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Pluto — a Complex and Changing World
astroengine writes "After 4 years of processing the highest resolution photographs the Hubble Space Telescope could muster, we now have the highest resolution view of Pluto's surface ever produced. Most excitingly, these new observations show an active world with seasonal changes altering the dwarf planet's surface. It turns out that this far-flung world has more in common with Earth than we would have ever imagined."
Is it just me, or do the photos look like a big blob of yellows and grays?
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
the amateur astronomer understands that Pluto is noting more than an asteroid with a big ego
The attitude gets even bigger when its closer to the sun than Neptune.....
How would you like to be demoted?
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
Five more years until we have a GOOD picture of Pluto. July 14, 2015...can't wait!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons
It's not just the seasons that change: In those four years Pluto has gone from being a planet to not being a planet to being a planet again to being kind of a planet... Complex and changing indeed.
These new high-resolution views no doubt provide important new information about Pluto's seasons, but the fact that Pluto undergoes significant seasonal cycles has been known for quite a while. (Here's one randomly chosen mention.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Pluto IS a planet. It was a planet when I was in school, so it will always be a planet, dadgummit.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
am I the only one who sees a blurry tux face in the 180 photo?
Nuf said
if you grant me the other seven dwarves are planets: eris, makemake, haumea, sedna, orcus, 2001OR10, and quaoar
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/EightTNOs.png
and the other 100 or so such objects of pluto size likely to be found in the coming decades in the oort cloud
or keep it easy and say its not a planet
your choice, but the third graders of 2080 who have to memorize 80 planets might not be too happy with you
face it, pluto is chump change
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It turns out that this far-flung world has more in common with Earth than we would have ever imagined.
Should we maybe think of classifying Pluto as a real planet?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
The solar system only has four planets worth distinguishing, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The rest of the objects in the solar system are too small to retain significant hydrogen and can be dismissed.
If Pluto's a dog, then what's the deal with Goofy?
"...more in common with Earth than we would have ever imagined."
If this is going to be along the lines of the the "Earthlike" exoplanets, it means something like Pluto has a surface, and probably some elements.
Why is it every planet that's not obviously entirely unlike Earth is "Earthlike"? Are we really that desperate for a refuge should we ruin this planet completely?
Hell no. Most people with even a slight interest and modest education know better, and don't try to make a point anything like that. No, these asinine statements are almost invariably made by 'science journalists' which are rapidly becoming less and less of both of those. They know they can't keep your interest recounting the bare facts so they have to come up with some bullshit that they're probably not even aware how bag of hammers stoopid it sounds. Pluto has an axial tilt, therefore it has seasons... like Earth. Sure, seasons with an average summer of 60 degrees Kelvin and winters at 30 Kelvin. How very Earthlike.
See, there's a downside to all these magazines and other media making stuff available on the net. Since they're making it available for free, they're not making anything directly from them, so they have nothing to lose by making them crap. Then they can get you to subscribe for the better stuff. In theory. Rather than paying some real and knowledgeable science journalists, or even specialists in that field, to write better material, they go the cheap route and use the same mediocre hacks for their print versions as for their e-versions.
So, naturally Pluto is Earthlike. It's because the source is Sciencelike. Sure, and those writers' and editors' asses are Hatlike.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
...planets have surfaces. Pluto has a surface, therefore it's a planet.
Pluto is not the only large body out there - Makemake, Haumea and Eris, among others, are just as large or larger, and also have signs of changes on their surface, but don't have the "planetary" history and don't get nearly the attention.
the alien base?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The whole scheme is arbitrary. The term "planet" was only nailed down in 2006, and of course it's going to take people time to adjust to the rigorous definition.
I'm not sure how useful the classification is anyway. The differences between Mercury and Jupiter are greater than the differences between Mercury and Pluto. Earth is more different still than any of the three with its complex and varied forms of life.
I think the astronomers should use their definition, and I suppose it ought to be taught in schools for the sake of consistency (though I question the value of making kids memorize the planets in the first place), but it's really not a big deal what you call it.
Your brain is not a computer.
That sounds about right. Earth scopes can barely make out features on even Neptune's atmosphere (although adaptive optics seem to be making rapid progress).
Table-ized A.I.
If you watch that little slide show, you see.....Asia, Europe, Africa, and then the Americas - they could have tried a bit harder if all they were doing was shuffling out a fake....geeesh.
heeey, wait a second... that looks just like a planet I went to grade school with!
.
-whoa, I'm jones'ing for a sig right about now...
Now is this better... or worse?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The key definition to me is that planets orbit in the plane of the ecliptic, all in the same direction.
Pluto does not orbit in the plane of the ecliptic. It's orbit also crosses the paths of existing planets. It's clearly an Oort cloud object. And not even the largest one. It has more in common with a comet than with any of the other planets, in both orbit and composition.
I don't understand why there's even a controversy here. Even as a child, when I looked at the diagram of the planets, Pluto stood out in a "One of these things is not like the others" way to me. It simply doesn't fit.
The decision to demote Pluto from planethood was and is a good one, and everyone upset by it just needs to get over it.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Easy, killer.
I decided against bothering with the controversy because the rest of my post is about how little it matters, and most people here respect the opinions of acronymed scientific groups. If it makes you feel better, you can skip that whole sentence.
You lost me in that last paragraph, but I have a feeling you lost yourself long before that so I'm not too broken up about it.
Your brain is not a computer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You raise a good point--Pluto is an oddball. At the time of its discovery Pluto was thought to have a mass similar to Earth's; it was too far out to identify much about until the tech caught up to the science. I wonder if we'd be having this discussion today had optics made a leap forward before Pluto's discovery.
The Pluto change makes sense for the purposes of astronomy, but you can't ignore the social impact that it has. Whenever new planets were discovered back in the day, people got excited about it--we still do, even when it's an "earth-like" planet that nothing could survive on and that none of us will ever see images of. It's a little unfair to allow for that excitement on the one hand but not the disappointment when a planet you grew familiar with is relegated to a lower status. It may be silly, but it removes some of its charm.
Pluto is still a unique object unto itself no matter what category it's placed in, which is what I was trying to get at with my remark about Mercury and Jupiter, so it doesn't matter much to me how it's classified.
Your brain is not a computer.
chill out hyper boy
unfortunately i only caught one hysteric with my stilted wording, but its a good one
i consider myself a moderate. of course liberals and conservatives have equal claim to adequacy, and idiocies abound in either direction. duh. you don't need to defend the obvious truth to every moron and troll you see on teh intarwebs, relax
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
---
Solar System Feed @ Feed distiller
ceres was considered a planet FOR HALF A CENTURY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)
they got over it WHEN THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS FOUND TO BE FULL OF SUCH MIDGETS
sound familiar? when the deluge of asteroids came in, people thought "uh, its going a little crazy with these planets here, lets lop off the pretenders". now, as they search and catalog the oort cloud, they find that pluto's experience is like ceres's experience in the asteroid belt: planet, until the deluge of neighbors, then demotion. its happened before, its happening again. there's no claim to pluto's status except nostalgia. they got over it in the 1800s, you can get over it now
pluto was discovered in in 1930, and kicked out of the club in 2006. that's a nice 75 year run, 50% more time than ceres
the only thing you have going for your clinging to pluto is adherence to tradition. that's not a good reason to say everything and its uncle is a planet, just to preserve pluto's status. its far easier to lop off pluto, consider us to have 4 (rocky) +4 (gas) planets, and be done with it. everything else is dwarf planet/ comet/ asteroid/ etc.: detritus, flotsam and jetsam, left over rocks, of lower import than the main 8
simple, easy, case closed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
what?!
it would be a shame to go to pluto JUST BECAUSE it is mistakenly considered a "planet." the shame would be making visitations based on historical nostalgia, rather than sound science. there's hundreds if not thousands of scientifically intriguing objects out there that are mostly anonymous but show something very intriguing to science, like a dozen gas giant moons that are much more interesting than pluto according to all sorts of avenues of discovery, or something having a ridiculously huge albedo for its size, whose composition therefore is very interesting,
or something like this freak, the giant metal dog bone asteroid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/216_Kleopatra
or the rubble pile asteroid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/253_Mathilde
or the potato asteroid with a moon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/243_Ida
the peanut asteroid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4179_Toutatis
binary contact asteroids:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_binary_(asteroid)
etc, etc.:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Iau_dozen.jpg
look, there are now 480,000 catalogued minor planets and nearly 69 MILLION observations (that could be double observations or new objects, not investigated fully yet). and its growing every year by hundreds of thousands
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/ArchiveStatistics.html
i would say at least 1,000 of those objects are more worthy, for scientific reasons, of exploration than pluto
howabout the centaurs (really out there)? howabout the trojans (locked in orbit with jupiter)? howabout the apohele (smaller than earth's orbit)?
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/MPLists.html
in short, fuck pluto: it gets WAY more attention than it deserves
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the only thing you have going for your clinging to pluto is adherence to tradition
Nonsense, that wasn't his point at all. His point is that drawing a line between Mercury and Pluto is no better than drawing a line just below Pluto. And he's saying that your argument of "But we can't have too many planets" is a weak one. I agree with him on both points.
Do you think that all of the small moons should have their moon status revoked? There are hundreds of moons now in the solar system, including some that are only a kilometre across!
the line between the 4 gas giants and the rest is a big one. that would work
the line between the 4 gas giants + the 4 (major) inner rocky planets and all the rest is another big obvious cut off point. that would work too
below that, it gets very murky very quickly in terms of valid, easily defined criteria
so your logical choices are:
1. 4 planets
or
2. 8 planets
or
3. 482,419 planets and counting
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/ArchiveStatistics.html
you choose. i'm going with 8
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the cut off between mercury and all other planets is a severe drop off
likewise, if it doesn't orbit the sun, its a moon. completely different issue
and yes people have constant arguments over what constitutes a mountain, in fact it spilled over into farce because of national pride in one case:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/19/wales
they even made a movie about it starring hugh grant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Englishman_Who_Went_Up_a_Hill_But_Came_Down_a_Mountain
so what you do, to avoid all this pointless hullabaloo, is you pick the most obvious simple cut off, and go with it. and that cut off means there are eight planets
endless mindless posturing to the contrary
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
(This goes without saying on /. but) If that's what you're noticing in those pictures then you REALLY need to get laid.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
I think Pluto is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the telescope's fault. Pluto is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. There's a large, out-of-focus plantoid roaming the solar system. Run, he's fuzzy, get out of here
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Astronomers were very surprise to seen that Pluto's brightness has changed over a few years.
Looks like Discovery News needs a new editor.
the cut off between mercury and all other planets is a severe drop off
Not even a factor of 2 is not a "severe drop off".
likewise, if it doesn't orbit the sun, its a moon. completely different issue
I'm not saying that moons are planets. I'm asking you what you think the definition of a moon should be? If you're happy having hundreds of moons, why doesn't this apply for planets?
so what you do, to avoid all this pointless hullabaloo, is you pick the most obvious simple cut off
The most obvious cut off would surely be that of the gas giants. The rest is pretty arbitrary.