dependent first and foremost on what something orbits, rather than what it is made of?
How about a trojan planet? Usually objects that are trojans are tiny, a requirement of objects existing at Lagrange points for two much larger objects. But what if those two objects were so massive that they allowed for the existence of a mass large enough to gravitationally become a sphere and retain an atmosphere at the LaGrange point? Yes, a trojan planet. Again, unlikely, but plausible.
so what i am saying is that being spherical, with a significant atmosphere, should eb the first and foremost important consideration in calling something a planet. that the "what does it orbit" modification of an objects meaning should be a distant second ("planet of saturn", "moon of the sun")... and perhaps size a more distant third ("plantoid", "megaplanet")
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, there are only 17576 TLAs to go around, and most of the snazzy ones are already taken.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...is it in the Scrabble dictionary?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
They also renamed Uranus to Urectum.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
NERD FIIIIGHT!!
Pluton, or more accurately "Plutón", also happens to be the Spanish word for the planet Pluto itself: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plut%C3%B3n_(planeta)
What about calling it a Clydon or even a Tombaughn after the guy who discovered Pluto. Better yet. Since he was from Kansas. We could call them Kansons or Americons.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Astophysicists everywhere pulled the old, "If it weren't for planets there wouldn't be any plutons so we're keeping the word, neaner neaner neaner" argument.
Are they just as mad about "rock" and/or "roll" (both words used commonly in GEOL 101)?
I demand (DEMAND!) that everything that orbits the sun be called "natural space satellite" and that all other objects that do not orbit the sun be called a "space pebble" except for man made extra terrestrial matter that will be called "space junk" and that satellites of my newly termed "natural space satellite" be called a "remote natural space satellite" and that satellites of those satellites be called "remote natural space satellite subtype a [or b, c, d, e...]" and so on and so forth for satellites of satellites of satellites (and so on and so on...)
Now as for light within in the the heliosphere but not within the atmosphere of a satellite it must be called "space light type [star, phosphorescent gasses, space junk emitted]".
And the tails of comets must be re-termed as "debris of satellite [enter satellite name]" and that any solid particles put off in the tails of the comet over a half a gram must be termed "space pebble in the debris of satellite [enter satellite name]"
This of course will lead to the renaming of "meteor showers" to "space pebble fallout to natural space satellite Earth".
Furthermore we need to rename the "asteroid belt" to "natural space satellite collective between natural space satellite Mars and natural space satellite Jupiter". Objects within the "natural space satellite collective between natural space satellite Mars and natural space satellite Jupiter" that are not residence of "natural space satellite collective between natural space satellite Mars and natural space satellite Jupiter" for at least 300 years at a time must be rename "temporary natural space satellite not wholly belonging to the natural space satellite collective between natural space satellite Mars and natural space satellite Jupiter".
And this is just the tip of the iceberg! I have a million ideas on how we can further fuck up the order of things by bickering and fighting over some random bullshit that isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference under the sun.
Hold on! Damn it! A pebble is a rock formation! Jesus! My entire idea is for nothing! God damn those geologists!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
A French missile
I think we need to make a distinction between bodies within
... ... which has enough mass to support a human colony (g > 0.1*g_earth) ... ... is within solar termination shock.
the star's termination shock and outside. Those outside are
fundamentally different in that they start to feel the galactic
plasma more and star's radiation less. This is especially true
if we intend to eventually colonize things because we would want
to classify them by how much solar energy they get and how
consistent the cycles are. This also means that bodies which
orbit the star are different from those bodies' satellites, since
their weather patterns would differ fundamentally and present
different challenges to colonization. Thus, I propose:
1. A planet is a body orbiting its star
2.
3.
This would kill Mercury and Pluto as planets, which is just as
well since those aren't colonizable. It would also assure that
any object we discover far from the Sun will not be a planet.
The mass cutoff is a bit arbitrary but if Mars is indeed
colonizable then 0.1 of Earth would be reasonable. I remain open
to the idea of adding a surface area cutoff.
Proctologists have been complaining about Uranus for decades
and even if we didn't use those definitions for what a "planet" was, it doesn't matter:
because whatever word we agree that would be this earthlike range of parameters of size/ atmosphere/ etc... say this word was "fred", then this word would rapidly become the most interesting word in use when talking about extrasolar systems
say we found 10 new systems
and we classified each according to our current definitions: gas giants, planets, moons, etc. the first thing everyone would want to know is where the "fred"s were: the bodies most like earth. the gas giants, planets, moons: who cares
"ok, this system has 20 planets, 3 gas giants, and 45 moons"
"whatever, where are the freds?"
"well, the freds, the most earthlike orbs, are: 4 orbitting the star, 2 orbitting the first gas giant, and one orbitting the third gas giant"
"ok, that's what i'll be researching"
the "fred"s are the most important things: the things that might harbor alien life, or be targets of our colonization.
and so in the future, whether we use the word "planet" or some other word to describe the most earthlike worlds, whatever word that is used will come to have the most meaning to us, and all other classifications will fall into more esoteric and archaic meanings, so that in a future of many known extrasolar systems, our current defintion of planets and moons will be looked down as ancient and archaic and useless
kind of like how modern chemists look at the quaint classifications of alchemists "earth/ air/ fire/ water", or how modern astronomers look at the whimsical classifications of astrologers ("libra", "virgo", "aries")
so will future astronomers look down on our current understanding of planets and moons and its basically useless emphasis on "what it orbits" as being more important than "what it is made of"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is what a solar map would look like if I was devising it
(A) The sun and inner planets
(B) The gas giants and planets orbiting them (Titans the only one)
(C1) "Planetoids"orbiting the sun that are spherical ...
(C2) Asteroids etc.. comets blah ....
a little more mass and we'd be in a binary star system, with jupiter shining bright
Just wanted to point out that we'd need quite a bit more than "a little more mass" for Jupiter to become a star. Jupiter would need to be roughly 75x larger than it currently is to begin nuclear fusion.
If Microsoft had only had added a word that every geology noob knows, then the astronomy guys would have been better prepared at the conference.
It's because Yosemite National Park, home to perhaps the most famous Pluton in North America, isn't in Washington State. If only Half Dome loomed above the Redmond skyline. But surely they must have plutons in the Cascades? Or don't the Microsoft geeks get out enough?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://dictionary.oed.com/ if you want a real dictionary, not that MS stuff, or the joke known as Encarta, or definitions by committe. Yes, it has pluton: An intrusive body of igneous rock formed beneath the earth's surface, esp. a large one.
We carry hammers and drink alot. All kidding aside it may seem like a stupid debate, but the term pluton is an integral part of geology and yes all the term is presented in Geology 101. As the article states there is overlap between geology and planetology so there is plenty of opportunity for potential confusion. My prediction is the astronomers will lose on this one. Why? Just because it was our word first!!! :P
but say, when we finally resolve the objects orbitting binary and tertiary star systems out there, why would the "moons" orbitting the "second" star not be called "planets"?
of course, when we are talking about things that massive, we would probably be talking about stars orbitting a common barycenter, rather than one orbitting another
but even with that just that concept considered, we have already entered exotic enough terrain to blow away our current rudimentary planet versus moon nomenclature system
and so the "what it is made of" consideration should be the first and most important classification and naming basis, and the "what it orbits" consideration should be a distant second classification/ naming basis
only then could we make sense of binary/ tertiary/ quartenary/ etc. extrasolar systems and what should prove to be a vast menagerie of exotic objects orbiting each
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Surface area would probably be just an arbitrary. Why be a neat fraction of Earths mass. It is as arbitrary as a planet must have a radius greater than or equal to that of Pluto or something else. Solar Termination shock isn't that bad, although something else would be needed. Ultimately however, it is of no great importance what is called a planet and what isn't it, the planets themselves don't seem to particularly care much.
I've never seen such a fuss over a space rock that nobody has ever even seen up close. First millions of kids write letters to NASA to keep it classified as a planet. Then astronomers fight over goofy definitions that try to save planetude for the kids. Then geologists fuss about the naming used in the goofy workaround.
I hope somebody nukes Pluto in the middle of the night[1] to end this. If the brats fight over the toy, you take the toy away. Maybe if somebody paints a big 666 on it, then nobody will want it anymore and gladly demote it to micro-rock status.
[1] As if there is another kind of time up there?
Table-ized A.I.
Thats one psychedilic tripped out gas giant trying to be a star!
I;d also like to popint out that if I lay a big round piece of turn dring a moon walk and place it in orbit around the sun that doesnt make it a planet even thought I have artificially created ideal hydrostatic conditions for it.. until a micro meteorite hits it..
I'll be pretty p'd off if my future child knows from class what Sedna (formally floating dung sphere B11312343is before the second most interesting planet? (Titan) in the solar system
Also, our moon is far bigger and more interesting than Pluton xyz's and dont get mne started on Enceladus and Europa which are vastly more interesting than plutonitinos
Or....maybe we should be angry at the academics who obviously are not running OpenOffice on Linux.
Nice tr(y|oll), but the OpenOffice dictionary doesn't recognize pluton either.
Anyhow, Word and OpenOffice both look like shit. If they want to be taken seriously, they should be using TeX, LaTex, or at least troff.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
i like it ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Since when is MS Word the definitive guide to the english language?
When you're an arrogant academic? He got a nice bit of Humble Pie Smackdown, and I can't think of anyone more deserving at the moment. Not to mention, both groups and a lot of other scientists will learn lessons from this....
Please help metamoderate.
Imagine if a pluton with a pluton was discovered! There would be fist fights at the science conferences and the two groups finally met.
Given that both uses are jargon specific to different and relatively unrelated fields, I really don't care.
The problem is that geology and astronomy are in fact very much related. Ever heard of planetary geology? I'll note that there are plenty of planetary geologists who are faculty members in astronomy, not geology departments.
Anyhow, the point is that it is easy to imageine how overloading "pluton" could result in a lot of unnecessary confusion in the planetary sciences, so it would make sense for the IAU to change it to something else.
Everyone knows a "Pluton" is a unit of currency based on plutonium - it says so right here in my copy of Robert Heinlein's Gulf!
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
I don't like it. An asteroid like Ceres potentially has as much living space as Earth currently does, because you can tunnel virtually the whole thing out. Things like atmosphere can be added. And being above a certain threshhold doesn't make it livable. After all, Jupiter isn't a great place to put a colony. There's no surface and the gravity is much too high.
My take is that being massive enough that the object is spherical, and orbiting the Sun is a better definition.Please...
Titan certainly is more interesting to us than mercury
Perhaps it's more interesting to you
Messenger is well on its way to study Mercury.
BepiColombo will hopefully be launched in the not-so-distant future
It's clear that Mercury is indeed a very interesting place to go.
Now I don't dispute that Titan is a wicked/awesome place to go, just don't pick a fight where none exists.
There are a great many reasons why Mercury is a seriously cool object to study.
What are the composition, isotopic abundance, spatial distribution and temporal variability of the particles on Mercury's surface and its surface bounded exosphere?
Why the hell does it have a magnetic field? Seriously, this is one our solar systems significant mysteries. Does Mercury have an active core? Does Mercury Vent? (certainly other bodies do... e.g. Io, Trition, Enceladus, etc...)
There are a number of evolution scenarios that attempt to explain the unusual properties of Mercury (e.g. high density, large core, large Fe/Si ratio, etc...).
The bottom line of my comment is that Mercury is interesting, and a solid understanding of its evolution is essential to understanding the creation of our solar system.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
see the usage of 'crack', 'cracking', 'cracker' versus 'hack', 'hacker' and 'hacking'. in popular culter 'hacker'=='cracker' and cracker is a racial slur. 'Hacking' is considered glamourous, while it means doing sloppy work in the correct subculture. These terms have been reassigned by the media, much to my chagrin.
In this way I also seperate the real nerds from the 'wannabes'. A real nerd uses crack, cracking and cracker and hacking means slapping something together instead of really thinking and engineering a solution.
my $.02
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I don't see the need for picking a more or less random word. Pluto is still going to be described as a kind of planet. The term 'pluton' (presumably meaning something like "Pluto-like-planet") is not scientific - we should use a term that has meaning and not something that means "this is kinda sorta like that".
Picking a term that's also used in geology was a terrible misstep - when geologists finally get out to these smaller planets, they are going to get horribly confused. Is the rock a Pluton - or is it FROM a Pluton - or is that a typo and it's actually from Pluto? Yuk, yuk, yuk! If you have to make up a word - especially a word that's still going to be used a thousand years from now - at least think through the consequences *carefully*.
The term "Dwarf Planet" seems entirely suitable here. It indicates that it is a kind of planet (which is reasonable given that it's round and orbits a star) - and it tells you something useful about it (it's evidently smaller than you might expect a typical planet to be) - and it has strong similarities with "Dwarf Star" which is a nice thing. We could then apply a kind of uniform taxonomy to those kinds of things - yielding "Dwarf Moon" for those teeny-tiny (but round) moons out there. All nice and uniform, neat and scientific.
If we got really elegant about this, we could talk about a "Dwarf X" (where X is a star, planet, moon or other body) as being an object that's in the lower tenth percentile of the size range for objects of class "X" (or twentieth percentile - or whatever makes that work). Terms like 'Red Giant' for stars and 'Gas Giant' for planets are already set up kinda like that. By implication then, our moon would be a Giant Moon or something like that since I guess it's the largest moon we know of right now.
If the astronomers don't get this 100% right this time, they are only going to have to do it all over again in another 10 years. We're already in trouble over free-floating "planets" that don't orbit stars and things that are borderline between stars and planets (Brown Dwarf Stars for example). We're also in danger of finding tiny stars that orbit humungous stars such that their barycenter lies within the diameter of the bigger star - and we could end up having to call those things planets!
We also could find moons that have their own moons - and 'double-moons' that co-orbit each other whilst together going around a common planet (actually - I think we already have some of those around Saturn).
www.sjbaker.org
How about Plutonfox? - In keep with the spirit of recent historical events.
the sahara desert is interesting, for a whole range of reasons and endeavours and scientific pursuits and knowledge classifications
but i assert that the amazon is more interesting than the sahara
simply because it is more complex (varieties of life/ water/ etc.)
my point is that more complexity is directly proportional to our level of interest
and titan is orders of magnitude more complex than mercury
ANYTHING with an atmosphere becomes more complex than something without, because it introduces an entirely new catalogue of avenues of scientific investigation
and our nomenclature should reflect that: something that might harbor life, or might be a place we colonize, because it more closely mirror's the earths dramatic complexity (the triple point of water is a whole other dimension of complexity) instantly means it is more important
and our nomenclature will eventually come to reflect that, eventually, just as the alchemists view of the world (earth/fire/air/water) was eclipsed by the chemists (periodic table) and the astrologers view of the world (libra/virgo/aries/etc) was eclipsed by the astronomers
"what it is made of" is far more important to us than "what it orbits
titan is a planet, an object of great interest, counting venus and mars and earth as its cohorts in our solar system
while mercury is nothing but a moon, a lesser object like dozens like it orbitting the sun, like ceres/pluto, or the other naked orbs orbiting jupiter/ saturn/ neptune/ uranus
atmosphere matters, more than anything else you can say about mercury
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
[...] because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important.
On my old Performa, I had a version of Microsoft Word where the spellcheck would not recognize the work "Microsoft." I guess that means they aren't important!
Too much mass is not a problem - just build your station a bit
farther from planet's center. Notice that surface gravity on
Jupiter is only about 2.5 times that on Earth, so it would be
conceivably colonizable. The challenges to colonizing Jupiter
are huge but not insurmountable even though its surface is not
solid.
Too little gravity though can have big health effects. We already
know that long term exposure to weightlessness can have adverse
health effects similar to aging. What we don't know is its effect
on human development, i.e. whether a baby born and raised in
microgravity would be viable and mentally capable. The level of
gravity where the health effects become significant is where
we should draw the line at acceptable lowest gravity and hence
planetary size.
Consider also the ratio of surface gravity of current nine planets
to Earth's:
mercury 0.28
venus 0.90
earth 1
mars 0.38
jupiter 2.5
saturn 1.1
uranus 0.91
neptune 1.1
pluto 0.06
Notice how Pluto is almost certainly not life-sustaining. Notice
also that Mars and Mercury are questionable. After thinking about
it some more I am willing to give Mercury a shot at being a planet
but again, it would ultimately depend on "safe" lowest gravity
level.
I like my definition better. It covers all the old planets except Pluto, and actually gives planets the special status that IMO they deserve.
My definition: a planet is a body orbitting a star that contains a majority of the mass at that distance from the star. More precisely, the sum of the mass of the objects with orbits that take them closer to the star than the planet at its farthest or farther from the star than the planet at its closest must be less than the planet.
That rules out KBOs, Ceres, and Pluto. It's simple and consistent and easy to apply to other solar systems. If we found a solar system with comparably sized bodies with orbits that cross, we can give them another classification like "proto-planet" or "asteroid" or whatever.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
(Often, scientists like to cheat a little and define small, well-behaved regions in isolation. An example would be Hooke's Law with springs, which is a crude approximation that is only valid over a narrow range but works "well enough" within that. Another would be the tustle between Quantum Mechanics - only valid for the microscopic, Relativity - only valid for the macroscopic or near light-speed, and Newton's Laws - the only useful way of modelling human-scale phenomena. It's only by understanding what happens at the boundaries, when two or more models produce the right answer for provably the wrong reasons or where no simple model works at all, that you get the really interesting discoveries, the real unification of ideas.)
Ok, your examples are obviously sufficient to prove that what an object orbits is irrelevent. We now have to decide what is important.
I suggested on K5 that what it forms from is what's important. A planetary accretion disk will have a composition dependent on the planet, a stellar accretion disk will have a composition dependent on the stellar nursary. A body that forms at a distance D from a planet out of a planetary accretion disk should contain a far narrower range of elements than a body that forms from a stellar accretion disk at the same distance, and the total span of elements should also be far narrower. This means that bodies that form in planetary accretion disks should be far more uniform than in a solar system with a comparable number of bodies within it. Also, because you have different sources for the material, because the spacing determines the relative abundances, and because the gravitational fields are going to be very different, the composition of a body B should be unique to a specific orbit and an accretion disk of specific type. No other possible combination of starting conditions should be able to produce the same overall composition.
To me, that says that the composition is a key factor. It can pinpoint exactly what sort of body the object formed around and at what distance. Ok, what other key factors are there?
The internal structure (eg: the number of cores) identifies the WAY it formed. It's not totally unique, as bodies will form and unform in an early system, but certain generalities exist. A body with no core or one core is probably an object that has accumulated mass over time. An object with multiple cores was, at one time, multiple objects of comparable size that have adhesed together but are still distinct. The structure also limits the timeframe over which it formed. An object with no core probably formed quite quickly - no strata and no migration. An object with one or more cores probably formed over a much longer time.
So let's go back to your example of a body orbiting three stars in the way described - and such systems are probably quite common, as stars tend to form in twos or threes, so it's a very useful test to apply. Well, here we have a problem. My definition won't work, as the scenario doesn't tell me what the body is made of, where it formed, how it formed, what its structure is, etc. As such, my definition is clearly of no value for pure observation. It's totally the wrong perspective. (In the same way, since e=mc^2, and since specific heat is measured as joules per mole per kelvin, it would be entirely correct to state your weight in degrees fahrenheit. One can be directly converted to the other, so neither is "wrong". Which is useful depends on what the weight is needed for.)
Your definition is good for observational purposes, in that it would allow an astronomer 100 light-years away to tell if an object is a planet or not. 100 l
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ya, 'cause Word's spell check is the authority on all things spelt.
Try a dictionary, Wikipedia, or fucking Google, moron.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I just typed pluton into word and it recognised it (office 2003). Even gave me this when I clicked reference and got a definition:
"a mass of intrusive igneous rock that solidified underground by the crystallization of magma"
joule: (n) a gemstone, such as amber, from which energy can be generated
candella: (n) a scented candle, usually used to illuminate bubble baths
angstrom: (n) a digital write-once medium for storing memories of fear and anxiety
Planette it is!
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
The people who are saying "who cares" are obviously not scientists. There are lots of scientists that become quite obsessed over such things as naming of something. It is quite shocking to see how much bitterness and rivalry there is in the sciences.
I should know, I am one.
i see now, yes you are the same jd at k5, hey ;-)
;-)
;-P
my take on what you just said is this:
there is no need to combine our systems, or for one to "defeat" the other
that there can be many classification systems
for example, mainline chemists have the periodic table, and this is how most people are introduced to the elements, and is usually the most useful classification system
but for nuclear chemists, it is more interesting to talk about variations in elements that don't even come into play in normal chemistry: the number of neutrons in the nuclei. and to use an entirely different classification system to organize those variations in neutron count
and for organic chemists, you begin to talk about grouping of carbon atoms, carbon/ nitrogen atoms, benzene rings, etc., in ways that expand upon and dramatically depart from the periodic table, but are useful mental organizing principles for classifying chemical compounds and their behavior and focusing our minds nonetheless
it may be true, in any field of study, that one classification system comes to rise above the other as the most common shorthand for the most useful measurement of interest
this system could come to dominate, as well it should, if it concerns dimensions of classification that is most useful to our minds
but it doesn't stop the other systems from being used, in certain less common fields, but that one dominant system comes to be most useful for introducing students to a discipline, etc.
so what i am talking about might be most useful for zooming in on the objects that might contain complexities, places we might find interesting chemistries or even life, or be targets for our own colonization
while what you are talking about is more useful for tracing the origins of solar systems, finding commonalities between them, and developing comprehensive theories about solar system formation and therefore predicting what we might find where in a particular part of a galactic spiral arm or around a particular star... and perhaps, eventually, predicting where you might find the "interesting" "planets" my classification system is preoccupied with
both are useful classification systems, and can coexist, depending upon the avenue of research. so: your nomenclature matters, my nomenclature matters, it just is a difference in what field of research you are involved in: investigating places of complexity/ life/ colonization, or investigating the formation of planetary systems
both are perfectly valid and cohabitational
our systems focuses the mind to the objects that are really interesting for a particular avenue of investigation: a classification system that does the job it should do: provide some scientific rigidity to focus our minds
and both of our systems are more important than simply orbital focus, and both are superior to the current IAU mishmash of plutons and culturally and historically influenced political decisions that have more to do with quaint folk understandings and making elementary schoolkids happy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Thanks to Writer2LaTeX, they can use OpenOffice for a composition GUI for WYSINearlyWYG, and LaTeX for typesetting.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Now that's talent!
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
The planet Pluto is scheduled to be renamed to avoid confusion with a Disney dog of the same name.
It's when it doesn't show up on Google with > 99 hits that it really doesn't matter.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
chill out
if something is more complex, it is more interesting
a television is more interesting than a brick wall
a house is more interesting than a cardboard box
this is a completely objective point of view
there is nothing subjective about what i am saying
"my point of view is more important than your point of view" has absolutely NOTHING to do with what i am saying, and it seems to be what you are reacting to
"an objective point of view is more important than my subjective point of view, your subjective point of view, anyone's subjective point of view" is what i am saying
that's it
got it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
we all know if it aint in word, it aint a word
...Geologist SMASH!
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. - Will Duran
Who is Noone and why does he care so much about this crap? Is he some relative of the guy who made Data & Lore? Even on Slashdot, I think that no one would get something that obscure... :-)
Well, the geologists themselves have been using common for their definitions, so they are not really the ones to throw the first rock .
E.g., they use the word "bar" to mean two different things: 1. A unit of pressure equal to 10 to the sixth dynes/square centimeter; approximately one atmosphere; 2. An accumulation of sediment, usually sandy, which forms at the borders or in the channels of streams or offshore from a beach. Last night my pal asked me: "are you coming to the bar", so I said yes, but I didn't know he meant "an accumulation of sediment" <another snappy sound from the band>
Look up other geological definitions: basement, bedding or butte, and you'll see why geologists make such great comedians.
Except that, based on the Google results, they would probably still have concluded that the definition was not a problem; the geological term is mentioned, among plenty of other uses (ignoring hits on the actual decision to name these objects): some software, French and Spanish use of "pluton" for the planet, proposals to use that term, etc.
The term may be Geology 101, but it doesn't seem to come up that much. In any case, this kind of ambiguity just is not a problem in the sciences.
You're right, though, that it's embarrassing when a scientist uses MS Word spelling dictionary to pick names. Google is the right tool--it's an accepted and widely used tool by etymologists and linguists.
Didn't immediately understand the issue when I read the summary because I'm french and in french Pluto is Pluton, so the 'new word' meant Pluto to me. Just to point out that it's not such a great choice according to me, I think they should have chosen a word a bit more different from Pluto than that, like, Plutonian body, Plutonesque body or more simply Keplerian planet, since it's all about big round keplerian objects.
You just got troll'd!
Gingerich is head of the IAU. He's supposed to be pretty damned smart.
He used a word processor SPELL CHECK dictionary as the authority to determine the existence of a scientific/technical term.
A SPELL CHECK dictionary. Used as the authority to determine the exisatence of a scientific term.
The head of the International Astronomic Union. Spell check dictionary. Existence of a scientific term.
Is anybody home??
He may as well have done no research into the background of the term. He would have looked less stupid that way. Sloppy and careless maybe, but not stupid.
And how is it he got to this position and how long will he be allowed to remain? Maybe he was elected so he wouldn't hurt himself running with scissors.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
surely you mean FirePluton do you not?
Plutiod?
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
Since they are often checking out earth on Earth ;).
It's not such a big deal. There are plenty of worse names esp in the computer related fields - names that make it hard to do decent keyword searches.
That said, the silly chap could have just done a search on google or some other search engine. A search for pluton on google turns up 3 million hits.
Actually - when planets warm up they lose their atmosphere.
The amount of atmosphere depends on the size of the planet, not the temperature.
Clue: Particle Escape Velocity
In Serbian, Pluto is called "Pluton" (just like Plato is called "Platon") and this is because it really ends with an "n" in original Greek, so this name will create additional problems.
No sig today.
Are you perhaps suggesting we also throw out our definitions of liquids and gas because they may regulary change state?
- These characters were randomly selected.
Lets see:
So:
And then you could compound them into more descriptive terms like this:
What would Pluto be? A Terraterrasol.
Simple.
"IAU head Owen Gingerich is quoted as saying that he was only peripherally aware of the definition, and because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important."
;-)
Hmmm... Gingerich and IAU both don't show in MS Word's spell check. I guess they aren't important either.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Having a fusion reaction going on definitely excludes an object from being a planet.
The classification of planets and moons has been worked out in the 21st and 22nd centuries; you can find it here.
Seriously, it may be fiction, but the Star Trek classification system ain't so bad, and it may well be what we're heading for. I just hope that there are enough life-bearing planets in the solar system to fill the K, L, M, O, P, and Q classifications.
I don't even know who this guy is. I don't think he is someone important, because he doesn't show up on Word's spell check.
:)
Gingerich => Generic, Generics, Gingery, Genseric, Gin Erich (I like this last one
It seems extremely odd to me that the planet believed to be most distant from the Sun was named after the Roman God of the Underworld. Perhaps they were closet Hollow Earth believers. And Charon is even worse; I don't see much evidence for a river around Pluto. Same problem with Neptune. In the case of Pluto, the geologists obviously have first call.
Pining for the fjords
+3 Funny, IMO.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I thought a pluton was a kind of fart lozenge. You know, you've been farting all morning then you go take a dump, but all that comes out is this finger sized turd.
Why not just call it a plutoid?
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Because we all know their population has increased so much that they have started to colonize outward planets!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If "pluton" isn't acceptable, then alternative words should be easy enough to invent.
"plutoid", for example. Or maybe "plutent" (combining pluto and planet).
In other news today, it was determined that Geologists really don't have enough to do.
-Styopa
Write "Ballmer" in MS Word... It's not recognized by the spell check, so Steve Ballmer is not that important...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Perhaps they never got to know the joys of a plutonic relationship between existing hard rock and an ingeous intrusion (hot lava!). Now he wants to create a new definition that allows for the plutonic relationship between celestial bodies that never touch.
Hmmmm. I say Geologists have more fun - at least our definitions include contact!
JB
Mercury gets to be a planet because it can be seen with naked eyes.
Seriously, they should have left the planets at 5, and find new names for the new categories of objects. That is how the came up with asteroids. Rockies, cloudies, and icies. Globs if they are round, asteroids if they are not. So a comet is an icy asteroid. And who cares what they orbit. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are not planets, because the ones that defined the term, the Greeks, did not say so: they could not see them.
Ans anyone checked that plutons aren't made up of plutons? That would make the whole thing much easier....
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
It depends on what you are interested in. If you are interested in atmospherics, weather and maybe the possibilities of life - then distinguishing between a moon and a planet based on atmosphere makes a lot of sense. But if you are talking about navigating a spaceship using complex orbital mechanics and such - then the distinction about whether something orbits something else becomes more important. You could imagine other people wanting to distinguish things by their mass - or by their composition or by their colour.
Which one of those interests should come to dominate the nomenclature that all astronomers use?
The pragmatic answer is that we have millions of books and papers that are already written and on library shelves that say that there are nine planets - that Pluto is a planet - that Ceres is an asteroid and that Charon is a moon. Scientifically, it doesn't matter a damn about what things are CALLED so long as we know what they ARE. I recall Feynman's story about his father telling him the name of a bird that they encounter - giving him the name in a dozen different languages and pointing out that at the end of that you still know nothing more about the animal. These names are just arbitary labels - provided for convenience. We know that there will be borderline cases where the names will seem inappropriate - or where it will be hard to choose between "Big Asteroid", "Small Planet" and "Moon" - that things may even end up having to change their names on a regular basis if they have very eccentric orbits or whatever.
But obsoleting a hundred years of publications at a stroke by changing the definition of a word and thereby making everything that's been written about Pluto or Ceres or Charon *wrong* seems very, very dangerous. It would have been better to QUALIFY the existing term for Pluto ("Dwarf Planet") and to have the term "Planet" mean something like "The nine things we've always called planets" - and to come up with an entirely new, clean, set of scientific terms to describe things more uniformly for the future without attempting to overload these old terms with new meaning.
This, at the end of the article, has me intrigued:
On 18 August a new proposal was mooted, adding that the object also needs to be by far the largest object in its local population.
The Earth has only four times the diameter of the Moon. Does that count as "large by far"?
Planet is an old term. Originaly it meant Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. We should invent a new term for "spherical solids that do not start nuclear fusion".
In other news, the International Geologist Union unanimously decided to use the word "quasar" to describe the sticky, gooey layer of dead animals found under large volcanic boulders falling around erupting volcanos. Geologists say it comes from an obscure South American swear word uttered mostly when you have to scrap this goo off excavation tools.
Also, the latest International Geology Summit announced that it would leverage its notoriety to market household items as a fund raising program. The first announced product is a new douchebag called "The Telescope" -- slogan: "Comfortable to your Black Hole!"
A ticked off International Astronomical Union spokeman said that the geologists were acting out of spite. To which the International Geology Summit replied, "Spite? You mean this basaltic sand formation that you find between Early Chewonitbitchian and Upper Youdumbasstic ?"
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Just don't let any of it get on your steak
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
This arbitrary delineation conundrum reminds me of an ironic mystery from my childhood: What the fuck was Pluto? He was obviously a dog, but how could one reconcile that his master Mickey, was also best buds with Goofy, who was also some sort of dog?
Everyone in the Disney world was some sort of animal, typically just a humanoid with a black nose and floppy ears; Mickey's inner circle were more literal anthomorphic critters. But how could Mickey not make the connection that his pet Pluto was the same species as his best bud Goofy?
Did Goofy and Pluto hang out? What happened when they were alone? Was there uncomfortable silence. or did some inter-species brotherly bonding taking place? I tell you what, this scenario made for many sleepless nights of contemplation when I was a child and forged the bitter, twisted adult now present.
And now we see that the mythical mutt's namesake is also suffering from a similar ambiguous cladistic relationship with its contemporaries. It hangs out in the same circles as the other planets, is superficially similar to other planets, but doesn't quite make the cut for full-blown status in this solar-system.
I'm not sure what to make of this but was Walt Disney making a prescient prediction with the Pluto/Goofy dichotomy? Is Goofy a metaphor of scientists stupidly wasting scarce resources bickering about arbitrary classification?
Personally, I believe that Pluto/Goofy is Disney's nod to his fascist beliefs; Even though we may be the same species, some people are no better than animals.
And don't forget about that stupid horse with the slave collar...
"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."
The "hole-in-the-donut" observation, though, is that every employee will rise to the level at which he can do the least harm. (perhaps Owen overshot his mark?)
Demote Pluto!
Planets are not round, they are sphereoidal
"...and yet, I blame society" Duke - Repo Man
--Mike Perry Untangling Tolkien
You'd better hope you call Pluto the right thing. With a 200 year period she could really make it miserable for you. "Did you just call me a Pluton? I hope you didn't, because I'm not one. Why would you think that? Maybe if you got off your goddamn ass and mowed the lawn you wouldn't time to think of ridiculous things to call me!"
shudder
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
You're confusing causation with correlation. Happens a lot here.
The US obesity epidemic (sudden spike, hence use of the term epidemic) is a lot newer than our wide doors. Cultural differences around personal space are a far more likely culprit. Lay it to the size of the country, wild west mentality, or what you will, but Americans expect a larger cushion of personal space than do most other nationalities, and this is old news. More recently, our passageways are also influenced by laws about emergency egress and disabled access, with 3' mandated for wheelchairs in particular.
Considering which came first, it's more valid to suggest our expansive personal space caused our epidemic obesity. Think of it as Manifest Destiny of the self.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I believe if all this is turns out to be a size issue then we should be calling the 'plutons' Barneys, and all the big planets Freds. This way, everyone will see how this is very friggin' silly and we should go back to more important discussions, you know, like the variegation and complexity in master strategies of sock drawer arrangements, or the infinitely subtle nuances of to-MAY-to versus to-MAH-to. We could conclude it with an open dialogue on the merits of older versus newer Pez dispensers. And wouldn't that be fun?
(MS Spell Check comment aside,) what's wrong about using an existing word to describe something else? Aren't people smart enough to descipher, according to context, whether a text is referring to a pluton -as defined in geology- or a pluton -as defined in astronomy?
Indeed, both elephants and ants can be called plant eaters. Nothing wrong with that.
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.
who named the previous iterations of Firefox?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Astronomers and Geologists also have different meanings for the abbreviation "CMB". It's either Cosmic Microwave Background, or Core-Mantle Boundary. As a planetary scientist, I talk to people from both groups and have to be careful about the use of that abbreviation.
How about calling it a 'Gingerich' since that doesn't show up in my spell check either? :P
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I had this reaction last Friday.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
'Pluton' is also Polish for Pluto and plutonium... oh, and platoon.
Yeah - that DID sound mildly interesting until I hit SUBMIT.
When did it become the rule that each word could have one and only one meaning? Who really thinks there's going to be confusion over this? It's ridiculous.
Sean
I, for one, find it virtually impossible to imagine how overloading "pluton" could result in a lot of confusion. In context, it's going to be obvious to the most casual observer which meaning is actually intended. This whole objection is ridiculous.
Sean
Plutons not planets STOP. Actually a body of igneous rock formed beneath the surface of the earth by consolidation of magma STOP. Microsoft responsible for the death of...err...none STOP.
Film at 11.
Silly astronomers.
Then != than you morons.
Hmmm.... an astronomer chooses a bad name for a new type of celestial body, starts a feud with geologists, and then - in a stunning move - decides that Microsoft is to blame???
:)
I know we blame Microsoft for all the problems here on Earth. Don't you think it's stretching things to hold them accountable for all the problems in the Solar System too?
-Peter
oh.
Actually, Calories/calories is an artifact of the system, which actually is case sensitive. For food labeling purposes in America:
1 Calorie (Cal) = 1000 calories (cal)= 1 kilocalorie = 4.184kJ
US-label food statistics are in Calories, with a capital C. One gram of protein = 4 Calories = 4000 calories = 16.7 kJ metric.
Not all that much weirder than the kilobyte = 1024 bytes, I suppose.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:pluton
No confusion will be created for most U.S. high school students, as they are ignorant of both geology and astronomy, unlike their parents, who know that Pluto is Mickey Mouse's dog.
The health effects of heavy gravity are far more immediate than those of light gravity. After all, being unprotected and falling out of a chair onto a hard surface can kill you instantly in 2.5 gee (and we evolved to walk around upright). Even in zero gee, you should be able to survive years as long as you exercise a lot. Maybe with appropriate drug treatment you can reduce substantially the atrophy of bones and muscles. Ultimately though, I think we'll figure some biological or mechanical solution to engineer our way out.
But none of this is really relevant. Why do we wish to base the definition of a planet on an arbitrary cutoff that relates to the ability of ancient humans to survive in a particular gravity? It makes little sense. At least if you can eyeball the object, and it happens to be as almost perfectly round, then it's probably a planet or star unless something weird is going on (like the object is too small, but it's mostly liquid water).Errrm... no. The logical conclusion would be changing the definition of a molecule because it changes states depending on temperature. ggp is suggesting a definition for "planet" and "moon" that could change regularly.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I think that the word 'planet' has been thoroughly missused, to the point that it no longer has a scientific meaning. Astronomers should recognise this, make their own, new, descriptive system of nomenclature, and leave the word 'planet' to our imaginations, newspapers and their universities media offices.
A nice suggestion was made by another poster: Extending the greek/latin roots of the words asteroid etc.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
As new objects are discovered, we can create new categories for them if they don't fit in existing categories. Each object is named according to the following system:
Category-ThingItIsOrbiting-UniqueName
Eg Earth would be Blurgen-Sol-Earth
For non-scientific purposes people would only use the unique name. The earth moon would be BlurgenQuasi-Earth-Moon. Pluto would be Pluto_Semi-Charyon/Pluto-Pluto. Jupiter would be Zyx-Jupiter/Sol-Jupiter. The sun would be GreatBallsOfFire_Semi-Orion-Sol.
Binary systems would be as follows:
Category1+Category2:BinaryOrTernaryOrQuaternaryEt
Thus the Charyon/Pluto system would be Pluto_Semi+Pluto_Semi:DoubleTrouble-Sol-Charyon/P
This means that we can now retain the word planet as a purely non-scientific term referring to Chuzzwozzer-Sol-Mercury, Blurgen_Semi-Sol-Venus, Blurgen-Sol-Earth, Goontron-Sol-Mars, Zyx-Jupiter/Sol-Jupiter, Zyx_Pseudo-Sol-Saturn, Zyx_Semi_Pseudo-Sol-Uranus, Zyx_Pseudo_Semi-Sol-Neptune and Pluto_Semi-Charyon/Pluto-Pluto so that children, astrologers, and myspace users don't get too confused.
One great side effect of this is the level of support we'll get from the scrabble-playing community for including a category called "zyx".
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
I think thats the word off the top of my head.
:-)
A few examples are: Nail, shag, root, screw.
Its closely related to the double-en-tondre, but since we're dealing with objects that are in the vicinity of Uranus, I think I'll stop now, lest I get sucked into the black hole of Karma-whoring
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Come on people! Where's your compassion? The geologists can't help if they have rocks in their heads. As for the astronomers relying on the MS Dictionary they must REALLY be lost in space. But then again maybe these should be the first human test subjects to be removed of the depressed gene.
The first time I read this I laughed so hard I started crying. Or, maybe I was crying because I was forced to acknowledge a supposed brilliant mind put that much faith in their processing application's dictionary to be scientifically accurate.
The Cambrian period is named after a group of mountains (in Wales?); The St Peter Sandstone after a type of sandstone found near St Peter MO; maybe the anti native-American mascot people should write letters to the geologists that named the Oglala and Lakota formations in South Dakota and Wyoming after "indians"; etc. Pluton seems to be a good "type" name for similar sized planets based on the first sample that was identified. While it is fun to see the IAU get a big wedgie about this classification business, their categories (moon, planet, etc.) seem antiquated considering what we do know about solar systems. (Remember when taxonomy meant anything in water was a fish - a shell fish, a fish with mammeries?) Biology, in many cases has moved from superficial "does it have wings? It must be a bird" to cladistics - "What did it evolve from?" I agree with a previous writer who said future generations will laugh at our short term perspectives. Cheers, Flack?
1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes
1 Kibobyte = 1024 byte
1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes
Well our moon with its thin atmopshere couldn't sustain life. Hell you'd blow up on the moon just like you would in the rest of outer space. So maybe should we use sufficient atmophere to not blow up and or instantly freeze (not that being cold should dictate its non planethood but if there is a low enough pressure you reach close to absolute zero real fast).
I say, geologists should start stealing astronomical terms not contained in MS Word! See how THEY like it. Heck, all science disciplines should unite on this against the astronomer-oppressors!
For everything I ever type, please assume "(sp?)"
I love it. What's good about this approach is that it provides a new "vocabulary" so to speak. In biology, systematics looks at different ways to arrange data: species via appearance, via clades, via ecological niche. In web design you increase access by presenting different ways of arranging data for users thinking in different ways (specific products vs. solutions, for example). In psychology approaching a disorder from different organizing systems (biophysiological, cognitive, behaviorist, existential) can give new insights. You've done the same thing to astronomy. The taxologist in me is deeply impressed.
/.ers (and I'm sure there are scientists, too) wondering how to apply the new rules to bodies orbiting other stars. You've provided a framework that works outside our system. All those scientists thinking in terms of orbits, etc., were like web designers who think architecture needs to match user layout; that is, not really thinking.
The reason the biologists, webweavers, and others play with different taxonomies is that how you organize your data determines the direction of your research and thought. For instance, there were
Ah, yes.... MS spellcheck is obviously the pre-eminent tool for deciding validity and correctness of ANY academic term. I suppose The Illustrious MS Compilers shall have to approach, among many others, the executors for Bertrand, Lord Russell and G. E. Moore, saying that their usage of "premiss" is obviously incorrect as it does not occur in their lists, and there shall have to be a revised edition of _Principia mathenatica_. Man is the only animal that laughs, but when you look at people, it's hard to understand how the animals keep from laughing. ---Mark Twain.