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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.
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,
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...
Is it just me or does anyone else find it harder to remember these damn phrases than it would be to just remember the planets and their order?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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...
If you consider that comets cross the orbits of all the planets, then none of the planets qualify.
Well Neptune doesn't have a vastly odd orbit for a start...
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
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.
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?
But that's an important distinction. The relationship between Pluto and Charon is much closer to that of peers. I liked the feature of the original attempt that would put the Pluto and Charon on equal footing. Unfortunately, this new definition seems to preclude the concept of a binary dwarf planet system.
Indeed, and the main other problem is our own moon. Various astronomers have commented that they consider Earth-Luna to be a pair of planets sharing a common orbit around the sun, and changing places periodically. (There are examples of this on a smaller scale in the Saturn system.)
Not that it really matters all that much. As other astronomers have commented, they mostly just say "body" and give a list of specs. Terms like "planet" are a bit too vague to be useful as technical terms. After all, Mercury, Luna and Pluto are more like each other than either is like Venus, Earth or Titan. This by itself tells us that "planet" can't be a very useful term for any technical purposes.
This is of interest mostly to mass-media journalists and authors of school textboks.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Clyde Tombaugh is surely spinning!
In astronomy, they don't call it spinning, but "ro...tat...ing" (making finger quotes as I type). You have to give some respect to the man who discovered the biggest snowball that side of the asteroid belt
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
I think every other "moon" has an gravitational center within the parameters of the planet. Charon is the only case, so I agree Charon and Pluto should be considered "binary planets". It you want to call them 'dwarf planets' too b/c they're are relatively small, that's fine too. But they're still planets. And I will still think of them as such, as well as any other object orbiting a star.
:T:R:A:N:S:
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?
That's the part I don't get.
We have a rather large body in the neighorhood of our orbit. We call it Luna. Are we not a planet?
Jupiter has groups of asteroids that share its orbit. Not a planet?
Neptune hasn't cleared Pluto out of its orbital space. Not a planet?
Scale up the Pluto/Neptune situation and consider a hypothetical stellar system with an Earth-sized body in an highly ellipical orbit that crossed that of a gas giant. Would neither be planets?
Some astronomer help me out here...
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
I commented on this before, but here is a shorter version...
Legal issues.
If we get off this rock, we will probably allow asteroid mining. It would then be OK to reduce an asteroid to rubble to extract the ore that you want. Now imagine Pluto has some valuable Ultra-rareium at its core. Is it OK for a company or a country to smash it to pieces?
These definitions are important so laws can be made. Is it OK to bury radioactive waste in an asteroid? What about Mars? Does this apply to all planets, or just rocky planets?
So, while it might not matter scientifically, (like political borders don't matter to geologists), they may be important anyway.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
I agree...screw Neptune.
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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.
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