Pluto Decision Meets with Frustration

fuzzybunny writes "The BBC reports that the IAU's controversial Prague vote on demoting Pluto from planet status was irregular. 'There were 2,700 astronomers in Prague during that 10-day period. But only 10% of them voted this afternoon.'" On a less serious note, lx writes "Nonplussed by Pluto's recent downgrade from Planet Status, Fox News's own John Gibson does an incredible Stephen Colbert impersonation to correct the 'revisionist history' of the IAU's decision. Exemplifying 'truthiness,' from the article: 'Long ago I learned it was a planet and I see no reason to unlearn it. Why should I?' "

Comments

In Other News...

[ackthpt]

After the ambush by the Dwarf Planet camp, on the last day, the IAU appears ready to fragment into smaller sub-unions, or dwarf unions.

Meanwhile, astrologers going out of their minds over the contentious issue of what constitutes a planet, how many of them there are and how it will impact births, weddings and divining portents, have finally had enough. This evening Seoul, Mumbai and San Francisco are in flames as astrologers and their clients rampage.

today's lesson: if you don't like the result of the last vote, wait until your opposition has left and then call another vote.

And what's this 472 of 2,700 being 10% stuff?

Stern said like-minded astronomers had begun a petition to get Pluto reinstated. Car bumper stickers compelling motorists to "Honk if Pluto is still a planet" have gone on sale over the internet and e-mails circulating about the decision have been describing the IAU as the "Irrelevant Astronomical Union".

I want one of those bumper stickers. I mean, how geek!

Ah, here's more info on merchandising the Pluto debate and a place you can vote with your $.

Considering...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Considering that Pluto orbits both inside and outside of Neptune's more circular orbit, even if on a slant to the ecliptic, what are the chances they could collide someday? Is there a common point both celestial bodies (note how cleverly I've avoided the use of the now obsolete term 'planet') have both passed through at some 4th dimensional offset (time for those of you in Rio Linda) from each other?

Re:Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

It MAY have something to do with how that decision was made. 424 delegates, out of an expected number of 2600, (sorry, haven't found any number regarding actual anttendées) made that decision. That's 16% of the nominal number of people who had a say in it.

A whopping majority, don't you think? If it had been in an American election that is - which it BTW wasn't, for you who haven't rtfn. ;-)

Not to mention the fact

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That it destroys a major plotline of Heinlien's clasic teen novel Have Spacesuit Will Travel

A question of fairness and integrity

[meburke]

Whether Pluto is or is not considered a planet is not as important to me as the integrity of high-level guidance among senior scientists. When the arguments for or against a decision depend on popular vote rather than rational consensus, scientists reduce themselves to the level of lawyers. When the objectivity of scientific thought is bypassed by special interest groups and politics, science is no longer Science. This whole process has been a shameful exhibition of politics.

Re:A question of fairness and integrity

[jc42]

Except they are not determining a scientific fact. They are pounding out a scientific classification. Classifications should and are decided by majority.

Yup; that's the way it's usually done. Most scientific fields have an international organization for deciding classification and terminology issues, and changes are usually made after the members vote in favor of the changes.

Of course, this is typically done rather differently from the typical political vote. There is a general consensus among scientists that you shouldn't change such things without good reason. So any changes in classification are typically preceded by years of discussion and presentation of evidence in scientific papers. When the voting actually happens, it's usually more along the lines of "Is the evidence good enough to justify discarding precedent and renaming these things?"

A famous one (among biologists) happened a quarter century or so back, when the big convention of zoologists voted to reclassify the Aves (birds) as a suborder of the Dinosauria. This had actually been discussed for more than 150 years, but since birds don't fossilize well and there were few avian fossils to study, the general consensus was "We don't have enough evidence yet." But in the 1960s and 1970s, a lot more evidence was dug up, and the consensus became "Yeah; it's rather convincing; let's do it." Funny thing is that the media still hasn't heard about that vote; they still talk seriously about the extinction of the dinosaurs. And biologists have a bit of fun looking puzzled, and saying "What do you mean? Dinosaurs aren't extinct. There's one sitting on that branch over there."

The IAU's vote on the definition of "planet" was a bit unusual. This was partly because the term is millennia old, but there has never been a scientific definition at all. So they weren't changing the definition of a scientific term; they were attempting to write a scientific definition of a common-speech term. Much of the scientific dispute was based on the fact that many astronomers considered it pointless, and thus unprofessional. That is, the real question wasn't so much how "planet" should be defined, but rather whether there's good reason to officially define it at all.

John Gibson == dumbass

[daddyrief]

I usually don't comment much, but when a nationally-recognized news anchor makes stupid comments, I feel obliged.

He says, "All of a sudden Ringo isn't a Beatle? All of a sudden somebody changes a standard and Curly isn't a stooge, or Zeppo isn't a Marx, or Ari isn't one of the "Entourage"? Actually I don't know why Pluto got itself unmade as a planet. I didn't even read the rest of the story, frankly."

My god. Yeah, because Ringo Starr's status as a Beatle hinges on statistics and his orbital ellipse, just like Pluto's. Look out for that 'Two Stooges' DVD also. John Gibson sounds like a prick -- if our understanding of the universe evolved John Gibson's way, we might still be afraid to fall off the edge of the world, or the Sun might still rotate around the Earth. The changing of 'standards' is inevitable as a better understanding of the universe becomes available. The more technologically advanced we become, you can bet laws, theories, and yes, even TEXTBOOK PRINT may become outdated.

(Note: this rant directed toward John Gibson's stupid 'rebuttal,' regardless of the IAU decision whether Pluto should be considered a planet or not.

Why?

[Kaenneth]

I'll tell you why.

Ever look at the price tag on a Textbook?, those things are expensive.

To pay for the textbook publishers political action committee.

Think of the money that will need to be spent by schools for new science textbooks; just after they got done replacing them to give equal space to 'Intelligent Design'.

You might think it's unimportant, but when the federally mandated standardised test asks how many planets are in the Solar System...

Back in the day

[ndansmith]

Gibson would've said the converse when they added Pluto:

"I grew up with eight planets. Now some know-nothing radicle tells me there are nine? This 'planet' Pluto is nothing but a rock of ice in space."

Re:NASA's new mission: to set foot on a planet

[aweinert]

I would think having large Lagrangian points would mean it has less dominance. The more mass a planet has, the bigger (or more effect they have on other bodies) the points are. Its Jupiter's gravity that is collecting stuff in those points. As for the transient comets and stuff, its like saying you don't have dominance over your house because there are some ants passing through. And not to mention, its part of the reason Pluto is not a planet under this definition, because in addition to its other problems, Neptune is dominates it.

Re:PLUTO IS STILL A PLANET

[Arcane_Rhino]

AP has suggested:

My Very Exotic Mistress Just Showed Up Nude.

Now that's news.

Re:Pluto

[Jugalator]

I agree, and Pluto was always controversially labelled "planet" in the science communtiy.

It feels almost like they're finally fixing a mistake made 70 years ago.

But since people more often than not resist change and there are so many different opinions on this, this is an impossible matter to define (and I believe we need stricter definitions with the late Trans-Neptunian Object discoveries) without upsetting groups of people. Bear in mind that some complaining about this may be people that would rather have us make 50 more objects or so as true "planets", like indicated by the draft proposal. I think that would be much worse, and I also don't think we should set an arbitrary limit of a planetary system to include Pluto artificially and make historians happy, as that would be an incosistent rule when we start mapping extrasolar systems.

Re:How about this?

[mdwh2]

Just like how we wouldn't term the rocks in planet rings moons, even though, to my knowledge, there's no definition in terms of size.

Although it's interesting that we don't seem to have a proper definition of "moon" other than being a natural satellite of a larger object. In fact, the same problem is occurring as more and more "moons" are discovered - for example, 45 of Jupiter's 63 moons was discovered since 2000, and includes "moons" only 1 km across! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter's_natural_sat ellites )

I wonder if they are going to redefine "moon" at some point and demote many of these moons? If not, I wonder why it's acceptable to have lots of tiny moons, but not planets?

Re:No reason to unlearn it?

[saskboy]

It's bad because there's no way to tell if he's pulling our leg or not. Based on his past performances, I'd guess he's being serious and just mocking Colbert. At least with Colbert there's a 99.9999% chance that he's being sarcastic.

better definitions needed

[gsn]

I'd agree with the posters that say we'd need an accurate classification - as the BBC article points out this adopted classification is ridiculous. So was the previous one which was mostly a) b) and c). Let me elaborate -

The new definition has that a planet is
(a) in orbit around a star or stellar remnants,
(b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape,
(c) is not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion of deuterium in its core, and
(d) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

Where do the problems begin - with a) what happens when we find systems that are orbiting tight binaries - they are not a single star, could satisfy b), c) and d) but wouldn't classify as planets. What about a system with objects satisfying b) c) and d) but around a brown dwarf. A black hole can be a stellar remnant - I'd not call something that satisfies b) c) and d) orbiting a black hole a planet. I'd call it mostly doomed.

b) is terrible and it features in both defintions - an object with a high spin or a large system of moons can be in hydrostatic equilibrium, and can satisfy a) c) and d) but deviate from being spherical by a respectable amount. Atleast here you can define some quantitative deviation from being a sphere. An artifical limit on how spherical an object is stupid because there will be border line systems. You can still kida work with this one atleast.

c) is fine and sensible and corresponds to well defined physical conditions and is the dividing line between brown dwarfs and stars - which makes me wonder what happens to brown dwarfs with this definition.

d) As the BBC article points out the earth hasn't cleared its orbits and there are plenty of NEOs, all the Jovians have moons and rings (if anything these are more in the neighborhood of the planets orbit than asteroids), Jupiter has Trojans and Damocloids. If Pluto crosses Neptunes object last I checked yes Pluto hasn't cleared its object but neither has Neptune. Do you select which one remains a planet on the basis of mass. What if the less massive object was more spherical?

Only a limit based on hydrogen fusion in the core is clean. You can atleast qualify how spherical an object is even if a hard limit above which we call something spherical enough and below not spherical enough is stupid. Since its quantitative its more useful. I don't see any particular reason to limit things to a single star or stellar remnants. This is flaky - make it in orbit around a system thats actively undergoing nuclear fusion or something. Theres just no way to use this neighborhood definition so toss it.

I think the problem here is the IAU is hell bent on saving what we traditionally think of as planets without adding too many.

Professor Iwan Williams, the IAU's president of planetary systems science, commented: "Pluto has lots and lots of friends; we're not so keen to have Pluto and all his friends in the club because it gets crowded.

Sounds vaguely racist ...er planetist.

The point is that planets are not that special and there are probably a lot of them out there. The only thing special about this one is that we are in it. Sorry if that seems anthropic. Stars are definetly not special and there are probably a lot of planetary systems out there. If the worry is that we have to change what we have to teach kids and we don't want them to memorize 100 objects then I'd argue that they ought to be learning a consistent defintion of what a planet and a star is instead. If they can name any 10 in our solar system they get ten points and can move on to the next question. Which is can than name a few other planetary systems. I don't think you are going to lose interest in astronomy by not emphasizing the nearest planet - not as long as you can take them to an 8 inch scope even and show you Jupiter's moons and Saturns rings.

Re:information never changes...

[mysticgoat]

And if other bodies ( such as xena )...

Wow.

That just sparked a minor epiphany. IIRC, Xena was a mortal woman who acquired the power to destroy the Gods. And now her namesake celestial body has demonstrated the similar power of destroying a planet named after one of those Gods, by stirring up a bunch of astronomical hot air many AU from its center of gravity. That's heavy, dude. I mean, isn't it amazing how reality recapitulates fiction?

I think "Xena" should definitely become the official name of this planet-destroying roundish body that orbits about the Sun and is bigger than a breadbox but apparently is pretty friendly with its neighbors.

Of course if the 4% of astronomers who decide such things find that Xena isn't all that tolerant of neighbors, then I guess it will become the nineth planet, eh?

Re:No reason to unlearn it?

[thrillseeker]

I stopped using the word "brontosaurus" which I learned as a child, because it turned out there was no such creature.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'

Bully for Brontosaurus.

Re:No reason to unlearn it?

[Red Alastor]

And people should ALWAYS be forced to use new words voted on by scientists. And not even a quorum of scientists at that! Insisting that people stop refering to Pluto as a "planet" just because 270 people halfway around the world took a vote is beyond stupid.

People are just unfamiliar with the concept of namespace. I have no trouble in accepting that Pluto is a planet in the mainstream namespace and it is or isn't (I'm waiting until the dust settles and we get a decision) in the scientific namespace.

Another exemple of people not groking namespaces is the "it's just a theory" rethoric. Theory does not mean the same thing for scientists.