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Pluto Making a Comeback
anthemaniac writes "Space.com reports that the American Astronomical Unions Division of Planetary Scientists recognizes the IAU's authority to make a new planet defintion but expects it to be altered. Separately, 300 astronomers have signed a petition saying they won't use the definition. All this stems from the discontent over how only 424 astronomers voted on the proposal that demoted Pluto. Looks like this little dog is on the comeback trail."
it seems like any vote on the future of pluto ought to wait till after the prob gets there in a few years. We do not even have good pictures of the planet, or a lot of solid date (if the wikipedia entry is good). I say wait to make any changes until than, anything else would be jumping the gun
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
They wont be changing that basic lesson everytime there is a fight in astromy associations.
Wincopy
If they were real scientists, they'd accept the new designation. That's how science works. You modify your model of the universe as new information becomes available. Clyde Tombaugh found the first of an unknown class of objects because Pluto happened to be the closest and easiest to see. They just called it a planet because they lacked the information we have. But now we know about the Kuiper Belt, and have adjusted the definition of Pluto accordingly. Mode me a troll, but stop with the sentimental bullshit. Rather than :losing" a planet we've gained a whole new neighborhood of the Solar System to explore.
Well, the trouble is that there is no old definition at all, save perhaps "there are nine of them, these nine." It's a planet because it's been called a planet in the past. That definition doesn't work when you start trying to classify the bodies in another solar system, of course. The reason Pluto has been left out of the formal definition is that it's too small. Way too small. And irregular. Any definition that included pluto would also be including three other bodies... and schools would have to teach TWELVE planets, not eight or nine. The trouble started way back when Pluto was discovered. It was discovered by an American, and as you know, Americans are a proud lot. So a few years later when it was discovered to be far smaller than first suspected, noone wanted to back down and admit it wasn't really a planet at all. In other words, they had to invent a defintion of a planet, and no definition that they could come up with included Pluto, but excluded the three other Pluto-like bodies.
They didn't change the definition of a planet; there simply wasn't any precise definition of a planet before. As for all of you who want to keep with tradition, I'll refer you to my previous posting on this.
If you've got a strong case why Pluto should be considered a planet, let's hear it. All this grumbling about "I don't see why they had to change things..." is rediculous. There wasn't an official definition before. That ambiguity had to change and when they drafted criteria, Pluto didn't make the cut.
GMD
watch this
That scientific "fact" can be changed by petition.
Yes, I know that this whole planet thing is just taxonomy, but do they? Do the politicians really understand that, either?
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
They demote pluto because it hasn't cleared the neighborhood of its orbit because its orbit intersects the orbit of Neptune. But doesn't this necessarily mean that Neptune has not cleared its neighborhood and therefore is also not a planet?
What does clearing the neighborhood mean? To me it suggests the planet should have no moons either?
If you are going to make a big deal and change the definition of something like this you should put a heck of a lot of thought into creating a definition that is objective and not open to interpretation.
Dear distinguished ladies and gentlemen of letters,
Humanity has arrived at an inflection point in our history, one whose influence will steer our course for decades, or, more likely, centuries. The post-millennial rise of both Islamic and Christian fundamentalism tears at the very skirts of the Enlightenment.
Your fellow citizens have twice elected an inarticulate and violent demagogue as President, a man who has expressed deep personal doubts about the validity of the scientific method and its relevance in America's primary-school classrooms. Three-fourths of the adult population profess a belief in angels; two-thirds believe the Christian Bible is the literally-true word of their God. Over half state that humans were created by God in their present form.
One American adult in one thousand can state the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Meanwhile, to the elected representatives of this singularly-unenlightened population, you, America's scientists and engineers, have cheerfully handed control of several thousand thermonuclear weapons.
And now you're bickering endlessly about... whether or not Pluto is a planet.
Cut this shit out. Now. I don't want to live in another Dark Age, or worse, die upon the threshold of one.
Let Pluto be Pluto, whatever Pluto is, and let's put our heads together and figure out how to deal with the delusions we've created for ourselves here on Earth. We need intellectual leadership, not semantic panem et circenses.
Answers? Sorry; you're the scientists, I'm just some obviously-unlaid AC, ranting into the night on Slashdot's nickel. If I had any suggestions, believe me, I'd be making them, but I don't.
But come on. We've got to do something productive here.
Common human consensus had Pluto as a planet and pretty much still does today.
Geez, you make it sound like they're just some random cranks who got together. This was a meeting of the IAU. Common human consensus had tomatoes as not being fruits and dolphins as fish before people sat down and came up with a consistent definition.
Pluto's essentially grandfathered in from a time when we hadn't yet found other objects in its size class. I hope you realize that Pluto is only about 2300 km across while our own moon is about 3500 km across. Are we in a double-planet system, or is there some logical reason you can think of for making a smaller object than our moon a planet while our moon is undeserving of the status?
I think it's high-time we demoted it as nothing more than an oversized trans-Uranic asteroid. I mean, it doesn't even operate on the same elliptic plane as the planets do and it has a "moon" that's half its size. The only reason anyone cares is a knee-jerk anger over having some childhood lesson overturned.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
In science our primary means of communication are words. Because of that, we need to have some degree of stability in the definitions of the words that we are using. At the same time, we (scientists) are constantly encountering new phenomena which can challenge our current definitions and systems of classification. Much of the same problem can be seen in biology: when taxonomists were originally dividing living organisms into families, species, and genuses, they had no genetic information available - they based their classifications on the structures present. However now many species have had their relations reassigned based on genetics - this means new names which better line up with the facts that are now known. Still, not everything must be changed; it is not always necessary.
Much the same has happened with physics, chemistry, and astronomy. In chemistry, the term "dative bond" has been all but replaced by alternative words. Some (older chemists) still use it, however it is a word that many disfavour. (And personally I prefer its use to some of the more clumsy longer names given.) In astronomy, "planet" was originally the name given to "wandering stars," yet we still use the term planet to describe them. Admittedly a case could be made for changing our definition, but I think that subclasses are possily a better way to go. Most of us have accepted the term "Gas Giant" for some time, and it in no way lessens the planetary status of such giants. Perhaps the idea of Dwarf Planets will gain similar acceptance?
Frankly though, I am not entirely sure that size is always the best way to categorize anything (despite our human inclination to do so)... perhaps composition or habitability might be better? (although this will be of limited use if we're never bother to visit them) I could easily be persuaded to describe pluto as an "icy planet"... or Earth as an "M-class planet."
When Aristotle pointed out that the Earth wasn't flat, it pissed off a lot of people. When Darwin published The origin of species, it pissed off a lot of people. When climate scientists pointed out the dangers of anthropogenic climate change, it pissed off a lot of people. When they found that Pluto, like Ceres, was within a belt of similarly sized objects, it pissed off a lot of people.
I suspect the reason these people were pissed off is because they can't fathom that new observations means that what they were taught before was wrong, and that the new information gives a better approximation of reality.
So what do we have? A nation for which to win (keeping the planet they discovered) is more important than to have a good result overall (a solid definition of "planet" that's usable for the forseeable future). Unfortunately, they're the strongest bullies on the playground and they don't mind pushing the other kids around. Let's hope they don't buy the majority they need to get "their" planet back.
Can't admit defeat with style, have to bitch around, looking silly and pissing everybody else off. (sighs)
You're actually serious, aren't you? In what way exactly does it kick any ass? The metric systems covers lenght, volume, force... all consistent and based on one, single meter.
The "standard" (that is, the standard in the US and hardly anywhere else) is based on how many definitions for lenth etc.? How many pints of fuel are in a rocket? Would that be american pints or british dry pints or british liquid pints? How many inches go into a mile? Would that be a normal mile or a nautical one? How many ounces does a quibic yard or foot of water weigh at room temperature?
The so called (by you) "standard" system is a mess, historically grown and a nightmare to handle.
"Planet" is only a label, and it's one used in contexts other than Science. Literature, History, Mythology, and Religion, among other things. When someone says Pluto is a planet in those contexts, it has no bearing on science. So, popular culture can continue to define Pluto as a planet and why not? Why should science have a monopoly? This is NOT like saying the Earth is flat. Saying the Earth is flat is a claim about the universe, saying Pluto is a planet is only giving it a label. When you say Pluto is a planet, most people aren't saying anything OTHER than the fact that it's an object in our solar system that's always been called a planet, and what's wrong with that? Why couldn't you say: "A Planet is one of the following nine objects in our solar system : Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and various other objects found outside our solar system, as decided by common useage." An Astronomer is free to say, "Pluto is not technically a planet, by the scientific definition." But that doesn't give any grounds to criticize people who want to call it a planet anyway.
>> Sure, that will probably get us planets by the dozen as we get a clearer idea of what't out in the edges of our system - but why is that a problem?
You would get them by the millions if you go by that definition.
What IAU wanted to do by adding the requirement of "clearing the neighborhood", was meant to bring in some lower limit to the size of the bodies considered planets.
Pluto-worshippers are now working to destroy that attempt at limit definition for emotional reasons, and having people accept some arbitrary limit by which Pluto would still be a planet, as would probably anything bigger than Pluto and thereby likely several hundreds of objects. We would end up with hundreds of planets in this starsystem alone, which is not very convenient when we clearly have a class of 8 much bigger objects. Maybe people would be more open to reclassifying the 8 classical planets as GIANT PLANETS, if they can't stand Pluto being called a dwarf?
I don't have a problem with demoting Pluto. I have a problem with their lame definition, which doesn't really concretely define anything.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I am a profesional astronomer and in my experiance most of my collegues could not really care less about this. For evidance, the fact that so few people voted shows that most astronomers are more interested in real science, not pointless naming conventions.
so if i say to you that osama bin laden believes in god, and justifies what he does in the name of god, does that invalidate or diminish the idea of god in your mind?
;-)
no, of course not, that's not logical. if i believe in idea x (evolution) and i believe in idea y (genocide), the fact that idea y is stupid/ wrong does not automatically mean idea x is stupid/ wrong. nor does it mean that if i believe in idea x, that i must also believe in idea y
get it?
but thank you for the humorous propaganda. it's always nice to see politically motivated lies and half truths making the rounds, convincing the gullible of ridiculous demagoguery and manipulating their emotions and acting on their prejudices
you know... like the nazis did
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...I just don't get why this is raising such a fuss.
When I was a kid, there were Baltimore Orioles. Then they decided that they were really the same species as Bullock's Oriole and both of them got renamed the "Northern Oriole." Then molecular genetics studies suggested they were really all that similar and now there are Baltimore Orioles again.
My science teachers were old enough to remember when _their_ sciences teachers had said "There are ninety-two elements. There have always been ninety-two elements. There will always be ninety-two elements." And "elementary" particles? Don't get me started...
The horseshoe crab was Limulus polyphemus. Then it was Xiphosura polyphemus. Now it ''seems'' to be Limulus again... or is it?
Classification is prescientific activity. It's very important but it's always arbitrary and subject to change.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Personally, I'd like to go back to the original five. The word "planet" comes from Greek and means "wanderer". They were called that because they didn't move with the stars as they (seemingly) rotated around the earth. In other words, they were defined in a way that was useful for human beings.
Since then we've been discovering adding objects that aren't visible to the naked eye. This has taken the word out of the realm of normal folk and into the realm of science. But it's not science. It's a pretty much an arbitrary definition that really doesn't mean much to scientists one way or another - other than as a possible marketing opportunity for a pluto mission.
With the new definition of 8 (and with the old of 9) school children learn that there are 8 (or 9) planets. Why? Because the teacher said so. Yet when they dig deeper to learn about the other objects and why they aren't planets what do they find? That basically we just made up an answer that sounded like it might sound scientific.
In this day and age when science is trying to defend itself not only against the intelligent design crowd but also government funding agencies, it seems to me that this whole fiasco only makes things worse. Science claims to be the light, the truth, the way of trying not to fool ourselves. But I can't imagine this whole thing looks very "enlightened" to the general public. Probably looks more like the circus that it is.
So I say we should do science a favor and give the word back to the sky watchers and the sidewalk astronomers. Someplace where the word can actually be useful.
Devon
should past mistakes in classifications remain just because of their age?
This is a picayune problem compared to the ones in zoological taxonomy.
Well, you know, if you applied the same standards for defining a species across the board... on the one hand half the species listed would become variants, and we'd have to consider making genus "Pan" part of genus "Homo". On the other hand, if we want to maintain the majority of the species listed as separate species then we'd have to deal with whether different races of man should be considered subspecies. And what a can of worms THAT would open up. All the racists in the world would come squirming out from under their rocks with their pet theories... but the fact is there's more difference between celts and saxons than between Urocyon Cinereoargenteus and Urocyon Littoralis.
In addition... it's not like astronomers actually need a definition of "planet". It's not a distinction that actually matters scientifically... the textbooks you're so dismissive of are probably the biggest reason there's a debate at all.
Is this really a "better definition of a planet" -- or just different? IMO, it's all semantics and that's the thing that has some people scratching their heads... This isn't about science, per se, it's about the politics of naming.
:-)
I don't really care whether Pluto is a "planet" or "pluton" or "dwarf planet" (since I've long been out of school) but the question I keep asking myself is "Why is the new definition 'better'?" Is it more accurate? Clearer? My take is that if you say "the planets are these nine (or ten, or twenty) bodies," that's perfectly as acceptable as saying "a body that's in orbit around the Sun, that's mostly round, that has cleared other bodies from its vicinity." The first definition is less flexible (and has lead to some arguments over whether newly-discovered bodies are "planets") but the new definition was also carefully crafted to include and exclude the things that are (or are not) to be part of the group.
One thing that amuses me about this is the politics of naming and/or grouping things. The current issue with astronomers is so much like what we get from doctors, with their naming fetish: a sort of neo-pagan belief that naming a thing gives you power over it. I always find it amusing when the doctor tells you you're suffering from plantar fasciitis, which is to say "sole band" - as if calling an injury by its location (in Latin) is some magical incantation. Or perhaps the Latin naming can give us insight into the current controversy. After all, these "star lawyers" are working on their naming conventions.
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