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IAU Demotes Pluto to 'Dwarf Planet' Status
davidwr writes "It's official. Pluto's been demoted. It's now one of several 'dwarf planets.' I guess we can drop the 'Period' from 'Mary's violet eyes make John stay up nights.'" (Of course, no one says you have to privately agree with the International Astronomical Union.) Several readers have contributed links to the BBC's coverage of the downgrade, as well as the usefully illustrated story at MSNBC.
many very educated men just screwed up nine planets...
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
8 Planets and 8 Dwarfs? Sounds simple enough...
My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nachos
How will this affect Sailor Pluto?
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nothing...
So will this render all astrological predictions which took Pluto into account as invalid? I'm sure the kooks will come up with some excuse to explain how their previous charts were accurate at seeing the future as if they ~knew~ this all along.
Trolling is a art,
Much vodka easily makes John seek urination naturally
I just can't understand why this story of Pluto's reclassification is deemed "breaking news" on the major news websites. It's not as if it just changed orbit and was streaking straight for New Jersey...
Now that would be breaking news!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Walt Disney is turning over in his grave...
My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I learned "Mary Virginia eats many jam sandwiches under Ned's porch." Now it will have to be "...under Ned."
That's a good one. I started forgetting planet order right about the time I lost the name of every dinosaur. Funny how the mind works.
i et_Union. Amaze your friends! Fool your enemies!
I still remember a great one from when the USSR blew up. I think it was a contest in Games magazine or something. Anyway, it goes Gorbachev's khaki underwear always tends to ride up at long lines exiting boring Kremlin meetings. Compare with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_the_Sov
Haida Manga
kick yourself in the head weeplanet!
*kicksself in head*
hahahahahaha
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
demote mercury to moon
elevate titan to planethood
i'm not joking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I remember failing a second grade test because I missed pluto! Time I march down to the nursing home and give Mrs Johnson a piece of my mind!
Create the new definition with a stipulation that for historical reasons, Earth's generally accepted planets will remain in the planet class. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not like any meaningful astronomy research is going to get confused.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
... the gals are called "Amazoness Quartet" in English-Speaking countries, and they are based on objects in the Asteriod (nor Kuiper) Belt
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
Actually, "dwarf planet" is considered rude.
It prefers to be called a "little planet".
(And besides, if Pluto is going to be the dwarf planet, which planet do the elves get? Or the hobbits? Won't someone think of the hobbits?)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Do they come with large enough tubes, so that my internets won't get clogged?
The owls are not what they seem
Millions of grade schoolers across the nation scramble to redo their third-grade Astronomy projects
The discovery of Sedna and 2003 UB313, both of which are very close to Pluto in size. This means Pluto is the same category of small rocky planets as Sedna and 2003 UB313, so it can't be considered the same category of planets as the other eight known planets.
I don't like this at all.
You IAU bastards! Now, My Very Educated Mother no longer Just Sat Under Napoleon's Picture. Now, My Very Educated Mother Just Sat Under Napoleon.
You guys are sick. Leave my mother out of this.
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
The meanings of words are not decided by vote - not even technical words. Imagine a bunch of doctors, even podiatrists, decided to redefine the meaning of the word 'leg'. Would anyone take them seriously? Of course not, not matter how expert they may be on the physiology of legs. So just because the IAU has made this vote here is no reason for anyone else to follow. The IAU, as they are free to do, have simply defined a technical usage for the word 'planet' for their personal use, but there is absolutely no reason why the public should follow. What's incredible, however, is that the rest of the word will. Despite the fact that billions of non-astronomers have been using the word 'planet' quite happily for millennia the rest of the world will simply fall into line because they have been deluded into thinking that a small astronomer elite can make linguistic decisions for them. Astronomers are experts in astronomy, not the arbiters of language.
What next? Mathematicians having a conference to decide whether or not zero is a natural number?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
from TFA
"Brown was pleased by the decision. He had argued that Pluto and similar bodies didnt deserve planet status, saying that would take the magic out of the solar system.
UB313 is the largest dwarf planet. Thats kind of cool, he said."
cool?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Gustav Holst was right all along!
In case anyone was wondering, eightplanets.com and eightplanets.org are already taken.
Oh yeah, and couple billion tons of mass as development aid wouldn't hurt, either.
"Gorbachev's khaki underwear always tends to ride up at long lines exiting boring Kremlin meetings. "
You mean "In Soviet Russia, Gorbachev's khaki underwear always tends to ride up at long lines exiting boring Kremlin meetings."
Where were you when the voynix came?
I got in similar trouble to telling my teacher that her solar system model was wrong because all of her planets were on the same plane. And, got in more trouble when I mentioned that Pluto is not the furthist planet from the sun, but rather Neptune was (at least, at that time). Of course, the worst was when I corrected a teacher whom said Saturn was the only planet with rings.
Click here or here.
Andrew
from my point of view, they didn't want pluto to be classified a planet so they created a definition which excluded pluto. I mean I can create a defintion of human that excludes certain races, it doesn't make me any less wrong.
did you forget to take your meds?
"We must immediately declare WAR on any objects in Plutos vicinity to...."
This must include the two nearby gas giants, right?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Tim Conway fans everywhere rejoice.
Before Pluto was discovered, there was "Mother Visits Every Monday and Just Stays Until Noon". (Note that the "and" covers the asteroid belt!) Adding Pluto changed this to "...Until Noon, Period". I propose we just go back to the original.
Quick, someone who actually knows what they're doing, please give me a rough answer/calculation to the following queries:
Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.
1) - Is it possible for Pluto and Neptune to one day (like within the next couple billion years) collide? Or are their respective orbits degrading to the point where by the time they'd be near each other orbit-wise, their orbits would no longer overlap significantly? Or by 'overlap' do they mean "diagrammatically speaking, on a two-dimensional representation they overlap but even at their closest possible point they're still a squillion miles away from each other"?
2) - If so, how cool would that be? Would it be funny enough to make it onto an America's Funniest Home Videos video montage? Would it need special clown-horn-honking sound effects?
3) - Considering their distance from Earth and their relatively small size, would a collision of the two have any noticeable effect here on Earth?
4) - Seriously, how cool would worlds colliding be?! Costanza jokes aside, I think it'd be awesome to the max.
Nine little planets, orbiting around the Sun, one was deemed too small, and then there were eight...
Eight little planets, orbiting around the Sun, one was deemed too big, and then there were seven...
Seven little planets, orbiting around the Sun, one had too many rings, and then there were six...
Six little planets, orbiting around the Sun, one got too close and melted, and then there were five...
Five little planets, orbiting around the Sun, one got too cold and froze, and then there were four...
Four little planets, orbiting around the Sun, one had too many clouds, and then there were three...
Three little planets, orbiting around the Sun, one had a clash with its neighbour, and then there were two...
Two little planets, orbiting around the Sun, one got bored and left with its moons, and then there was one...
One little planet, orbiting around the Sun, we nuked it ourselves, and then there were none!
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
but Mickey and Donald are right up there.
You know what the problem with this "What is a Planet?" debate. There is no metric. It is the case, and always has been, that whether or not something is a "planet" is a matter of almost complete subjectivity. There is still no objective, measurable and testable model under which an object can be said to be a planet.
In programming terms, the function:
bool Is_Planet( Astronomical_Object* foo );
, does not yet exist. Well, under some proposals, it would have existed in the following form:
bool Is_Planet( Astronomical_Object* foo ){
return (Is_Kinda_Big(foo) && Is_Kinda_Spherical(foo));
}
Great. Let's have a big round of applause of the boys at the IAU. Seriously, an eight year old could have come up with this. "Well, it's kinda round!". What if it's elliptical? What if it's a cylinder? Elliptical cylinder? What about Dyson Sphere's? Ringworld's? What if it has bumps? Depressions? Great big crater holes? Gentlemen What about the Death Star?
500+ years of modern astronomy and still no definition for a planet. Is this professionalism? Look at the difference in comparision to other scientific fields. The SI units give precise, unambiguous definitions of every observable quantity in the universe. Can we get something similar in astronomy please?
OK, I'm ranting, but here's somthing that astronomers can really chew over. Is their definition of a planet falisfiable? If not, are they really scientists, or just stargazers?
May the Maths Be with you!
Pluto's been demoted.
That's exactly what it would like us to think...
In truth there are three classes of planets. There are rocky planets like the Earth and Mars then there are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn and finally icy planets like Pluto and other round Kupier Belt objects. None of the planets have perfectly round orbits so orbit is a poor watermark for planet status. Round shape and orbits the Sun are the most important features since roughly round shape denotes a certain mass. The number should increase not decrease there should simply be three classes of planets. If Pluto is to be considered little more than a large comet than the gas giants should be classed as failed stars. The definition for brown dwarf is fairly arbitary like the planet definition. It's arbitary if some compositions are called planets and others not since the remaining planets vary greatly in composition.
WTFPLUTO.COM is available!
Thanks GoDaddy!
size-challenged planet?
The Raven
re: my take on it: many very educated men just screwed up nine planets...
They're diplomatic. Plutonian Objects gets the Geologists off their backs.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Beyond the fact that Clyde Tombaugh got eyestrain looking at photogrpahic plates trying to find the damned thing in the first place (he's doing 7200 RPM in his grave as we speak - people in Las Cruces can hear the high-pitched whine), the fact is we all grew up thinking of Pluto as a planet and this whole fracas has been nothing but a circus of uptight astronomers, lame-brained reporters, and fringe wackos.
I for one am not going to give in -- Pluto's a planet, case closed. When we go whippinng through other star systems with our handy "Guide to What Plaents Are," then this whole thing will make sense, but for right now, right here, on our lonely little mudball, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Is it just me, or is the definition of dwarf planet contradictary?
... and (d) is not a satellite.
A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that: (a) is in orbit around the Sun
Also, here's the definition of a satellite:
A satellite is any object that orbits another object (which is known as its primary). All masses that are part of the solar system, including the Earth, are satellites either of the Sun, or satellites of those objects, such as the Moon.
How can it be in orbit around the Sun if it's not a satellite? By this definition, no object is a dwarf planet.
International Astronomical Union: 'Nobody goes unloadin planets around here unless we got somethin to say about it, see?'
So who's going to re-write the Schoolhouse Rock song/video?
For as much as I agree with Pluto's demotion (and I DO very much), the question becomes why not think of it as a planet for historical aspects?
The only reason I mention this is because there isn't really a definition of "continent" that makes any sense.
He'll complain "Nobody tosses a dwarf planet from the planet list!". Then he'll get drunk, angry, and book himself for numerous guest spots on Howard Stern.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Pluto is not a planet under these new rules because it's orbit crosses Neptune's... but doesn't that mean the Neptune is not a planet because it crosses Pluto's orbit?
It is sad but at least they are consistent; an object should have cleared debris from its formation to become a planet; without these, Ceres and several astroids would have been planets as well.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
This is great, come I'm sick of trying to be accurate when I explain to my kids that SOMETIMES Neptune is the 9th planet instead of Pluto because of their orbits. This saves me that grief.
Boy are the Plutonians going to be pissed when they hear about this. How many minutes does it take for radio waves to get there? Everybody better duck. Anyone bad enough to live on Pluto is not someone I'd want to mess with...
I guess Pluto DOES know when to quit...
From the "Please keep uranus covered for the duration of the flight" department: I'm so TIRED OF THESE.... oh, never mind.
Where were you when the voynix came?
FTA - "Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's." and from the definition, "and has cleared the neighborhood around its rbit."
Doesn't that mean that Neptune also hasn't cleared it's neighborhood? It's orbit overlaps that of Pluto. So why is IT a planet?
Now we can get back to feeding the worlds poor, and curing diseases.
Any volunteers?
For a nice date: Call strftime(3C)!
..as sales increase! at least for a short time.
does anyone know if this ruling applies in kentucky? given that whole "evolution is just a 'theory'" thing and all..
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
To this day, I have Interplanet Janet playing in my head when I think of the solar system.
Click here or here.
The one they taught us at school was "My Very Easy Method, Just Set Up Nine Planets".
Erm... such much for that, I can't even shorten it since there are eight!
Neil deGrasse Tyson is featured on an interesting podcast discussing the subject of panet classification and education. I highly recommend a listen to anyone intrested in this subject.
You would've thought with all of the http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcach e.asp?contest_id=11570&start=1&end=10&display=phot oshop to keep it a planet, it wouldn't have been demoted.
How does it change many dyslexics to take a lightbulb?
Twenty years will go by before schools teach this. Schools have to wait for some teachers to die off, posters to get reprinted, new books ordered, etc.
Click here or here.
Now that we have a dwarf planet, this opens up the possibility of other dwarf planets in our solar system. I'm thankful that when I took astronomy that there were only 9, but now school children will have a much harder time with pluto, mickey, donald, grumpy, doc, sneezy, bashful, and lest we forget dopey.
memo to self: who are you and what have you done to my brain?
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
Sadly, many of you will get this reference.
While on the subject, I have to report this peice of scientific pedantry. Once, describing the difference between scientsts and engineers on a blog, I used JBB as an example of a scientist and somebody else as an example of an engineer. Which got a rapid response from her son, then at Cambridge, on the lines of "No, mum is an ex-scientist." A family so good at precision are the obvious people to rule on the planetary staus of Pluto.
Pining for the fjords
Mother very easily made a jam sandwich using nuts. (a - asteroids)
Now we gotta go snag the Pioneers and rub Pluto off the plaques or else the aliens will be totally fscking lost when they come to find us.
"Is this the right place?"
"No. The map says there's 9 planets, and this system only has 8."
"Are you sure? There seem to be a lot of hairless monkeys running around on that 3rd planet..."
"Look. If a species is capable of sending a spacecraft outside of its solar system, I'm sure they could figure out how many planets they have orbitting their own sun. This obviously isn't the right place and we need to keep going to find the people who sent that probe so we can give them the secrets of universe, the greatest of which is a machine that transmorphizes ordinary seawater into chocolate milkshakes and requires no energy to function."
Thanks a lot, IAU. I hope your proud of yourselves. :(
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/24/102112/777
Just before coming down to speak with you, I called Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus and congratulated them on their success today. As I see it, in this campaign, we've just finished the first half and the Classical Planet team is ahead, but in the second half, our team -- Team Pluto -- is going to surge forward to victory.
I am, of course, disappointed by the results, but I am not discouraged. I am not disappointed because I lost my planetary status, but because the old politics of scholarship and intellectual integrity won today.
I expect my opponents will continue to do in the future what they have done today: Belittle me instead of coming up with ideas to avoid having to rewrite science textbooks.
I will continue to offer the astronomers a different path forward to make my Solar system and orbit a better place to live and work, and that's what I want to do for another six million more years.
I know a lot of people in this system, and not just "classical planets", are angry about the direction in which the Solar system is moving, and so am I.
Tomorrow morning, our campaign will file the necessary petition with the International Astronomical Union so that we can continue this campaign for a new astronomy of unity and purpose. I will always do what is right for my orbit and Solar system regardless of what the political consequences may be.
Tomorrow is a brand new day. Tomorrow we launch a new campaign -- Team Pluto -- Asteroids, non-conforming celestial objects and planets.
Thanks,
Mike
Like the decision?
:)
:)
Many Very Educated Men Just Said "No Pluto."
Hate it?
Many Very "Educated" Morons Just Said "No Pluto."
Take your pick
PS: 0th post HOO-YAH!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's a good thing I sold all my shares of Pluto.com to a Ferengi before all this went down.
Remember the future...
You can't demote someone out of a category that never had an official definition.
The is the first scientific definition for planet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Unlearn what you have learned, you must!"
Subject says it all.
-- Boycott Shell
This was just a demonstration to cow the nations of the world. Next they will call the UN and demand money - or they will start to redefine other words. Cars will be houses - buildings will become mountains - books will just be animals - the IAU will reak havoc unless their demands are met!
Howabout:
My Very Extremist Muslim Just Sent Us Nukes
ganymede has no atmosphere
our solar system has:
4 planets (titan, earth, venus, mars)
4 gas giants (NOT a planet) (saturn, jupiter, uranus, neptune)
countless moons (mercury/ ceres ar emoons of the sun) (including ceres, mercury, pluto, ganymede, triton, etc.) (anything spherical)
and countless asteroids (anything not spherical)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
because we are finding other planets in other solar systems.
An actual definition of planets is needed.
I like to think of it as a planet, but thats just my childhood teaching talking.
It's ok, somepeople refuse to believe the earth is round. I am sure you're in good company.
The real question is; why si neptune a planet? It hasn't cleared it's path of objects. Namely Pluto.
Now, if the try to rename pluto, they will have hell to pay.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
why is the definition orbiting around a sun?
isn't the sun what we call specifically to the star at the center of the solar system which is where earth belongs? shouldn't it be star instead? would this definition just limit to eight planets in the universe (it would seem very unlikely that they will find more planets in the solar system with the new definition.)
anyway, i was hoping that they decided to give just one exemption to pluto to be part of the planet and all others will no longer be planets. at least everybody will be ok with it. i mean normal people would find it confusing.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
Pluto may not be a planet anymore, but he's still my favorite Dog Star.
http://www.nineplanets.org/intro.html
That should be www. eight planets.org
Marys Vagina exudes menses, jamming swells uninvited Ned's penis.
How many planets are there? Many Voted Early Morning: Just Slightly Under Nine.
[Plutonian Grand Overlord to Imperial General Zif'f]
"That's it! That's the last straw! Zif'f - launch the invasion!!"
Now that's breaking news!
So let me make sure I understand - Pluto cuts inside the orbit of Neptune and has therefore not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, but Neptune, despite not having cleared Pluto out of its orbit, is still a planet? These criteria strike me as intended simply to eliminate Pluto. They aren't universally applied. There are numerous earth-crossing asteroids. Does that mean that Earth has not cleared its neighborhood?
Let's face facts. Our sun has 4 real, indisputable planets. Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Mars simply aren't in the same category of object as Jupiter. When you get right down to it, everything else is just dirt. Earth has more in common with Europa than it does with Jupiter. I think the real conflict here is the attempt to continue to think of the Earth as a "planet" while ruling out objects like Pluto. The word "planet" carries a romantic importance that we feel like we must apply to the Earth. I think there are 3 main categories of sun orbiting objects in the solar system:
We could even call Jupiter, et. al. superplanets or something. But as long as we're talking objective science here, Mars and Saturn just aren't in the same set.
...nine what? NINE WHAT?!?!
Launch every sig!
"Don't worry; if Pluto is voted out of the Solar System, it'll run as an independent."
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
They are learning old and incorrect facts, and now the schools have to go buy new books... again!
On the other hand they could wait a week and watch them overturn this.
I, for one, welcome our new Plutonian overlords.
Well, has anyone looked at it from Pluto's point of view? I mean, demoted from planethood to the status of a dwarf? It's a sad day! "Pluto's Lament" http://daypoems.net/poems/2801.html More seriously, I have in my library an 1855 astronomy book that lists 26 (!) planets, and 18 of them are what we would call asteroids today. I think that sort of planet proliferation is the bullet the IAU dodged today, and I'll bet their strict constructionist definition will stand.
If Pluto is too small to become a planet, does that make the Astronomers size queenS?
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
according to your definition, why are we then not considered moons around the sun?
This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Captain, Vogon Constructor fleet. Pluto has been scheduled for destruction to make room for the new intera-galactic highway... thank you and have a nice day.
Many VIPs Eagerly Mediated: Just Slightly Under Nine.
it was gettin' too crowded out there, anyway.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
Mickey Mouse has vowed revenge on the IAU. He is going to work diligently to wipe out Uranus from the list of planets.
Does this deffinition do away with the notion of binary planets? Would they both the be considered "Dwarf Planets" because neither cleared the neighborhood around its orbit (even if the system of both had)?
But isn't the Moon's distance from Earth slowly increasing thus, surely, the binary planet definition will also apply to the Earth+Moon eventually?
I'll tell you why they're doing this. It's not because there is any scientific reason to do so. It's because they simply have nothing better to do. They don't know what to research. They probably don't have the money to do so even if they did know what to research. So instead, they go declaring that Pluto is an asteroid or some stupid thing like that, in order to gain attention and most probably funding, so they can spend millions to discover that Jupiter is really just a dust particle, and Uranus has a bunch of Klingons around it.
Cardassian: How many planets are there?
Picard: There.. are... NINE planets!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl,
A solar system Ms. from a future world,
She travels like a rocket with her comet team
And there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen,
There's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen.
Argh. Now I will have that song stuck in my head all day long. Of course now that Pluto has been demoted, they will need to revise the verse that says:
Mars is red and Jupiter's big
And Saturn shows off its rings.
Uranus is built on a funny tilt
And Neptune is its twin,
And Pluto, little Pluto is the farthest planet from our sun.
If you're feeling nostalgic, the complete lyrics and a .wav clip
are on this
web site.
Stephen Colbert
The line I learned was "Mary's violet eyes made John stay up nights panting". It's just not as interesting to grade-school students without the panting... (Alternative: "Many very early men ate juice steaks using no plate". The word "ate" stands for the Asteriod belt. Again, not the same without the "P"... Curse you, IAU!)
This will destroy their tourism trade. Who's going to want to have their brain extracted and carried through the gulfs of space in a metal cylinder just to visit a measley dwarf planet?
Pluto is losing it's planetary status because it has not cleared its neighborhood around it's orbit.
I had read that b/c Pluto crosses orbit with Neptune, and of course hasn't "cleared" Neptune away, it is not a planet.
However, Neptune has not "cleared" Pluto from its orbit either no??
So why is Neptune still a planet?
Are they saying that Pluto needs to clear more of its own neighborhood, like the Kuniper Belt?
Does that mean it will eventually become a planet in millions of years?
Doesn't the new definition demote Neptune too? Pluto crosses its orbit, so Neptune has not cleared its orbit of other bodies either.... Hmmmm, 7 planets and counting.... Wait, Jupiter has Trojan asteroids sharing an orbit. Make that 6.... Oops! Earth has Trojans too. Guess what, we don't live on a planet! 5 and dropping fast....
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
The nine planet system was doomed after 2003 UB313 was discovered and found to be larger Pluto. So if UB313 is not a planet then Pluto cannot still be a planet. However, if Pluto is a planet then surely 2003 UB313 is a planet as well. What seems to have complicated the debate is that some astronomers vehemently want to demote totally as a planet; for them even 'dwarf planet' status doesn't go far enough. On the other hand there are other people who just a vehemently want to keep Pluto as planet.
I doubt this IAU meeting will be the final word on the question in the long run.
Ask an impertinent question and you are on the road to the pertinent answer.
If you look at the classical 9 planet list, the first thing that pops into your head is, "one of these things is not like the others."
I applaud the IAU for finally defining the meaning of the word and for not trying to fashion the definition into klein bottle to include Pluto/Charon.
I would have been even more strict than the IAU: I would have required planets to have no more than a maximum orbital eccentricity and no more than a maximal deviation from the orbital plane. But in practical terms I suspect my extra requirements are largely redundant.
There is a poll on aol.com asking if people support the decision to demote Pluto, oppose the decision, or just don't care. So far the results are 61 percent opposed, 26 percent don't care, and 13 percent support the descision. The "mentally inflexible" masses appear to be winning. I bet they're worried they will have to take astronomy class all over again, since they had a hard enough time passing it the first time. I guess the "mentally inflexible" masses think we should halt all scientific progress just so they can keep up with the rest of us.
I should probably go turn in my nerd card now for admitting to using AOL. Shame on me. Well, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery, right?
I quite like the additional criterion of dominance of a body in its neighbourhood. It's not as arbitrary as simply requiring a minimum mass or size.
I think "has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit." is the worst part of the definition, is earth even really a planet under this definition? I mean it can hardly be said to have cleared the neighborhood with a big honking moon sticking around like a pesky little sibling. I really can't see how "neighborhood" or "size" is less arbitrary than a mass which was picked because it represented a threshold where gravitational forces would take over as a formative process.
Demoting Pluto is a small price to pay.
I would agree, except now we are calling something a "dwarf" planet which by definition is not a planet. So, instead of the descriptor being a subset it is a superset. This is very bad. Dwarf has a very specific meaning as a descriptor and planet now has a specific meaning, but "dwarf planet" put together now has a totally unique meaning contrary to the definition of the two words individually. Dwarf simply means "small" as an adjective, to say that it is a small planet, but then in your definition say that it is not a planet at all, is the result of either too little sleep or too many beers.
On the other hand, I do not like the fact that a planet should orbit to Sun to be called a planet. On this point, I preferred the original proposal in orbit around a star. I don't see why our solar system should be any different, why planet-like celestial bodies orbitting other stars are not called planets.
Yes, this is an outrageous change of definition for people that call themselves scientists. That a planet is something that orbits our own star goes against many years of convention without any meaningful physical criteria.
I have no particular emotional attachment to Pluto and really don't care what the professionals decide - it's their bailiwick. But, according to my English, the term "dwarf planet" simply qualifies planet and therefore Pluto is still a planet - specifically, of the dwarf variety.
This naming convention seems much more problematic than whether or not Pluto meets the criteria of a "true" planet.
Would not "planetoid" have been a better choice?
Jupiter hasn't "cleared the neighbourhood"; it has all these moons around it! Any planet with moons or rings isn't going to qualify.
Oh, but you may say, "Well, by clearing the neighborhood, we mean nothing else in a similar orbit; Jupiter's moons orbit Jupiter." Okay, that's a stretch, but the trojan asteroids share Jupiter's orbit. Jupiter certainly hasn't cleared out those!
Bruce
So, instead of the descriptor being a subset it is a superset.
Sorry, I should have said mutually exclusive set. Really wikipedia has a good diagram, but the orderly diagram makes it appear to be a logical distinction rather the linguistic mess that it is.
A: Pluto is a planet
B: No, Pluto is a dwarf Planet.
A: Yes, that's right I said it was a planet.
B: But it is a dwarf planet, so you are wrong.
A: Isn't a dwarf planet just a type of planet?
B: No.
A: Then why is it called a planet at all
B: uhhh, cause we are really just nostalgic about describing pluto as a planet
A: Is that any reason to screw up the defintion for future generations
B: Ah just get your own solar system, our defintions are specific to just this one.
I mean, people with titles like The Lord of the Dead tend to take such things rather personally.
I can see the fnords!
I couldn'd stand Pluto anyway. He was kind of an embarrassment. What would visitors of our solar system think if the first planet they see is this sucker? I find Uranus and Neptun make a far better choice for our border planets! They are some impressive, cool planets. Talking about making a first impression.
Planethood is like porn: I know a planet when I see one.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
But... YOU'RE FIRED!
Ohh but seriously, I am so relieved.
I was absolutely horrified at the possibility that we'd have planets Mickey, Minnie and Goofy added to our solar system.
2) Some of us have become heavy enought to be almost spherical
3) Some of us are driving people out of our neighborhoods.
Please submit names of famous people you think make the cut.
Does this mean that that it suddenly is something lesser to be the first dwarp planet ever to be discoverd?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Pluto was all to much like a Kuiper belt object getting caught by gravity than a classic planet. This is LOTS better than the draft proposal going on about making all those "plutons" and pushing up the planet count. I'm happy IAU had the guts to actually demote a planet instead of doing the opposite. This is like finally fixing up a mistake made a long time ago, and I'm grateful for that. Their compromise with dwarf planets seems elegant too, as that would give recognition to unusually large celestial bodies, that however still are more like rocks compared to classic planets.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Poor dwarves down under. Now they aren't even safe in space.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Major vacillation ensures mostly jaded scientists undeserved news. (I applaud the astronomers of the world.)
will be to eliminate Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune as planets. Obviously real planets are made of rock like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Those other bodies are just big puffs of gas. They shouldn't be called planets.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
... it should have been reported by John Cleese, pointing to a model of the solar system screaming "This is an ex-planet!"
At least in this case, they weren't using the term incorrectly for the most part. They actually had it right.
/.)
No. We've known for decades that the "planet" Pluto was far smaller than any other planet and made of fundamentally different stuff. And through all that time, astronomers let it go because every time one of them mentioned that Pluto wasn't really a planet he was shouted down by the public. Now that we know there are dozens of bodies just like Pluto - and some even larger - what little scientific accuracy there was in calling Pluto a planet is completely lost.
Face it, the astronomers weren't going to come out of this looking good no matter what:
1. They develop a definition of "planet" that includes Pluto and, by association, dozens of other bodies. Effect: The public freaks out about "those crazy scientists". (For proof, just read the previous article on this subject here at
2. They develop a definition of "planet" that excludes dozens of small bodies and, by association, Pluto. Effect: The public freaks out about "those crazy scientists". (For proof, read this thread).
3. They develop an entirely new set of definitions using brand new words that no one's ever heard of before. Effect: The public freaks out about "those crazy scientists" who are trying to complicate a "perfectly simple situation".
And, of course, there's the fact that any one who gets upset over this really has far too much free time on their hands.
Clear, Dark Skies
I wonder how they will deal with this.. Now that they lost a planetary body....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mercury should be demoted also.
It really is just a dwarf planet with:
1) no atmosphere,
2) no moons,
3) a smaller size than two of Jupiters moons, and
4) a highly eccentric orbit.
It by no means has cleared its path of other objects, but rather has simply avoided being swallowed up by the sun.
So what if we discovered a star system with a giant planet like Jupiter which assumed an orbit similar to Pluto's? Would we call it a dwarf planet even though it dwarfs the size of the other planets in the system? Affections for Pluto aside, I just don't think we got this definition right yet.
Shakespeare said it best.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
Well any institution that officially acknowleges this stupidity should lose government funding. It's one way I get a vote.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Jupiter is really a new type of dwarf star.
Rather than going super-nova, Jupiter became a high super radioactive gas giant.
If there were radio telescopes in other solar systems, it would detect Jupiter as a very tiny star.
At the very least, Jupiter is not a normal class planet and should be promoted to a higher than planet status.
Further more, a few of Jupiter's moons should be promoted to a sub-planet status.
This would, of course, upgrade our solar system's status to being more complex by containing a sub-solar-system.
Since the human race has already demoted the sun, the moon and Ceres, demoting Pluto doesn't seem like such a big deal. The word planet originally meant "wanderer". Any body whose position varied with respect to the star background was regarded as a planet. In ancient times the sun and the moon were regarded as planets along with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Ceres was also regarded as a planet at the time of its discovery. This decision of the IAU is nevertheless an important one and a victory for themselves and for science. They have corrected a mistake made long ago. The only losers are those would mistake science for dogma, and cling to false belief in the face of later evidence. Those who would regard astronomers as losers are those would regard scientists as gods and science as an infallible philosophy. Today science has been shown to be what it is: a self correcting philosophy.
The IAU has clearly been bought off by the TBIA - Text Book Industry Association, hoping to sell millions of updated science texts.
I never liked that planet anyway.
I love how all of these slashdot posters think they're right and a large group of astronomers must be wrong.
it'll be like Puerto Rico. Always called a country/planet but only listed as a commonwealth/minor planet on official documents. This will be a lot more clear 500 years from now when a whole country worth of people can live for prolonged periods of time inside colony ships.
My first thought would be that the moons orbit the planets, but there's only really a quantative difference between earth-moon co-orbit and say pluto-charon orbit.
Mostly just devil's advocating, but doesn't this strike anyone else as a really stupid planet definition?
The phrase "cleared the neighborhood" refers to how the planet formed more than how it exists now. It means taht it was formed by causing nearby material to accrete with it in the planetary accretion disk, in a sense "clearing the neighborhood" of trash. It has nothing to do with the fact that it is alone or nearly alone in its orbit, though that usually goes hand in hand with "clearing the neighborhood".
Some people just seem to have a negative emotional response to the idea that there may be hundreds of planets in the Solar System, and that emotional response seems to be what has won the day here. There is no science behind this at all, it is a definition that is arbitrarily designed to permanently cap the number of planets to a small, manageable number. I see at least two big problems with this, first, the opening up to the possibility of there being hundreds of planets would force educators to rethink how these concepts are taught in elementary school. It could be something other than a memorize-these-nine-things exercise, but rather an opportunity to teach the basic concepts. Now it will just become a memorize-these-eight-things exercise. The other thing is that many of the newly discovered objects really merit study, and I don't see any Congress appropriating funds to send a probe to something that is just a "dwarf planet". The worst thing, though, is the pervasive media certainty that this is the end of the debate, five hundred really smart people voted on the issue and now it is settled for all eternity. I think that this new definition is deeply flawed in a number of ways, and we really need to treat this as a debate that has just begun.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
1930-2006. Truly an astronomical icon! Pluto is survived by a growing family of dwarfs.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Those crazy scientists should just have used a different word to planet. "Astronomertlet" or some stupid jargon like that. Planet is an ancient word in widespread general usage, so of course people are going to complain. It's not like the astronomers had a previous definition of planet that was being violated.
If you go back to the previous thread on the subject, they wanted to call the new class of objects "Plutons" - but this was shouted down by geologists, who use the term to refer to a type of volcanic rock.
Informally, they are now referring to Pluto-class objects as "BOOCs" - as in "8 planets and a Bunch Of Other Crap.
Clear, Dark Skies
so there
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
it is considered a brown star now
What am I to do with this now?
There. One line. Why do we need these cosmogonical definitions based on what we think happened at the formation of the solar system when we could have a MUCH simpler definition based on what we directly observe IS happening?
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Bring back Pluto: http://www.petitiononline.com/bbpluto/petition.htm l
VOTE!
What bothers me is that the Pioneer plaques have to be corrected now! Who volunteers to go correct the Pioneer plaques? Perhaps one of the religious right who had an issue with the "smut" on them will go out to update the solar system description and place some clothes on the images of God... errrr man and woman. Makes me kind of wish we had more plaques floating about the firmament.
Pluto demoted? Now that's just Goofy! ;-p
-Eric