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Illinois Declares Pluto a Planet
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."
Everybody knows Pluto is a dog.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Slashdot declares Illinois retarded
Why no one trusts them to get things done anymore... We're in the biggest financial crisis in years and they spent the time to declare Pluto a planet. It means nothing, is non binding, and shows a huge disconnect between the political scene and the general populace.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
and I declare Illinois a corn field.
You can't handle the truth.
Yeah. I vote that Illinois also changes the definition of a mile and shortens it so that their residents can get more miles to the gallon! I also vote that they cut the definition of an hour down to 30mins to shorten my working day.
Consensus and standards be damned, they're just definitions!
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.
Well it depends on how you define SUN
Our Sun is a star called Sol We call it the Sun because it is what we are in orbit around. If we were in orbit around an other star we would call that Star the Sun.
The more formal defination of a Planet is the following.
1. It Orbits around a Sun.
2. Its shape is Spherical
3. It is large enough to have or can attract and clear up other objects in its orbit.
#3 is the problem with Pluto with its orbit crossing Neptune once the time gets right and Neptune gets to close it will just Suck up Pluto and not the other way around. So even it Pluto was the size of the earth if it was where Pluto is now it wouldn't be considered a planet.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yo mama is so fat...Illinois declared her a planet
Yo mama is so ugly, astronomers who look at her think they're looking at Jupiter's moon IO
Yo mama is so old, her boyfriends CARBON-date her
Yo mama is so old and fat, her stomach is actually fusing helium with neon to produce magnesium just before she turns into a neutron star!
Yo mama is so ugly, that when computer scientists look at her, they are immediately reminded of Edsger Dijkstra's letter "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" because they don't want to "Go To" her.
Ok, that last one got me severely beaten up on the playground when I was a kid, but the rest are funny and hardly trollish.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
In other news, a giant robotic Neil deGrasse Tyson was seen bursting through the walls of the Illinois Capitol Building, saying, "Pluto is a Plutoid. You have 30 seconds to comply."
People of Illinois,
we have duly noted your recent reconsideration of Pluto and its classification. We appreciate this sign of good-will and will take it into account in our upcoming invasion of Earth.
Although I can make no promises at this point, I am able to inform you that sparing your lives is currently viewed favourably amongst our population.
Yours sincerely,
Gral Rex,
Minister of Earth Affairs, Government of Pluto
p.s. to the rest of mankind: You are all still toast.
"The IAU definition of a planet is more extensive than that."
A celestial body that is (a) in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
If Pluto isn't a planet, it will cost a bunch of money to replace all the fifty year old science texts.
If Pluto is a planet, they can keep using the fifty year old science texts.
What, you think I'm kidding! You obviously aren't a teacher.
Don't argue. There's already three astronomers at the bottom of Lake Michigan who "begged to differ."
It's the Chicago way.
The law is written thusly: "that as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status"
Because Illinois is a northerly state... does Pluto ever actually pass "overhead"? Ever? Pluto's orbital inclination to the sun is about 11 degrees at maximum. The latitude of Illinois is much higher than that, at about 36 degrees. So Pluto may never pass through their air space, even if the borders of Illinois are extended upwards to infinity.
But since Pluto can never truly be "overhead", does that mean the law never actually goes into effect?
Comments? Suggestions?
Nice selective quoting there. You missed a bit: "states that in the Solar System a planet is" .. so this definition doesn't apply outside the solar system, it doesn't say that things outwith the solar system cannot be planets.
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
who are a bunch of snobbish scients to deny that?
They are, uh, the appropriate scientific institution. They're also, you know, informed?
Say what you like about the IAU defintion, but its a scientific definition made by scientists.
When the powers that be start defining things they aren't properly informed on, in a manner different to the rest of the world, things get pointlessly confused.
If an elected group of people were to decide that within their durestriction, the speed of light in vacuum is 2 * 10^8 m/s, this changes nothing about the state of the world, but is liable to cause significant issues for physicists working in their durestriction, and particularly for cross-durestriction collaborations.
When the 17th Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures defined the speed of light as 299,792,458 m/s in 1983, they were not doing so as elected representatives of the people of Earth, they were doing so as the appropriate scientific institution. This definition clearly didn't change reality in any way, what it did do was give a global definition such that individuals wouldn't use their own favoured definitions and cause inconsistancies when the same calculation is performed by different parties.
Definition of planet, speed of light, I see no real difference here. It doesn't matter how right the definition is, as long as we agree to use it. Consider for instance the average mass of a planet in our solar system. With a standard global definition, this value is simple to agree upon. Without one, you need caveats. If you have caveats for every definition known to man, achieving any consensus quickly becomes a ridiculous process.
You used Edsger Dijkstra references as a kid? I don't think it was the "Yo mama" insults that got you beat up on the playground!
CHICAGO - Federal authorities have indicted several Illinios Senators on corruption charges after an undercover investigation. According to tapes released, Senators called a number of planetoids asking "what they could get" for the title of planet. Rod Blagojevich was unavailable for comment.
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
Well, Pluto's orbit is about 16Â farther from the plane than Earth's. Illinois' latitude is about 37Â, and Earth's axial tilt is about 23.5Â. So, we can have a minimum of 13.5Â of Illinois' "overhead" to the earth's plane, and a maximum of 60.5Â. So the orbit of Pluto is indeed overhead Illinois many times in the american summer. The odds that Pluto itself is in the spot are astronomically (literally) low.
PS: Fuck slashdot and it's lack of unicode support. And while we're at it, inline TeX would be nice to.
entropy happens
The official name of our sun is Sun. Sol is commonly used in science fiction but is just latin for sun and is not the official name.
The is the same as our moon the official name is Moon, it is commonly referred to in sci-fi as Luna.
So if you were in orbit around a planet that orbits a different star you could refer to it as the local star or local sun or by its official name, such as the 2nd nearest star to us being Proxima Centauri (of the Alpha Centauri solar system).
The problem with having Pluto being a regular planet not that you have nine planets, it's that you end up with a much larger number of planets as a lot of kuiper belt objects are better matches for planet status than Pluto.
Pluto doesn't look like any of the other planets in other ways, such as having a 'moon' so big that its center of mass isn't inside itself. In fact Charon is 11% of Pluto's mass, and while the Moon (Luna) looks huge, its mass is only 1% of the Earth's.
Just as interesting, Charon doesn't orbit Pluto, making it the only 'planet' with a non-orbiting satellite. Aditionally this satelitte has a mean distance that is less than 20 times Pluto's radius. To put that in perspective, that'd make the Moon orbit at 120,000 km - about a third that of its current orbit. And if we wanted to put it even more into perspective, the Moon would also have to grow significantly to something like 3 times its current size (haven't done the math). While that would be interesting from an astronomical point of view, I'm fairly certain we wouldn't enjoy the increased gravitational pull. If you think high tide is bad now, imagine what it'd be like if the ground itself moved up and down with the tides.
We use definitions, like the word planet, to make things easier. If we can use one definition to describe the planets, and then have to go "oh, and it's okay if they don't lie in the same plane as everything else, as long as they're no more than 50 AU away from the Sun, and have a huge eccentric orbit compared to every other planet", then it doesn't really fit the same definition.
In fact, just looking at orbital eccentricity it'd difficult to argue that Pluto (and Mercury) is in the same class as the other 7 planets. Mercury has a slight excuse since it's 100 times closer to the sun.
But, to jump on your main point:
"declaring that what everyone had said was a planet for the last 80 years is now not one"
That's the thing about science. Science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop.
What have we discovered/come to realise in the last 80 years, that we took for granted back then? How about asbestos not being good for you? Smoking not being good for you? That you could in fact go faster than the speed of sound? That DDT isn't the safest way to get rid of bugs?
How about something a bit more down to earth? Like plate tectonics. I mean, if you were to go back in time to the 1930s, when Pluto was discovered, and told people that the earth's surface was made up of large slabs of rock, floating on an inner sea of molten rock, and that these massive plates moved, shifting continents around and that the Earth of today looks nothing like the earth of 100 million years ago, you'd either be comitted to mental 'care', or just outright laughed at.
But, if you prefer sticking to your guns, defending something that we thought was correct 80 years ago, then why not do one better and defend astrology. That's even older.
Pluto: "I'm being what?"
Astrological society: "Demoted... you're being demoted."
Pluto: "I don't understand... why?"
Astrological society: "Honestly, your just not up to code, you know? Most planets have certain criteria they must follow, criteria that you just don't meet. You understand right?"
Pluto: "I sure as hell do not!"
Astrological society: "Well, it's like this... realistically... well, your an ice cube, basically and well... we mistook for a real planet. But we do apologize for the confusion."
Pluto: "OMG. This is so embarrassing."
Illinois: "It's okay Pluto we understand. Hey... how would like to be governor? Seriously, we have a spot open all the time? Tell you what, if you agree to govern us then we'll let you be a planet."
Pluto: "Uhm... you do realize that in all reality, I am a giant ice cube right?"
Illinois: "That is neither her nor there... look, when the time is right... it'll happen. You seem like a smart fellow, and together I think we can get a lot accomplished. Just remember though, when things go bad, you have to go back to being an ice cube. We don't need you parading your mistakes around for the whole galaxy to see like that last guy."
sudo apt-get lost
With Blago, Burris, Todd Stroger's extreme Cook county sales taxes (Chicago for the rest of you), Sheriff Tom Dart suing craigslist...
I'm embarrassed to live here. Passing a "Pluto is a planet" resolution is over the top for this legislature compared with all the other fun stuff going on. It furthers Illinois as a laughing stock, tarnishing the reputation of the state, it's people and businesses.
That is reason enough to get my goat, straw that bropke the camels back per se and make some phone calls and try and remind my representatives to get the bleep on track.