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IAU Names Fifth Dwarf Planet Haumea
Kligat writes "The International Astronomical Union has renamed the dwarf planet Haumea and its two moons Hi'iaka and Namaka, after the Hawaiian fertility goddess, the patron goddess of Hawaii, and a water spirit. The cigar-shaped body is speculated to have resulted from its short rotational period of only four hours. Holding up the reclassification of the body as a dwarf planet was a dispute over its discovery between the groups of José Luis Ortiz Moreno and Michael E. Brown."
Wait, it's "cigar-shaped" and they're naming it after a fertility _Goddess_? Something's not right here.
Ok, great victory for believers in Hawaiian mythology. I'm waiting for the day when they finally run out of religious mythologies and have to allow names like Xena for real. Although there are so many religions around that by that time Xena will probably be seen as an ancient mythological figure.
Not really. Moreno had also been looking at the object for a while, they only looked at Brown's observing logs the day before their announcement, to check whether they were actually looking at the same object as Brown. Brown didn't follow the standard procedure for claiming discovery of a minor planet (but had published an abstract signifying their intention to announce the discovery), which left the door open for Moreno to get in first. If Brown had followed procedure, there would have been no problem.
It was very impolite of Moreno though. The polite action would have been for Moreno to (1) contact Brown directly, rather than googling through his observing logs, and (2) come to a friendly agreement on who gets to claim the discovery. The astronomy community is (or was, until this event) very good natured. That good nature was probably the biggest casualty in all of this. But Moreno's reputation took a hammering too, at least in the popular press.
"The decision was made after discussions by members of the International Astronomical Union's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN) and the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN)"
Surprisingly interesting names, but should bodies that name themselves CSBN and WGPSN really be in charge of naming other bodies?
Fitting name for an invisible planet: Named after a fertility goddess...yet geeks will only ever know her through pictures on the web.
Moreno's reputation took a hammering too, at least in the popular press.
I'd be interested to hear your definition of "popular press".
Does anyone else find "patron goddess" ironic? Patron comes from the Latin word "Pater" meaning "Father".
With some things I've accidentally downloaded off the Internet, I don't think there's any irony here at all.
I see nothing dirty here. If you keep your observation logs public, you can't cry foul when someone accesses them or even uses the information in them (something he hasn't shown, and is only implying).
And in any case, there's not any lack of documentation that Moreno had been investigating the object. It's not like he didn't know about it until the day before he reported it and "stole" the whole thing from Michael Brown.
In short, Brown gambled on no one else reporting it while he collected more data so he could make a bigger splash, and lost the gamble, because others were studying it too, who were more interested in notifying the scientific community than in making a big splash.
In my opinion, Mr. Brown appears as a bad gambler, sore loser and not a good academian. He may be a good astronomer, though.
By "popular press", I mean the various press agencies commonly read by the proletariat that reported the spat between Brown and Ortiz Moreno. From what I recall, most of them did report it.
How do you define "popular press" ?
From what I recall, most of them did report it.
Now I'm intrigued by your use of "most".
Haumea is the pronunciation of homo which means gay. This kind of spelling is often used at a hugely popular blog called Geenstijl.nl...
In case anyone was wondering...
The names suggested are both fertility goddesses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataecina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haumea_(mythology)
I think the suspicion was in the timing. The timing of events went something like: both had been observing the same object. Brown released an abstract saying he'd be announcing something. Moreno googled his logs to see what he'd been observing. Moreno then announces it the next day. I think there was speculation that upon realizing Brown would be announcing the discovery of the same object he was observing, Moreno announced it himself the next day since the first to announce it gets credit for discovery.
Regardless, finding a loophole in someone's data security and secretly viewing someone else's logs is impolite, if not downright unethical. It certainly doesn't speak well of Moreno's integrity.
E pluribus unum
I thought the definition of a Dwarf Planet was that it was big enough to be rounded by its own gravity, but not big enough to have swept its orbit clear of other debris?
If it is indeed cigar shape, it would appear to fail the first of these criteria.
I'm intrigued by your choice of word to be intrigued about.
It's a pseudonym. He just wanted to rake in the fame twice.
I followed the link to the picture.
Didn't *anyone* realize that it's a giant egg? And when it hatches, it's going to come in-system for food?
mark "it's hatching...arrrrghghghghghghhh....."
Not Hiigara?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
"IAU Names Fifth Dwarf Planet Haumea"
Ah, so now it goes: Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Planet Haumea, Dopey, and Doc?
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
If they're going to call them dwarf planets, they should name them after dwarves.
Probably some of the dwarves in Norse mythology have names? But certainly there's all the Tolkein dwarves, and the Disney dwarfs.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is getting complicated. Before Pluto got demoted our 3rd graders only had to remember earth plus 8 stereotypical Roman gods. Now we've got Hawaiin fertility goddesses, Pacific islander super-deities, Eskimo ice-queens, and TV warrior princesses. Curse they IAU! When will the insanity stop?
Obviously something has to be done. Our preconceived notions about the solar system are collapsing around us. There is only one logical response:
It'll have to go.
Blow everything up except the sun, the original nine planets, and their moons...except Phobos. Blow Phobos up, as well. Too many demon invasions from that place. We'll join the ranks of the people of Krikkit as a civillization that defined its own universe, and our third graders can go back to embarrassing educated adults on television. Do it for the children.
It doesn't seem accurate to me to call it "cigar-shaped". If the shape is due to its rotation (which is implied by the Brown et al paper linked from the article), then it would have an oblate spheroid shape like the Earth. I.e., more of a hamburger shape than cigar. It seems a shame to ruin all these Freudian jokes, but facts are facts.
A little bit more to it than that. Moreno accessed the data, then asked his colleagues to point the telescope right where the object should be, then sent out an announcement with the new observation plus a bunch of archival data. The Caltech crew got suspicious when they noticed the Googling. They got even more suspicious when they noticed it was from the same IP as the announcement email. They got even more suspicious when Moreno wouldn't respond to their request for an explanation.
Moreno didn't find a dwarf planet, he exploited Google. He is a liar that doesn't have any right to the discovery.
It's not a dwarf planet, it's a Plutoid. Give #9 a little respect people.
Causation can cause correlation
You fool, I already read the timeline; once, at the time of the original event, and once again before I wrote my post. From there I hunted around until I got to http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/, and from there to http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/ .
FWIW, my Dad is an astronomer. I'm just a condensed matter physicist. I don't have any inside information though, nor does the old man. For you to make such accusations, I would hope that you do have such information. But since you have never deigned to show the proof, I can only assume you are full of it.
Oh yes, you knew all about it when you wrote your first post, huh? Now go on, I'd love to here about your physics credentials. You brought it up. Now shell out.
Papers authored by me on the physics arxiv: http://arxiv.org/find/cond-mat/1/au:+McCulloch_I/0/1/0/all/0/1
Papers authored by my dad on the physics arxiv (he is retired now, most of his papers pre-date the internet): http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+McCulloch_P/0/1/0/all/0/1
That isn't quite right, the first announcement from Moreno's group occurred before they did the new observations. You really should read the timeline to get it straight before making posts, otherwise you are just wasting people's time. Moreno's group sent the announcement to the IAU the day after the first access of Brown's observing logs. It was only after this announcement that Moreno accessed Brown's logs again and requested the additional observations. After that, Moreno sent a follow-up email to the IAU with the new observations, and also some more of their 2003 data. This is suspicious, but it is also possible that Moreno's group simply hadn't finished analyzing all the 2003 data by the 27th, but were desperate to claim the discovery nevertheless. That would be impolite, but not fraudulent.
The whole dispute would have been avoided if Brown's group had contacted the IAU in the first instance, instead of just publishing an abstract for a forthcoming paper that had no official status.
That's Moreno's claim, that it was simply co-incidental that he went back though two year old data right after Brown released the abstract. However, Brown pretty much nails it: Moreno used the abstract and the logs for research but did not cite them. That's a big fucking no-no in science, and the only real reason to do that is to try to conceal the fact you were pirating someone else's research.
So no cigar for him. Heh.
Well, Moreno's claim is that they never really used the information in the logs, but only looked at it to confirm that they were studying the same object. It is bloody suspicious though, the standard procedure in that case would be to just email Brown and ask him. And I agree, not citing Brown is poor form, irrespective of any other circumstances. But what would Moreno have cited? You cannot cite an abstract that contains no information, nor can you cite an observing log on the internet. You can only cite a publication, and Brown hadn't published yet. Presumably the IAU and/or Brown have already tried to determine if the orbit information submitted by Moreno could be traced back to the data in Brown's logs (eg, by calculating the orbit from the exact figures that Moreno accessed from the logs, and seeing if it agreed to the N'th decimal place with the figures submitted to the IAU), but couldn't find a smoking gun.
I tend to the opinion that, if there had been a fraud, there would be more evidence for it. For example, the 2003 observations that Moreno talks about, these either happened or didn't happen. There must be some documentation on that, and presumably the IAU investigated this.
Internet fame awaits the first fat guy with a webcam who posts a "Haumea-Haumea" video to YouTube.
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
i emailed the site and told them about matron vs. patron, and they changed it.
(and it wouldn't be ironic, so much as ignorant or a mistake)
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