Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Illinois Declares Pluto a Planet

Posted by timothy on from the after-ruling-out-pebble-and-mailing-tube dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "The legislators in Illinois, always on the lookout for more places to find voters, have passed a resolution declaring Pluto is a planet. I'm not sure what else can be said here, except that — besides overstepping their jurisdiction just a wee bit — they make a couple of scientific howlers in the resolution itself."

4 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Before people say that Illinois is stupid by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are now 8 planets in the UNIVERSE because they defined a planet as a body orbiting the sun. The definition sucks so I have no problem if states are defining a planet as something else than a small club of grey men(IAU).

    You can say that it's "just a definition", but I don't see where it's the place of a legislature to make scientific definitions to scientists. Legislatures supposedly have better things to do. If they don't, they should recess until that changes.

    The IAU definition of a planet is more extensive than that. Also, while I haven't read the IAU text, I doubt their definition means that there are only eight planets in the universe. The only thing I don't like about their definition is that their use of "dwarf" in "dwarf planet" basically means "not a planet", and I think that's inconsistent and improper use of the word.

  2. Re:There is a good reason for this ... by hansamurai · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But don't publishers try to sell "new editions" to the districts every six months, or is that only a college problem?

    --
    Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
  3. Re:Before people say that Illinois is stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Neptune will never "suck up" Pluto. They are in a 3:2 mean motion resonance, so although their orbits cross, they will never collide.

    http://www.nineplanets.org/plutodyn.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance

  4. Re:Too right! by canajin56 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Isn't that how politicians do everything? No Child Left Behind tripled the amount of fresh veggies children were eating in cafeterias, by defining ketchup, relish, and French...sorry, FREEDOM fries as fresh vegetables, since they are all plant matter, and all WERE fresh before being cooked. Awesome work, children are eating healthier and they didn't even have to spend money on giving them different food than before! They also drastically reduced animal testing within the US by defining rodents and birds as non-animal vermin. For a grand finale, they redefined the poverty line, thus reducing the number of low income families! Then for an encore they changed the definition of what it means to be "unemployed" and drastically reduced unemployment! Truly amazing what you can to dramatically improve the country without doing anything other than changing the definitions of words!

    --
    ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI