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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."
I miss Pluto.
$ make dwarf_planet
make: *** No rule to make target `dwarf_planet'. Stop.
Alright, well, that doesn't help at all. Maybe this?
I've got to say, I think the compromise struck is a pretty good one. Pluto being a planet with similar objects not being a planet was not really scientific.
Plus, plutoid has a good ring to it.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Shouldn't it be named Module::Build?
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.
... but not as much as I miss Goofy.
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."
root@Universe# sudo make kuiper_belt_object
- Object "juiper_belt_object" not found! [damn it!]
root@Universe# sudo make Kuiper_Belt_Object_136472_2005_FY9
**Output omitted**
**FATAL ERROR! Universe OS GCC cannot make executables! [Double damn it!]
root@Universe#_
Shit! In the interest of time, I would just reload the whole universe from scratch rather than hunt down that demon!
The game.
42
The game.
...that the name for their creation deity as written is automatically read by English speakers as make make. (even though it's pronounced makimaki)
I don't therefore I'm not.
That's the beauty of this new system: Dwarf planets don't count towards the overall total. So it doesn't matter if Sedna, Orcus, Santa, Ixion, Quaoar and so on turn out to be dwarf planets, the number of planets will still be eight. So you won't have to learn anything new.
This is the best restaurant I ever eat in
The definition has no scientific usefullness. I have no problem with creating taxonomies purely for local use, but they should at least tell you something about the objects you are classifying. Plutinos, cubiwanos, twotinos, are all usefull categorizations of objects by their orbits in the Kuiper belt, which is likely correlated to their orgins. Dwarf planet is a usefull categorization of things bigger than an asteroid, but smaller than a planet.
Plutinoid is just stupid - all the dwarf planets except Ceres. Yes, I know that Ceres has different orgins and makeup than the large KBOs, but there is an awful lot of variation between those as well. If we wanted a more specific definition than dwarf planet then we should have waited until we knew more about them so we could make one that has some meaning.
If astronomers couldn't change the number of planets as new information became available, then astronomy would be dogma instead of a science. To me the pluto demotion has been a great illustration of science at work. Educators should be using it as an example of the difference between science and dogma. Mistake made, mistake corrected.
Why does it matter? Well, think back a few days to the recent news on the DNA analysis of birds. Turns out, the definition based on appearances is completely wrong. What was it, kestrels are genetically closer to hummingbirds than any other bird of prey? And the DNA variation between any two lineages within a species has next to zero correspondence to morphology. In other words, looking at something from the outside tells you bugger all. So, naturally, looking at the outside of an object orbiting the sun is the perfect way to tell what it is. It's only a method every other discipline has now ruled to be faulty, after all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Good thing, too. Otherwise it could've started a recursion that would've filled the universe with dwarf planets and they would've come crashing down on us.
There is no particular scientific benefit in calling something either a planetoid or a dwarf planet. It's all a matter of opinion it seems to me. So I understand the annoyance.
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
For those that understand IPA, the correct pronunciation is: /ma:kima:ki/
---- Don't lick something unless you really mean it.
That's Goofy.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Except:
1. Even for birds, there are classifications which are useful even if they don't reflect the DNA. E.g., a "bird of prey" or "flightless bird" are still useful categories, no matter to whom the individual species are related.
Basically a category is just a way to say "all these have property X", no matter what X is or in what other categories they also belong. Grouping them by DNA is just _one_ of the many possible groupings. It's useful, no doubt, but it's not the only useful one. It doesn't make all others faulty. No, even the ones based on looking from the outside. Sorry.
I fail to see why the same can't apply to planets. We already have such categories as being in the right band to have liquid water too, for example. It tells you bugger all about its interior, but it does tell you that the exterior _could_ support Earth-like life. It's a useful category. Even if it's based on where it happens to be.
2. These have no DNA so to speak. They're chunks of rock and ice.
And a lot of other stuff is pretty much based on how big they are and where they are. E.g., whether it has one core or no core or multiple cores, is pretty much just an issue of how big it is. If gravity was high enough, it pulled the heavy stuff towards the centre. If not, not.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There is no "mistake" to be made in choosing between two essentially arbitrary definitions which have no basis in external reality. Nothing has changed about Pluto. Nothing of substance has changed of our understanding of Pluto. (It is not like our understanding of biology, where new DNA evidence comes to light and two organisms we had previously assumed to be related becaused they looked similar turn out to have no recent common ancestry.)
The only thing which has changed is our arbitrary definitions.
There is a great hue and cry that one way to arbitrarily define things is not merely customary but that it is Correct and that all other forms are Unscientific. That, my friend, is dogma in its purest form.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
So, are you suggesting that Venus, or Aphrodite, be renamed Fuckfuck?
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.
We need one of these objects to be named 'Rupert' in honour of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Don't call them "Dwarf planets" They prefer the term "Gravitationally Challenged"!!!!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The International Asteroid Registry
"Forget stars... name a cold, hard rock after your ex."
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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...