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IAU Classifies Pluto & Eris As "Plutoids"
Kligat writes "The International Astronomical Union has decided that Pluto and Eris should be classified as "plutoids," alongside their 2006 classification as dwarf planets. Under the definition, the self-gravity of a plutoid is enough for it to achieve a near-spherical shape, but not enough for it to clear its orbit of its rocky neighbors, and the plutoid orbits the Sun beyond Neptune."
Reader FiReaNGeL links to a
similar story at e! Science News.
My uncle had a problem with his plutoids, and he had to sit on a big doughnut and use lots of ointment.
pluto contracted plutoids from minnie
How they are classified means what to whom? Someone needs their grant pulled for gross misuse of time.
Eris, which measures about 70 miles wider than Pluto, is the farthest known object in the solar system at 9 billion miles away from sun. It is also the third brightest object located in the Kuiper belt, a disc of icy debris beyond the orbit of Neptune.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
But...has anyone told Scott Ramsoomair?
It's a stupid debate altogether. I image all the astronomers involved feel really good about themselves for making an impact. Why couldn't they leave well enough alone? Pluto will always be the ninth planet to me, despite Eris. Definitions be damned!
*sigh*
The new definition of "planet" was quite good. Clear, straight to the point, and easy to apply to any object. Now, they add a new category that applies only to our solar system?
Okay, we won't be seeing objects this small on other star systems, but the point remains. We are already at a time when we know these objects should exist in many other places in the universe. The classification shouldn't depend on their position inside our solar system, it should be generic enough that we won't have to change it (again) when we see one of those around Alpha Centaurii. I thought this was the single most important thing to come out of the previous discussion about what should be considered a "planet".
In college I knew a 'dancer' who had named her 2 breasts "Alex and Nikki"!
As I recall, they each had "...a near-spherical shape, but not enough for it to clear its orbit of its rocky neighbors..."
-I suppose naming them "Pluto and Eris" would have worked equally as well...
my award-winning 5th grade planet mobile becomes even more irrelevant.
"This space intentionally left blank" - Principia Discordia
Will the twiter sock puppet people PLEASE GET A LIFE!
Thank you, that is all.
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet."
Or in other words, what does the terminology matter? Yes, we like to classify things to organize our thoughts. But this seems a step too far.
Developers: We can use your help.
They didn't do any more research. Nothing scientific was done. No more information was found out or cataloged. Nothing interesting happened. Just a bunch of people with too much time on their hands gave yet another name to a celestial body that orbits the sun. Frankly, who cares?
Earth should be classified as a dwarf planet as well because it hasn't cleared its orbit of rocky neighbors either.
When Pluto lost its status of planet a couple of years ago I was shocked reading that the USA was lobying against that definition just because Pluto is the only planet discovered by an american scientist. Please, oh please, tell me that IAU hasn't produced this new denomination just for political reasons. It would be very sad...
I'm not sure why but they seem trying to purposefully exclude Ceres which is spherical in shape (able to overcome hydrostatic force) and exists in the asteroid belt
The summary fails to mention one further requirement: For an object to be considered a true Plutoid, it must posses a "curiously strong" flavor.
plutoids classify you!
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
First it got demoted, then given a brand new (and largely meaningless) title. I expect Pluto to get a pink slip any day now.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
this whole thing has become a charade. first, they have 'declassified' a damn heavenly body that is orbiting the sun as a planet for billions of years, then invented a new classification to fill in the gap.
this is not science. pluto is a planet.
Read radical news here
1) Call every thing X 2) Decide somethings actually aren't X 3) Come up with stupid meaningless name that makes all school textbooks obviously outdated, aka centrifugal force and sell them new ones. 4) Profit!
IIRC it is a kuiper belt object that actually isn't on the same plane as the other planets.
I think I actually recall it being found by accident because it isn't where we would expected it to be, most likely it is a captured object not formed by our suns accretion disk.
Odd... my spell checker doesn't think "plutoid" is a word!
Pluto isn't large enough to clear it's orbit of "rocky neighbors". Well, here's a news flash - neither Earth, nor Mars, nor Venus, nor Mercury have orbits that've been cleared of rocky neighbors. So apparently the bias only applies to the outer regions of our solar system?
For that matter, if you want to be REALLY pedantic - Pluto's orbit overlaps Neptune's, so Neptune apparently isn't large enough to clear it's orbit.
There! We've whittled it down to two planets total: Jupiter and Uranus. That'll be easy to remember...
#DeleteChrome
I much prefer my name for such objects: "planettes".
Agreed. Pluto is a planet, so is Eris. Naming the latter after the goddess of chaos and discord was a splendid idea (as well as a lovely if possibly unintended homage to the late Robert Anton Wilson, though not as good as naming it Mickey would have been).
Let's be honest here. We all know the reason Pluto was re-classified to throw off the Tom Tom of our, now lost, Galactic Overlords.
Galactic Overlords: "Tom Tom! Where is this "Earth"?!"
Tom Tom: "Make a left at the 9th Planet."
Galactic Overlord: "WTF?!?! There IS NO NINTH PLANET, Tom Tom!"
Galactic Overlord's Mother-in-law: "I told you, Rory! You should have made a right at Uranus! If you can't find a PLANET, HTF were you able to find my daughter's birth tube?!"
Galactic Overlord Jr.: "Are we there yet?"
Galactic Overlord: "Dammit! Don't make me pull over this Star Destroyer!"
Galactic Overlord Jr.: "I gotta pee!"
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Thank you, that is all. We have a life and it is to point out each time a twitter sock puppet posts a comment on
after all, who can name one other planet in which allegedly intelligent life is in contact with us? only one? maybe earth is not a REAL planet, itself, if everything else that IS a planet has no allegedly intelligent life.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Pluto got it's name from the famous Disney character. I am surprised that the Disney Corporation hasn't been going after some one or other to get payment for using their "IP".
Given Disney's rapacious geed over things like this, I would think they are at least cooking up some idea of having the world pay for saying the name "Pluto" in any context.
I also think a 'Plutiod' is a good description.
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
WTF is a plutoid? We already have a definition that could easily fit pluto and other celectial bodies like it
http://www.go-astronomy.com/glossary/astronomy-glossary-p.htm
"A large asteroid or other celestial body, also called a minor planet."
Call them planetoids. Therefore still remaining a planet but one that is not large enough to remove debris from its orbit. Then throw on mercury and mars and we can have a solar system of six planets and four planetoids (minor planets). This crap about removing debris from its orbit is farcical, how do they not know given another billion or two years it won't remove remaining debris?
No, no it isn't. Please don't pretend you know what science is if you can't follow a simple a definition which is plainly accessible. It's a rock, floating in space, which is slightly more remarkable than a grain of sand on a beach.
Science and classifications change. Pluto isn't a full fledged planet anymore. Get over it and stop yelling at the kids on your lawn. Do we really need any more damned arbitrary classifications? (planets, dwarf planets, minor planets, kuiper belt objects, plutinos, twotinos, cubewanos, scattered disc objects, ffs enough already...) Make a few and explicitly define them. Then stick each object in the solar system into the category. Don't make up crap to fit things into the classification you want it in. Square peg, round hole. This is just bad taxonomy.
Fun info: List of solar system objects
Poor Pluto. Dissed again.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
Many (but not all) of the observed dynamical features of the Kuiper Belt can be explained by giant planet migration.
we must fund a NASA mission to go to Pluto, and nuke it into gravel
we are wasting far too much time and thought over this frivolous disagreement. the obvious solution is to simply destroy the object of this disagreement, and move forward again in peace and unity. we must salve the wounds we have savaged on each other in this truly barbaric and vicious debate
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Pluto officially defined as Pluto.
Eris officially seen as similar to Pluto.
Who really gives a flip?
There are objects out there of every size shape and configuration possible.
See my blog at Who's Who
In the realm of things that don't matter except that I've been told for more than 40 years that Pluto is a planet then told by some 'Congress of Ass- tronomers' that it's not - screw those smug smirking bastards. I saw the Nova episode and hate every one of those ass-tronomers who happily conspired and worked on the planet demotion by vote. It's a planet and some power tripping douchebags can't vote otherwise. Now I hate this crop of Ass-tronomers.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
And in the taxonomy of taxonomists, we find that taxonomists can be sorted into "lumpers" and "splitters". There tend to be more splitters, because it is easier to write papers arguing for splitting an existing taxon than it is to write papers arguing for combining two or more existing taxa, particularly if the original namers are still alive (and possibly the dean of your department.)
It gets complicated when nature doesn't cooperate by forming things in easily sorted groups. Then you get long, ongoing arguments about whether to lump or split; where do you draw the line, or should you draw a line at all. Perhaps astronomers should take a page from the biologists and create some infraspecific taxa (e.g. subspecies, varieties). Then you could call anything that is large enough to pull itself into a roughly spherical shape a planet, while distinguishing rocky, inner planets, gas giant planets, and icy, outer planets.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
is an american.
Ergo, Pluto MUST be a planet.
'cos an american said it was.
You aren't un-american, are you?
The plutino moniker is to stroke the egos of those americans who have taken the status of pluto a *little* bit too seriously (and I'm talking as an astrophysicist here) in the hope that they'll STFU.
...they didn't name the last planet Hermes.
ZOMG!!!!one1
Your a twitter sock puppet too! Are you, or have you ever been a member of the twitter sockpuppet conspiracy?
The funny thing is that Twitter (and his puppets) generally say interesting, on topic, things, while the twitter haters generally are just off-topic wankers, trolling based on personality and not content
Though the sock puppetry is rather immature.
If Erris is a "plutoid", does that mean Twitter is a trolloid, or a fucktoid?
Oh! Wait, I get it.
It's the largest IRC network out there. Oh wait...
OK, I could ben wring about it being a captured object. But does giant planet migration address the orbit of Eris being 44 degrees tilted compared to the other planets and the like?
Your whole response is begging the question. Why would we need to classify the objects we find orbiting other stars into "planets" and non-"planets"?
The really big background assumption here is that "planet" is a natural kind. The real lesson from all the IAU Pluto reclassification nonsense should be that, actually, astronomy has shown "planet" not to be a natural kind.
Back in ancient times, when "planet" meant "light in the sky that moves in a very different kind of path from the other ones," and terrestial mechanics and astronomy were different sciences with different laws, there might have been a good case for calling "planet" a natural kind. Since Newton's time, however, we don't have separate laws for celestial and terrestrial motion. Newtonian mechanics allows for infinitely many intermediate cases between whatever paradigm examples of "planet" and "non-planet" you wish to pick, and will never draw a line between them.
Are you adequate?
There is not Goddess But Eris, and Murphy is Her Consort!
HAIL ERIS! ALL HAIL DISCORDIA!
The Law of Fives:
The Law of Fives is one of the oldest Erisian Mysterees. It was first revealed to Good Lord Omar and is one of the great contributions to come from The Hidden Temple of The Happy Jesus.
POEE subscribes to the Law of Fives of Omar's sect. And POEE also recognizes the holy 23 (2+3=5) that is incorporated by Episkopos Dr. Mordecai Malignatus, KNS, into his Discordian sect, The Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria.
The Law of Fives states simply that:
ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR ARE MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO 5.
The Law of Fives is never wrong.
fnord
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
You and GP are begging the question. Yes, classifications are "useful" to catalog objects orbiting other stars. But, what is the use of cataloguing objects orbiting stars, in the first place? What does it tell us? Does the classification of an object predict any properties of it that beyond those that were required to successfully classify it?
Two subpoints here:
The response to this is that classifications aren't properties of things in themselves, but rather, are context- and purpose-dependent distinctions that people impose on them.
I've not seen anybody come even close to doing this for "planet." Once you observe all the things you need to observe to decide whether a celestial body is a planet or not, you're not in a position to predict anything else about the object.
This doesn't mean that scientists can't use non-predictive classifications for genuinely useful means; non-predictive classifications can be quite useful for communicating with other people (if somebody says "planet," it may not allow you to predict a lot about the object, but it helps you guess what the other person may be talking about). But usually, those classifications don't really need to be very precise.
In this case, the problem is pretty simple. The ancients charted the movements of the lights in the night sky, and were concerned with formulating laws to explain their motion. The problem you hit right away when you start doing this is that a handful of those lights move in a manner that's very different from the vast majority of the others. Those weird, "wandering" ones are the so-called "planets," in the original sense. This goes back to point (1): the classification of some celestial objects as "planets" responds to the purpose of formulating and solving this problem.
Guess what? We're not the ancients. We don't have their problems in explaining the motion of those things. We have super-powerful telescopes that show us all sorts of funny rocks in space that they could never hope to see, moving in all sorts of weird trajectories. We have a theory of Newtonian mechanics that explains their trajectories as a specific case of more general laws, without having to formulate laws of weird-space-rock-motion. Why are we keen at all to try to get a precise fit between what we see and their vocabulary? The reason we have problems with deciding whether something like Eris is a "planet" is because we know a lot more than the ancients did. Insisting too eagerly on the classification just demonstrates a failure to appreciate how very different and superior our understanding is.
Are you adequate?
eris, also known as the reason pluto is no longer a planet.
"You forget Peter I was there for an kuiper-belt, unexplained massive planet migration." "Ray, the planet migrated about a foot and a half."
In other news, Earth is now considered an earthoid, Neptune a neptoid, and Venus a venoid.
More shameless pandering to the Pluto cultists. That renegade dwarf has had a free ride for too long already!
I think I actually recall it being found by accident because it isn't where we would expected it to be, most likely it is a captured object not formed by our suns accretion disk. Can we call Kuiper Belt Objects KIBOs? That way people that are knowledgable about internet trolls but disinterested in science have one more thing in this article to snigger at.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"Many very excited martians jump so unlike normal people" becomes Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Plutoids
They invented a reason
That's why it stings
They don't think you matter
Because you don't have pretty rings
I keep telling you I don't care
I keep saying there's one thing they can't change
I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are
Let them shuffle the numbers
Watch them come and go
We're the ones who are out here
Out past the edge of what they know
We can only be who we are
It doesn't matter if they don't understand
I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are
Who you were
Long before
They said you weren't
Anymore
Sad excuse for a sunrise
It's so cold out here
Ice and silence and dark skies
As we go round another year
Let them think what they like, we're fine
I will always be right here next to you
I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are