Slashdot Mirror
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.
The publishers are loving this.
they pissed off a LOT of people.
What more can you say?
Nine planets?
Seen from outside, the solar system has two large gas planets (Jupiter, Saturn) and two small gas planets (Uranus and Neptune). If you look closely, you see two small rock planets (Earth, Venus), and various smaller debris, like Mars, Mercury and Pluto.
Regards,
--
*Art
...in other news today, doctors tried to demote any penis that is not at least 7 inches long to 'dwarf penis' status.
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.
So... What is a Planet Again?
the issue centers on one the IAU itself says it hasn't addressed with it's new definition of a planet: extrasolar systems. as new telescopes come on line with more resolving power, our bestiary of planets is going to grow by leaps and bounds. it will render the debate over pluto moot
i think a definition of planet should be:
-round, with a significant atmosphere
-this is distinct from a gas giant, which should be considered closer to stars than to planets (round, mostly gas: really just stars without enough critical mass to ignite fusion)
-and distinct from a moon (no atmosphere, but still round)
-asteroids, comets, etc make up the miscellany
and notice, most importantly, i said nothing about what something orbits. what something orbits is really secondary in consideration to what something is composed of. if we find an earth-like "moon" orbiting a gas giant in another solar system, is what it orbits really the first consideration in picking what to call it? no, composition should come first, orbit second. so you could have a moon of the sun (pluto), or a planet of saturn (titan), or an asteroid of mars (deimos/ phobos, etc.)
so this system demotes not only pluto, but also mercury. while promoting titan. so our solar system is composed of:
-4 planets (venus, earth, mars, titan)
-4 gas giants (jupiter, saturn, neptune, uranus)
-and countless moons (of the sun and the planets)/ asteroids (of the sun and the planets)/ comets/ ring systems/ kuiper belt, oort cloud objects/ etc
really, as we see more and more exotic arrangements in extrasolar systems as new telescopes come on line, this debate about pluto will look more and more pedantic. and the IAU should really begin focusing on a more rigid definition no matter what, something they said they weren't doing at their last congress. we will soon have a vastly larger catalogue of strange orbital objects/ arrangements out there. pluto is small potatoes... literally
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The death of Pluto as a planet is going to be a watershed moment in my, albeit sad, life. No longer can I dwell in childish thoughts of a small comet like body with an excentric orbit being a planet. There are definitions after all. Definitions are an important part of adult life. I can't carry on wearing a cape and claiming to be superman anymore. Its time to stop pretending that my stick is a sword and my coconut percussion is a hourse. Yes, its time to put away such childish thoughts that led to Pluto's planetary status. A world of progress and commerce awaits us bold explorers who dare to stare into the blindingly obvious truth and confront it for what it is. Changing the definition is out of the question. We've matured now, ripped off the band-aid of addolesence in one quick, but fluid motion. As much as we would like to remove the bitting sting of pulling out a dozen arm hairs, we know deep in our hearts that we are better off as we are than as we were. Alas poor Pluto, I hardly knew thee, but though hast gone to a better place. A place where you can be amougnst your own kind. You were my favorite Planet, its true, but now you start a new life abielt less a less glamourus one. You'll forever be my favorite planet, dwarf or otherwise. I'll think of you fondly and call you every other weekend.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Well they'll change the lesson plans when the text books change. The text books will change when the "facts" are decided. Public schools are at least 5 years behind on text books. In the worst case, Pluto has got at least a decade more as a planet :)
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
Since the borderline is probably going to have to be arbitrary, why not use Pluto's diameter as the minimum? If other Kuiper objects are bigger, like Xena, then make Xena a planet also. If we end up with 20 planets, so be it. 25 is about classroom size anyhow such that each kid can get a planet assigned instead of sharing that is done now. Who knows, maybe there is a Mars-sized Kuiper object out there. Dismissing Kuiper objects just because they are "far" is kinda arbitrary. Size is a better criteria than distance.
Table-ized A.I.
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
Too late, solar system already took Pluto off of his Friends List.
Whether or not Pluto is recognised by these asscociations, Schools will continue to teach that the solar system has nine planets and Pluto is the ninth planet. They wont be changing that basic lesson everytime there is a fight in astromy associations.
At least the shitty schools, anyway. Maybe your statement is an indictment on how shitty the school system is.. unfortunately, I don't think so. I understand your point that schools have alot of switching costs, and that the 9 planets concept has alot of inertia, but if scientists decide Pluto isn't a planet, then it's not a planet.. I expect my child's school to teach them that. I expect my child's school to teach my children about what real scientists do, and what real science is going on, and even about what real scientists are arguing about. Once scientists finally agree on what is a planet, and who the planets are, I expect my school to keep up. If science changes... schools are supposed to change with it. This idea that you shouldn't have to keep up with science because it's inconvinient... well, don't make me invoke the intelligent-design drama If you aren't going to teach kids the things that science agrees is correct, then what exactly _are_ you going to teach them? Whatever you feel like? Whatever you were taught?
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.
For those of you at home who are playing along, here's the score so far:
~800 bc - Roman god of the underworld.
05-01-1930 - New planet. Also Mickey's new canine companion. Retains position as god of the underworld.
08-10-2006 - Still a planet. And a dog. Takes time off as god of the underworld to "spend more time with his new ceslestial family".
08-24-2006 - Demoted as a planet. Reclassified as a "dwarf planet" (or as they prefer to be called "Little planetiods"). Resumes job as god of the underworld.
Today - A planet again. Maybe. Title of "Roman god the the underworld" undisputed. Still a dog.
(ps. Tomorrow - Profit ???)
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
The rest of the world can use the metric planets that evolved in our solar system.
There. Everyone happy now?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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.
Nope, that's Venus and Earth. Mars is about one-third the mass of earth, IIRC.
Quoth the wikipedia, "Mars has half the radius of the Earth and only one-tenth the mass, being less dense, but its surface area is only slightly less than the total area of Earth's dry land".
I think a lot of the summaries have missed the point.
The final "definitions" that they came up are not scientifically useful or even useful for any reason. No better than the previous enumeration of planets. Really a lot worse in that now by definition planets only exist in our solar system. So, all those things that orbit other stars... oh well now they are just thingies that orbit other stars. The draft proposal seemed much better by comparison and provided a much more broadly applicable definition. Hell kick pluto out of the main planets if you want, but do so by increasing some arbitrary size threshold and then don't use planet as part of the name for whatever you are left with, at least if by definition it is now not a planet or any type of planet. Even the dorky sounding "pluton" would have been better than "dwarf planet"
And you have to imagine we are going to be finding a lot more planets around other stars in the coming decades as telescopes and processing power improve. or we would have, now we can't since all we can find is something that has no category of its own, unless they too will get a two word name that includes the word planet, such as "extrasolar planet" even though the word "planet" alone is not applicable.
And the part about clearing the neighborhood of the orbit part of the definition seems like it could be problematic from an observational standpoint. The idea that even if we agree to extend this new "definition" to other star systems, then observations probably won't be sensitive enough to be able to determine if the planet-like object has cleared all the asteroids from the "neighborhood". So, until we actually go to another star system, the likelyhood of finding another object and consitently (with the definition) say that we have found a planet will be nil.
Those of you who think the problem some of us have with these problematic new definitions is merely nostalgia, think again.
Bring back the draft proposed definitions and maybe tinker with those a bit. These ones they came up with need to be thrown out.
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."
...is that because of the New Horizons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons mission NASA and US astronomers has been pushing for a definition where Pluto is a planet because it is more prestigious to send a probe to a planet than to a dwarf planet. We are supposed to be scientists, and make definitons that make sense from a scientific point of view, but this is politics.
That's approximately 117 mm for the real scientists
>>
I expect my child's school to teach my children about what real scientists do, and what real science is going on, and even about what real scientists are arguing about.
>>
Then why do you care about your school teaching *astronomy*? Here's everything anyone needs to know about astronomy: space is big and mostly empty. Every once in a while, you'll find a burning ball of gas. Every once in a very long while, some rocks of various shapes and sizes. We're not sure how space got here. Some people find space impressive. For the rest of your life, a couple billion of your tax dollars will be spent firing rockets into space to get a better look at the rocks. OK, that wraps up astronomy. Lets move on to chemistry, biology, physics, and other sciences which actually have an impact on the lives of human beings.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I really liked the original suggestion. It's a planet if:
* It is round under its own gravity
* it is not already classified as a star
* It is not a satellite to something else not classified as a star (ie. when the common point of rotation is located within the body of the other object)
A possible fourth criteria could be:
* It orbits something classified as a star
though I'd be happy without that criteria, making solitary, wandering bodies be called planets as well.
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? It's not like having nine planets has some mysterious significance, and it hasn't been nine - or eight for that matter - for very long either.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
If you aren't going to teach kids the things that science agrees is correct, then what exactly _are_ you going to teach them?
Propaganda, same as always.
KFG
. . . something you look at and say, "hey, that's a planet."
No, seriously. Given all the historical baggage surrounding the term "planet", people shouldn't be trying to use it as a scientific term in the first place. If you want something that can be used to scientifically denote a certain class of astronomical objects, call them "primary satellites" or something. What's wrong with saying something like this, for example? "A planet is one of the nine satellites of Sol: Mercury, Venus, Earth, ..., Pluto; or a similar object orbiting another star that is widely recognized as a planet." That keeps the status quo with respect to our solar system, which doesn't seem to have hurt anything in the 76 years it's been around, and lets public opinion decide on anything else that pops up. Which leaves astronomers free to spend their valuable time actually watching the sky rather than trying to convince people that something that looks like a planet and smells like a planet isn't actually a planet.
I think the books should be changed to indicate that Pluto's planet status is just a "theory", and give equal time to different scientific definitions.
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)
Wrong domain. The www means you're requesting Pluto from the Earth.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Not to mention the fact that neutrons are subatomic particles.
"Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace." -Robert H. Goddard
My only relevant qualification for this argument is to be an enthusiastic amateur astronomer, but if anything it has meant I've been following it quite closely.
To be honest, the whole argument seems quite ridiculous to me. If the definition if a planet is so waffley that astronomers can't agree on it, then astronomers shouldn't be using the word for anything important in the first place. I'm a little surprised that the IAU saw the need to have a vote on this definition at all, and I'm even more surprised at the apparent outrage that's being expressed by professional astronomers whom I'd have thought might have had more interesting things to do with their time.
It's not as if we don't already have unambiguous ways to describe what's being referred to. The word "planet" is really just a convenience word that can be used as short-hand by people in informal communication. So what if we can count how many "planets" we have? Doing so is a convenient simplistic way to indicate about how many "big things" there are, but it doesn't even start to describe the real complexity of the Solar System.
"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.
>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.
Are you suggesting that witches are not actually made out of wood?
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric. 02/
7 inch would be about 177.8mm.
Lovell (he of canals on Mars fame) decided that there must be a huge Gas Giant out beyond Neptune, but could never find one.
In order to find this planet, and ensure that Lovell wasn't primarily remembered for his fanciful and incorrect thesis regarding life/civilisation on Mars, a junior astronomer was set to work searching for this suposed super giant Gas Planet.
Note that I say Junior, no-one else wanted the job, no-one....
Instead of a Huge Gas Giant, he found a tiny rock. As it turns out this was the first sighting of a Kuiper Belt Object, a noteworthy acheivement in itself which was sullied and robbed of its true importance as a milestone in astronomy due to the politics of the day within the astronomy movement.
So, this tiny rock was hailed as Lovells planet, in spite of the ludicrous nature of this claim, given the obvious disparity between the predicted object, and the one found. It could never have caused the gravitational perturbance by which the presence of the gas giant was inferred by Lovell.
It's status as a planet, whilst debated by some then, and many since, has been assured due to this fear of blackening Lovells name.
Interestingly, none of the astronomers who wanted Pluto to be a planet would consider calling our moon, or Ceres planets, even though admitting Pluto into the list of planets meant these, among others, would now qualify.
It is this bizarre situation that the decision regarding Pluto is seeking to resolve. That not many astronomers were there to vote is beside the point. The vote was known to be taking place a long time in advance (many months), it wasn't a rushed secret ballot or anything.
The people who want to discredit the vote don't actually have an alternative classification, they just want the ambiguity to remain.
In effect, what we have here is an old fashioned cat fight among supposedly mature people of science (predominantly men).
planet used to mean 'anything that moved in the night sky', the literal translation being 'wandering star'.
Originally even the Sun was classed as a planet, as was the moon, any comets that were seen, jupiter, the lot.
As a definition it's changed a lot.
Oh but it is, it's very important. A precise terminology is critical to get anything done in any field.
:)
Nostalgia or neat names your kids like are no reason to violate the rules of your field. AIDS was orginally categorized as a form of cancer, but then we found that it's not a cancer, so we stopped calling it a cancer. It's simple, really. Once you disprove something, it makes no sense to go on believing it.
The simple truth is that if you call Pluto a planet, then you also have to call Ceres and potentially hundreds of bodies in the Kuiper belt planets as well. Pluto does not dominate its orbit around the sun, it shares it with Charon, they spin around each other, one is not a moon of the other. None of the other planets in the solar system have such a symbiosis, they all have moons that orbit them. What shall we do when we manage to spot specific planetary bodies in distant solar systems? "let's see... hrm, that's a class-M planet, that's a gas giant, that's a dead rock, all of these have moons and they're spherical and dominate their orbits, but hey, here's a neat looking body there dancing with another body, I guess that's a planet too, let's call it Mickey and forget the thing it's spinning with." Where does it end? We need a concise definition that works every time, no exceptions.
As it is, with that gold disc in the voyager spacecrafts showing the planets of our system, it's doubtful ET will find us now since he'll see our system has only 8 planets but his directions said there would be 9. If he stumbles into the system anyway, and finds that's he's got the right place, he's going to think we're a bunch of retards for saying we have 9 planets
The world doesn't revolve around you, you know!
Wait... this just in: the IAU have had another vote, and... well, apparently it does. Or does it?
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
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
(bad) alien: "BOW BEFORE ZOD!"
IAU: "i hearby reclassify you from bad alien to good alien"
**poof**
(good) alien: "E.T. Phone home..."
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!
Remember that all of this has happened before. Once upon a time, Ceres was a planet. Then other asteroids were discovered. The first few became planets too. Then astronomers realised that these were all objects from a seperate class, and redefined them not to be planets. Pluto is exactly the same. We thought it was a planet when it was the only KBO we knew. Now we know there's millions more of them, and Pluto isn't even the biggest of them. Pluto is member of a seperate class of objects, and will be defined as such. If not now, than after a few more big KBOs have been discovered.
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
is that you seem to think that there is a *re* definition of "planet" going on here. That isn't the case. This is about the definition of planet. There has been NO definition of what "planet" means and they are trying to work out what defninition to use.
Deciding a version that includes pluto is as abitrary as deciding on one that excludes it. However, excluding Pluto-accepting-definition means that we have a reasonable chance of remembering what planets we do have. A definition that includes pluto would either have to have "and pluto, because we thought it was at the time" at the end. Which reads a little silly.
So, to reduce the sillyness, the actual definition (which is not changed, it is brand new and never defined, except as a list of names (which isn't a definition: no extrasolar planets are named in the list, so they can't be planets...), a definition is made that just happens to exclude pluto as a planet.
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.
Ok, the only way to settle this thing once and for all is to have them fight it out in a steel cage. The last astronomer standing gets to decide.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
The Object Formerly Classified As Planet.
X IMPRIMITE "SALVE TERRA!"
XX ITE AD X
actually - Tomatoes are fruits by a botanical defnition and vegetables by a legal one. The U.S. Supreme Court declared they were vegetables based on a definition based on the way in which they were used.
The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, standing on the moon and looking up at the Earth, it would look like the Earth hangs there in the exact same spot, 24/7/365.
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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Revenge of the Plutons: This Time it's Personal.