Slashdot Mirror
Mass of Dwarf Planet Eris 27% Greater than Pluto
jcgam69 writes "When it was discovered in 2005, some thought Eris should be considered the 10th planet of our solar system. Everyone still considered Pluto a planet then. At first, Eris was thought to be slightly larger. Now — with the help of Eris' moon — Eris is known to be 27% more massive than Pluto. If Pluto had remained a planet to the entire community of astronomers, surely Eris would be considered the 10th planet."
it's a planet. If it's orbiting a larger planet, then it's a moon.
This is just a classification problem. In my company, the secretary takes care of that shit. WHY ARE WE wasting our time with this crap? I don't give a shit if some schoolkid has to memorize dozens of planets. That's between him and his teacher.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Pluto is big enough to have a moon (okay, so Pluto/Charon is really a double planet). Eris is more massive than Pluto. Sounds like they should both get to (re)join the club. Why not?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
The Kuiper belt, I am sure, contains still some surprises for us. Perhaps many surprises, and who knows, maybe some of them unpleasant. I wouldn't be surprised if Neptune one day grabs one of those rocks and launches it over here. That'll be lots of fun.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Some of us still consider that the world is flat.
Change can be hard.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is the reason that people think Pluto should be a planet:
Did you learn it before you were ten years old? If yes, it can not ever change.
...but is it art?
Why? The actual physical and astronomical facts about the matter, given our contemporary understanding of astronomy, do not depend on such a classification at all. The classification of the celestial objects is not a matter of convenience, not of fact. No astronomical fact follows independently from the "fact" that body X is classified as a Y in your scheme. That is, the only facts that follow about body X are the very same facts that the classification requires for it to be an X; when you gather all the facts that you need to classify X as a Y, the fact that X is a Y does not allow you to infer further facts about it.
Because, of course, there are no physical or astronomical law hinges on whether an object is a star, planet or moon; they're just big blobs of matter in various states, of various shapes, moving at various velocities relative to each other, and exerting all of the usual forces that they exert in virtue of being the aggregates of the stuff they are made out of.
Are you adequate?