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Makemake Becomes the Newest Dwarf Planet
Kligat writes "The Kuiper belt object formerly known as (136472) 2005 FY9 has been rechristened Makemake and classified as a dwarf planet and plutoid by the International Astronomical Union, according to the United States Geological Survey. The reclassification occurs just a month after the latter category was created. The object was referred to by the team of discoverers by the codename Easterbunny, and the name Makemake comes from the creation deity of Easter Island, in accordance with IAU rules on naming Kuiper belt objects."
Sorry I didn't include this in the submission, but Michael E. Brown, the leader of the discovery teams of Makemake and Eris, wrote a blog entry about his experience picking a name for the object. It's supposed to be pronounced "maki-maki," Hawaiian-style as he calls it. He likes to name objects discovered around the time his wife was pregnant after fertility gods and goddesses. You might remember "lila," his child's name, being in the URL of the Eris discovery announcement web page.
Easter Island creation deity.
That "makemake" is from Japanese or some other language... and that the guy who named it wasn't really just a complete loser.
Do we need to start telling people to RTFS (Read the Fucking Summary) as well as the usual RTFA now?
C/P directly from the Summary:
"The object was referred to by the team of discoverers by the codename Easterbunny, and the name Makemake comes from the creation deity of Easter Island, in accordance with IAU rules on naming Kuiper belt objects."
For those that understand IPA, the correct pronunciation is: /ma:kima:ki/
---- Don't lick something unless you really mean it.
The current definition of 'planet' is specifically restricted to describing objects within our solar system. Your latter two points are thus irrelevant and your first does not carry enough weight on it's own to be convincing. Hence your argument is refuted.
I'm aware of the way they defined it. You apparently are not.
The IAU...resolves that planets and other bodies, except satellites, in our Solar System [my emphasis - khallow] be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:
This statement says nothing about planets about other star systems. In particular, it doesn't say that there can't be planets in other star systems. And note that the key distinction between "planet" and "dwarf planet" is an undefined characteristic, "cleared the neighborhoor around its orbit". So we have a definition that is ill-defined, works only for 1 star system out of tens of billions, and makes a distinction based on hard to observe dynamics that would only make sense for a portion of these star systems.
Pluto is not, and never was, a planet. Get over it.
I see we're revising history now. Pluto was indeed a planet from roughly the time of its discover until it was reclassified in 2006.
Slighly OT, but here's a link to an google engEDU talk on the subject of taxonomies, by the author of "Everything is Miscellaneous". True believers in "tags" (metadata) may be familiar with some of the ideas. Early (first couple of minutes) on he makes some amusing observations of the Pluto controversy. I didn't completely agree with his view, but his argument is illuminating.
I can't remember if the video touches on this specifically, but the discussion reminds me of the ascendancy of cladistics in biology. In a sense, all taxonomies are ultimately local.
(The stuff about Melvil Dewey later on in the video is hilarious and worth a watch too)
I agree with the principle of dogma vs. science, but I don't think this is the best example. It doesn't do well for credibility if you keep changing your mind based on unstable definitions and pretend it to be news each time you've tweaked one of them.
It's not "changing your mind", it's discovering new information. The discovery of Pluto was an accident (due to an error in calculation, a much bigger planet was predicted in that location, but it wasn't there), and because Kuiper Belt Objects were unknown at that time, Pluto got planetary status, although it was immediately obvious that it was a very abnormal planet.
Eventually it became clear that Pluto had to be a Kuiper Belt Object. As long as it was the only big one, that wasn't much of a problem, but eventually, astronomers discovered KBOs that were as big as or even bigger than Pluto, and a choice had to be made. Leaving Pluto a planet while denying that status to other large KBOs would be silly and unscientific, so either all large KBOs would become planets, resulting in dozens or hundreds of extra planets in our solar system, most of which would share similar irregular orbits, or accept that KBOs are different from regular planets, and give them their own class. That's what happened. Maybe they should have demoted Pluto earlier, but it was unavoidable, and by the time it happened, it was long overdue.
Not that this wasn't the first time planets had been demoted. In the 19th century, Ceres and a couple of other asteroids were also considered planets, but eventually astronomers decided that since they shared a similar orbit with lots of smaller asteroids, they had to be a different class of objects from the regular planets. Ceres and the others didn't have planetary status for as long as Pluto did, but that was due to Pluto accidentally being discovered way before we technically should be able to do so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makemake_(dwarf_planet)
Makemake,[5] pronounced /maËkimaËki/,[6] formally designated 136472 Makemake, is a very large Kuiper belt object, and one of the two largest among the population in the classical KBO orbits. Initially known as (136472) 2005 FY9, it was discovered on March 31, 2005 by the team led by Michael Brown. Makemake is now officially classified as a dwarf planet and plutoid.[5][7][8]
Prior to making it public, the discovery team referred to it by the codename "Easterbunny". The name "Makemake" is taken from the creator god of the people of Easter Island.[5] For the purposes of proceeding through naming procedures, the IAU will treat it as a plutoid.
obligatory:
That's no moon...