NASA's Hubble Discovers Another Moon Around Pluto

thebchuckster writes "Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite – temporarily designated P4 — was uncovered in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet. The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km)."

Comments

Planet

[Baloroth]

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy planet Pluto.

There, FTFY :)

More seriously, when did they find the second and third moons? I honestly don't remember ever hearing about them, last I knew Pluto just had Charon. Must be really out of the loop on this.

Re:Planet

[adamjcoon]

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy rock Pluto.

There.. FTFY ;o)

Re:Planet

[EvanED]

If you count Pluto as a planet, do you count Eris as a planet? (It's bigger than Pluto.) What about Sedna? (Smaller, but not by a whole lot.)

Wikipedia says Nix and Hydra were discovered in 2005 (also by the Hubble team, apparently) and named in 2006.

Re:Planet

[EvanED]

Depending on how you count, it may be more accurate to say "rocky ice". By volume, Pluto has more ice than rock. (By mass, it is indeed an icy rock.)

Re:Planet

[adamjcoon]

lol technicalities! :)

Re:Planet

[Normal Dan]

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy rocky thing we call Pluto.

There... FTFY :D

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no clear difference between what is a planet and what is not, that's why all this crazy war is going on. We've had too many casualties on both sides, so I say this: let's toss a coin and let that decide if Pluto is a planet or not. Anything smaller is not a planet, anything bigger is a planet. Problem solved.

Re:Planet

[Cochonou]

Eris might not be that big after all. The first estimation of its size were made according to its mass, but it seems that this dwarf planet could have a higher density than Pluto.

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

In which way is little people not people?
How small do a human need to be to not be a human?

Re:Planet

[operagost]

So the current satellite scorecard looks like this:

Smallest planets: Mars, 2; Mercury, 0
Biggest "dwarf" planets: Pluto, 4; Ceres: 0

Re:Planet

[DigiShaman]

If you have a large object locked in a stable orbit around a star, and it too has a moon; to me that qualifies as a planet. Give Pluto back its former title please.

Re:Planet

[qzjul]

Well, the current definition of being spherical and clearing its local neighbourhood (and being in orbit of the star, not another planet), is a pretty good one I think anyway.

Re:Planet

[Canazza]

Pluto and Charon orbit around a non-fixed barycenter that is actually outside of both Pluto and Charon. Pluto/Charon is really a binary Dwarf Planet with 3 moons. Which, honestly, is fucking awesome.

Re:Planet

[John Bresnahan]

If you have a large object locked in a stable orbit around a star, and it too has a moon; to me that qualifies as a planet.

Using this criteria, there are hundreds, if not thousands of such "planets". Wikipedia

Re:Planet

[fyngyrz]

• If an object exists or existed in the past as a stand-alone fusion reaction, it's a star.
• If a space-going object was assembled using tools, it's a spacecraft. Otherwise,
• If an object has its own orbit about its star, and it has enough mass to overcome any other structure it might have had and has pulled itself into a sphere or oblate spheroid, it's a planet.
• If an object has its own orbit about its star, and cannot pull itself into a sphere or oblate spheroid...
  • then if it's primarily rocky, stony or metallic, it's an asteroid
  • else if it's primarily gassy or icy, it's a comet
• If an object orbits a planet, it's a moon, irrespective of shape.
• If an object doesn't orbit a star and isn't under power or in a directed trajectory, it's a rogue [planet, asteroid, comet, spacecraft].

So: Pluto is a planet. Eris and Sedna are both probably planets, but we don't actually know if they have rounded themselves as yet -- they're pretty far out there. So it is possible one or both are asteroids.

Re:Planet

[Bob the Super Hamste]

The BBC has a write up that says the other 2 moons were discovered using the Hubble in 2005 at the beginning of the 6th paragraph.

Re:Planet

[MozeeToby]

It amounts to people having a holy war over where blue ends and purple begins. It's arbitrary. They needed a definition and it was generally felt that a definition that kept the number of planets to a reasonable number was in everyone's interest. The reason the definition was changed was because modern theory predicts dozens or even hundreds of Pluto-like objects in the outer solar system, which was thought to be an unreasonable number of bodies to be labeled as planets.

IMO, what they should have done was create a super-category 'planets', which would include the 100+ objects in the outer solar system, and at least 3 subcategories (terrestrial, gas, and dwarf) that are more specific. I think there's an argument to be made that Mercury has more in common with Eris than it does with Jupiter for instance, but then I'm not an astronomer.

Re:Planet

[Nadaka]

All orbiting objects orbit around a non-fixed barycenter. The only factors determining if that center is inside or outside one of the planets is the ratio of masses of an object pair, the distance between them and the radius of the more massive object.

Re:Planet

[EvanED]

Interesting, I didn't know that.

(That being said, I'm not convinced that mass isn't what should be used for the "bigger/smaller" measure in the first place.)

Re:Planet

[Canazza]

I meant inside a fixed object. (IE, the moons Barycenter is inside the Earth, until such time as it floats far enough away in a few millenia)

Re:Planet

[careysub]

Pluto and Charon orbit around a non-fixed barycenter that is actually outside of both Pluto and Charon. Pluto/Charon is really a binary Dwarf Planet with 3 moons. Which, honestly, is fucking awesome.

Absolutely! Further more its physical and orbital characteristics clearly associate it with the recently discovered Kuiper Belt Objects. It is should not be viewed as a "pathetic little planet wannabe" but as the King of the KBOs (Eris would be the Queen).

Re:Planet

[tommy2tone]

More seriously, when did they find the second and third moons? I honestly don't remember ever hearing about them, last I knew Pluto just had Charon.

2005, Hubble found them.

Re:Planet

[N0Man74]

That's interesting, but that then brings up another question. Should you qualify what is or isn't a planet based on it's size, or it's mass?

To a real estate agent, size is pretty important, but I would think that mass would be more important to an astronomer.

Re:Planet

[d3ac0n]

Not only that, but as a definition it is empirical and not subjective, like the various "size" based definitions are.

Planet: Any body which has all of the following properties:
1. It's mass has compressed it into a spherical shape.
2. It's primary orbit is around a star
3. It has cleared it's orbit of all other bodies that aren't satellites of itself, Lagrange point bodies, or "twin" satellites of similar mass that it stably co-orbits with where the co-orbital point exists outside either body.

Note the last part there. Not everyone includes this. I include it as it not only allows BOTH Pluto and Charon to be counted as planets, but also takes into account any new extra-solar co-orbiters we may discover in the future.

I mean, wouldn't it be embarrassing to leave that last part out, and then down the road discover a "double earth" planet system orbiting another star and not be able to categorize either earth-sized body as a planet?

Now, if you INSIST on having a "planet / proto-planet" dichotomy, I could accept a fourth definitional point:

4. Must have a gravitational force large enough to hold an atmosphere outside of any solar wind stripping influence.

This addition would still include Pluto, although it might exclude Charon as it has no known atmosphere. However it's lack of atmosphere could also be due to the extreme cold and the fact that most of it's ices are water ices, thus largely non-volatile at those temperatures and unable to "gas off" and create an atmosphere.

Lastly, I have also seen some scientists want to include a 5th definitional point:

5. Has a differentiated structure.

Not sure how Pluto and Charon would stack up against that criterion.

Re:Planet

[formfeed]

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy rocky thing we call Pluto.

There... FTFY :D

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth dwarf moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto.

There... FTFY :D :D

-Actually, would it be a dwarf moon, or a dwarf-planet moon? Or -in this case- both?

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

The number of satellites has nothing to do with whether a body is classified as a planet or not.

Re:Planet

[Dyolf Knip]

> 3. It has cleared it's orbit of all other bodies that aren't satellites of itself, Lagrange point bodies, or "twin" satellites of similar mass that it stably co-orbits with where the co-orbital point exists outside either body.

Wouldn't this definition preclude a Kemplerer Rosette? Sure, they don't occur in nature, and are in fact quite unstable without active stationkeeping, but if you put (to pick a number at random) 5 Earth-sized planets equally spaced in the same orbit, be kinda silly to declare them non-planets as a result.

Re:Planet

[d3ac0n]

(Eris would be the Queen)

Don't tell Charon that. She's been hanging with Pluto a long time. Also, she's an icy bitch.

Re:Planet

[dkleinsc]

I include it as it not only allows BOTH Pluto and Charon to be counted as planets, but also takes into account any new extra-solar co-orbiters we may discover in the future.

Except that they haven't in fact cleared their orbit of all other bodies that aren't satellites - with the discovery of the Kuiper Belt, Pluto started looking a lot more like Ceres than it did like Mercury.

Re:Planet

[d3ac0n]

You missed the "Stable" part of the definition. Any body not in a stable orbit, regardless of size, would not be considered a "planet".

Yes, it may seem silly, but a randomly wandering body, regardless of size, shouldn't be called a planet. I think "Planetoid" or "dark body" would be more accurate, although we may need to come up with a new word.

However the size alone should not be the definitional point as size-based parameters are constantly subject to revision, and are thus unreliable.

Re:Planet

[kimvette]

4. Must have a gravitational force large enough to hold an atmosphere outside of any solar wind stripping influence.

On that point, Pluto is more of a planet than Mercury.

Re:Planet

[d3ac0n]

Haven't they? I was under the impression that they orbited near the edge of the Kuiper belt, but that their orbit was actually clear of other Kuiper belt objects.

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Fetal.

Re:Planet

[d3ac0n]

Well, Mercury certainly COULD hold an atmosphere, but it's orbit is so close to Sol that the solar wind strips it.

If Pluto were closer it wouldn't have an atmosphere either. That's why the "outside the solar wind stripping influence" part of the definitional point.

Re:Planet

[arth1]

If an object orbits a planet, it's a moon, irrespective of shape.

So the space station is a moon? And the hammer they dropped up there? And Saturn's rings are moons too?

I would be good with a definition of moon that requires a spherical shape and long-term stable orbits. That would exclude Mars' satellites, which is fine with me. They're just captured asteroids in decaying orbits.

Re:Planet

[MozeeToby]

Your definition comes very close to having the moon declared a planet. Although at present the barycenter is below the surface of the Earth, the moon is constantly moving away from the Earth. The day will come when, by your definition, the moon will suddenly and instantly be elevated to planet-hood even though nothing obvious has changed.

Not that that makes your definition wrong of course, just pointing it out.

The argument of what is and isn't a planet is older than people realize; Isaac Asimov suggested a system where the body with the largest gravitational influence would determine if something is a planet or not. Titan is influenced by Jupiter 380 times more than it is influenced by the sun, so it is clearly a moon of Jupiter. Interestingly, the moon is influenced by the earth only 0.46 times as much as it is influenced by the sun, making the moon a planet by Asimov's definition.

Re:Planet

[Artifakt]

But if you stop counting Pluto as a planet, and then you discover another Kuiper Belt object that's not only bigger than Eris but as big or bigger than Mercury, do you make it a planet, or do you take Mercury off the list?
          Right now, the IAU definition of planet is deliberately limited to our own solar system, just so it doesn't apply to situations extra-solar astronomers have actually already found, or are very likely to find in the next few years (How do you determine what 'clears an orbit' in a young solar system where there's still lots of small stuff everywhere?). There's still a fair chance we will find something else in our own system that the definition either calls a planet or some sort of ambiguous case (If the albedo is average for an icy rock, then it's not a planet but if there's something darker on the surface, maybe it is...).
          What has usually happened to complex, multi-part, legalistic definitions in the sciences? People tried to define every element on the periodic table as either a reactive element or an inert, 'noble' gas. Was there a move to take Xenon off the noble gas list when someone managed to get it to combine with fluorine under high enough pressures? Biologists had a big checklist for what constituted life - with sub-definitions of eating, excreting, reproducing, etc. When they first found viruses that could only reproduce by hijacking a cells reproductive copying systems, there was debate over whether viruses were truly alive - did anyone float a new, more complex definition of what counted as reproduction and demand that everything now fall squarely on one side or the other of the line they had drawn? Did they redraw the line again for Prions?

Re:Planet

[d3ac0n]

i think the sensible answer is "neither".

Whether you base it around "X" size or "X" mass, the problem is that "X" is inherently non-empirical and subject to change, thus inappropriate as a definition.

The only "mass" related definition that would be empirical would be "Mass large enough to compress it into a sphere." It's empirical enough that you can actually chart it.

Combined with other definitional points such as the ones mentioned in my earlier post, you can have a totally empirical definition of a planet that makes sense and prevents us from having an insane number of planets in our system.

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

They're already called rogue planets.

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's why your definition is a crock of shit - it requires the planet to be theoretically moved closer or further away from the sun.

Re:Planet

[d3ac0n]

Your definition comes very close to having the moon declared a planet. Although at present the barycenter is below the surface of the Earth, the moon is constantly moving away from the Earth. The day will come when, by your definition, the moon will suddenly and instantly be elevated to planet-hood even though nothing obvious has changed.

Not that that makes your definition wrong of course, just pointing it out.

Excellent point. However I would hasten to point out that I included several other definitional points that must all be met to call a body a planet. Certainly point number 4 about having enough gravitational force to hold onto an atmosphere would prevent Luna from being classified as a new planet as it escapes Earth's grasp.

Re:Planet

[Hognoxious]

No shit, Sherlock. Send me a postcard from Stockholm and sign it "captain Obvious". I'll treasure it, really I will.

Re:Planet

[nopainogain]

semantics. i used to enjoy semantics. i'm not looking forward to when the other pluto is downgraded from dog based on standards held by goofy!

Re:Planet

[Artifakt]

The trick there is, whatever we declare the worlds of an artificial rosette to be, what they are is whatever the transhuman species that made them calls them. Trust me - you don't want to get into an argument with people who can shoot you with a gun that causes your grandparents to have a 50 year string of bad luck, precluding you ever being born. Whether they call them "planets", "properly sorted and indexed lebensraum", or "the big round closets where I keep all my stuff when I'm back in this brane", we'd better stick to their definition.

Re:Planet

[PwnzerDragoon]

You missed a line:

If a space-going object was assembled using tools, it's a spacecraft. Otherwise,

Though you're right that definition doesn't take rings into account.

Re:Planet

[rednip]

Seeing that the declaration that Pluto wasn't a planet was a failure on it's part (not intentionally, I'm sure) to meet a good standard for a planet (as designed by astrophysics), the 'flip of the coin' idea must be presented by someone who still hold out hope that Pluto would attain the status it once had. Do not let his attempt at subterfuge confuse you; instead of 'solving the craziness' he's only attempting to extending it for another chance at winning.

Re:Planet

[fyngyrz]

Though you're right that definition doesn't take rings into account.

Sure it does. They're just large groups of moons. Just as an asteroid belt is a large group of asteroids, and the Kuiper belt is a large group of comets.

Re:Planet

[EvanED]

But if you stop counting Pluto as a planet, and then you discover another Kuiper Belt object that's not only bigger than Eris but as big or bigger than Mercury, do you make it a planet, or do you take Mercury off the list?

"It depends". I tend to feel like Pluto's size is almost the least compelling reason to not classify it as a planet. Other properties, like the fact that it's orbit and Neptune's cross, it's orbit is out of the orbital plane of the other eight, it hasn't even close to cleared its orbit, etc. are way more compelling (and interesting!). I would say evaluate your Planet X on those merits rather than size or mass.

I'm not sure that the IAU's current definition is great (you mention the "clears its orbit" criteria for a young solar system, but I'm not even sure that it's all that great for our own. If we have to re-evaluate our definition every decades or two for a while, I'm fine with that. But I do still think that what we've got now is better than what we had before. At the very least, it keeps people's terminology (largely) consistent.

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't hear? It's a Mass Relay dude! I mean, how the hell else am I supposed to team up with Garrus and take down the Reapers? You expect my Specter ass to use sub-light travel?! Bah!

All joking aside, with that much Ice, I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised if we find out it really is some sort of artificial alien construction. That would explain the orbit too. Hell, just make it out of iron, encase it in enough ice, and roll an intergalactic Zamboni over it, and the only way we'd know is to actually go out there and melt the ice.

Re:Planet

[Artifakt]

But the point is, the number of satellites should have nothing to do with whether a body is classified as a planet or not, because it's not logically connected to the classification. It's pretty intuitive that two planets of the same size could gobble up different numbers of smaller satellites on a pretty much random basis. We don't want to make a random factor paramount in defining something.
      That bit about clearing orbits in the standard definition the IAU now uses... Isn't that an essentially random factor? You could have two planets the same mass and size, and if one of them is closer to a big gas giant world that does a lot of orbit clearing on its own, it would look like it had a clearer orbit than the other, wouldn't it? And, what about the objects being cleared? Doesn't their average orbital eccentricity have something to do with how swiftly they get assimilated as moons, nudged out of the region, and so on?
        Once you include such odd concepts as the IAU chose as necessary to a definition, you lose your right to just say something such as "the number of satellites has nothing to do with whether a body is classified as a planet or not". See, your reason for rejecting it is because it's not logical to make something that isn't truly fundamental to your definition such a part of it. If you aren't applying that reason consistently to your own side of the discussion, that makes you a jerk. (Not you personally, I mean that hypothetical you that is known in real life as the IAU).

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, along with Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, Orcus, Quaoar, Charon (making it a double with Pluto) and a few others I can't remember right now.

I preferred the earlier proposal from the IAU to the one they ultimately adopted, mostly cause I could never understand what "clear the neighborhood" means...

Re:Planet

[camperdave]

But "Mass large enough to compress it into a sphere." depends upon what the object is made of, and where it is. Ice will form a sphere at a lower gravity than rock. A rocky body close to the Sun may be more pliable than an equally massive hunk of ice in the outer rim territories. Thus a lower gravitational pull would be needed to round it out.

Re:Planet

[Lanteran]

Wow, titan's influenced by Jupiter so much that it's considered a moon of Jupiter over Saturn? Gosh, astronomy these days.

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun fact: the barycenter of the Sun-Jupiter system is above the Sun's surface. Extra-terrestrial observers have taken to calling it a "dwarf star".

(Come to think of it, so do we. But while no one gets upset when you leave out the word "dwarf" when referring to a star, all hell breaks loose when you do the same for a dwarf planet.)

Re:Planet

[v1]

or "rogue planet". So if a planet was in orbit around a star, and the star went nova, (and the planet survived the event) then it would lose its status as a planet? seems odd.

Re:Planet

[Chris Burke]

No. Pluto's planetary discriminant -- essentially the ratio of its mass to the mass of the other objects in it's orbit, not counting direct satellites, is 0.077. Eris is 0.1 and Ceres is 0.33.

Neptune's is 2.4x10^4, and it has the lowest discriminant of any of the IAU-defined planets. Earth is actually on top at 1.7 Ã-- 10^6!

That's a 5 order of magnitude difference.

I mean, "clearing the orbit" is the part of the IAU definition of "planet" that causes Pluto to be excluded, so it's a little weird that you'd nerd out on planet definitions but not know that. :)

Re:Planet

[Chris Burke]

Why does it seem odd that changes in status would result in changes in categorization?

If Saturn was sucked into another dimension without disturbing any of its satellites, then the 6th planet of the solar system might end up being Titan.

Re:Planet

[mcvos]

That's a lousy solution. The current definition is much better: a planet has to clear its orbit of most other objects. All 8 planets have done that. All objects that were once considered planets but lost that status (Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Ceres, Pluto, and possibly others), all lost it because people discovered more and more similar objects in similar orbits.

Re:Planet

[mcvos]

Is Charon round enough to be a Dwarf Planet?

Re:Planet

[mcvos]

Note that Ceres would also be a planet according to this definition. Possibly Vesta too (it's not yet proven whether it's mostly-spherical shape is due to gravity).

Re:Planet

[Chris Burke]

But if you stop counting Pluto as a planet, and then you discover another Kuiper Belt object that's not only bigger than Eris but as big or bigger than Mercury, do you make it a planet, or do you take Mercury off the list?

Mercury would remain in hydrostatic equilibrium, and thus would continue to satisfy the only size-based criterion for planethood.

This hypothetical KBO would have to be very large in order to out-mass the rest of the objects in its orbit enough to qualify for the "clearing the neighborhood" criterion. But if it was large enough, a planet it would be.

Interestingly, both Ceres and Eris have done a better job of clearing their orbit than Pluto. Which is to say a terrible job that's still 5 orders of magnitudes below the least of the planets. :)

(How do you determine what 'clears an orbit' in a young solar system where there's still lots of small stuff everywhere?)

That's a good question. You could resolve it by either saying you can only categorize objects in older, stable systems. Or that everything in such a young system is at best a proto-planet that may or may not become a planet depending on how things shake out.

Extrasolar planets are where we're most likely to find ambiguous cases, and where we will eventually have to throw up our hands about drawing infinitely precise lines between categories.

Thankfully, our own solar system does not require drawing a precise line since there's such a huge gap between things that have cleared their orbit and things that haven't. I would suspect that this is not an accident, and rather a consequence of planetary formation where either an object accumulates enough mass and is in the right orbit and so either absorbs or tosses everything else out, or it isn't and so a bunch of smaller fragments all remain.

But with the study of extrasolar systems just beginning, I don't want to extrapolate too much from the data point of 1 system. :)

There's still a fair chance we will find something else in our own system that the definition either calls a planet or some sort of ambiguous case (If the albedo is average for an icy rock, then it's not a planet but if there's something darker on the surface, maybe it is...).

That actually seems pretty unlikely... Like I mentioned before, for there to be a planet lurking in the Kuiper Belt it'd have to be pretty dang big, like Jupiter. But if there was a Jupiter-sized object in the KB, then it would have had a noticeable gravitational effect on the belt (not to mention Neptune) and it would look very different.

Re:Planet

[fyngyrz]

Yep. I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that our star holds on to more than nine planets. I also think the idea that Pluto isn't a planet is ridiculous, and that any definition that ends up that way is by definition, busted.

Re:Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, at least Pluto's trying to clear its orbit by capturing a bunch of the nearby objects as moons. It's not its fault it lives in the Kuiper Belt.

Re:Planet

[Forty Two Tenfold]

Sirius B.

Re:Planet

[mcvos]

Fair enough. I disagree, though. I think the requirement that planets clear their orbit is a sensible one, and I think ending up with potentially hundreds of planets, almost all of which are KBOs, degrades the clearly different nature of the 8 major planets. I think the distinction between a major planet and a dwarf planet is a useful one.

A moon orbiting a moon

[darth_MALL]

You can't explain that.

Re:A moon orbiting a moon

[tverbeek]

It's a bit like the tides, Mister O'Reilly.

Pluto's Moons

[Bloodwine77]

Poor Pluto, they can take away your planetary designation but you will always have your moons!

As for Hubble, I am quite happy with its continued usefulness and success. Hopefully it never loses its funding (at least not until there is a suitable replacement).

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Gideon Wells]

You know, I used to feel bad for Pluto. Poor, alone out there except for Charon. Then they demoted Pluto and ever since it seems like all Pluto can do is try to bling itself out more and more for attention. Maybe the right decision was made. Between Saturn and its rings, Earth with its fancy smancy life, Uranus and Venus with their hipster rational anomalies... I just don't think we can take another attention seeeker.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Hubble will eventually degrade in performance just as it has in the past. Gyros and batteries wear out, electronics get glitchy, etc.

Unfortunately, when it starts to happen again, there won't be anything we can do about it. Without the shuttle, another service mission is impossible. And with Hubble's successor (JWST) hanging by a fraying budgetary thread, there likely will be no replacing it with an improved telescope, either.

We as a country have given up on science, unless it makes immediate profits for megacorporations or helps the military kill people more efficiently in foreign lands.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[the gnat]

Unfortunately, when it starts to happen again, there won't be anything we can do about it. Without the shuttle, another service mission is impossible. And with Hubble's successor (JWST) hanging by a fraying budgetary thread, there likely will be no replacing it with an improved telescope, either.

This has been repeated a number of times, but launching an entirely new Hubble into high orbit (without a shuttle, that is) would be substantially cheaper than maintaining the shuttle program in order to service the existing scope. I hope JWST pulls through, but I don't think NASA should get a blank check from the taxpayers.

We as a country have given up on science, unless it makes immediate profits for megacorporations or helps the military kill people more efficiently in foreign lands.

I'm not a fan of our budget priorities for the last decade, but I can understand why Congress is viewing JWST skeptically. The telescope isn't even supposed to launch until 2017 at the earliest and it's already billions of dollars over budget. Sure, this is a fraction of what we're flushing down the toilet in futile wars, but we're already stuck in those, and they're much more difficult to pull out of than a project that's still in the planning stages.

Except for servicing Hubble - a dubious justification - the shuttle was a terribly inefficient use of money for the science that came out of the program. As far as scientific funding in general is concerned, NASA continues to do great work with remote probes and will be sending another rover to Mars soon. The NIH and NSF managed to avoid major funding cuts in a year when most federal agencies got hit hard, and the DOE Office of Science, which was slated for a huge cut, also survived mostly intact. Speaking as a scientist involved with many of these agencies, I'm thrilled with the outcome.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[vlm]

We as a country have given up on science, unless it makes immediate profits for megacorporations

I'm not thinking Hubble was manufactured by schoolchildren or launched by a volunteer group.

That's the mystifying part. You'd think there's just as much room for corruption in the aerospace contracting field as the banking field, but apparently fraud is easier in the banking industry. Since they (as in the big bankers) are not going to let us fix the banking system, the solution would seem to be, make the aerospace industry as corrupt, or more corrupt, than the banking industry.

I'm sure we could set up some system of multiple tiers of commissioned sales people, maybe a derivatives market, a couple corrupt safety ratings companies... If it doesn't work, 1) banking system doesn't either and no one cares 2) "space is hard" apologists.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Grishnakh]

We as a country have given up on science, unless it makes immediate profits for megacorporations or helps the military kill people more efficiently in foreign lands.

What's more disappointing is that the other industrialized countries haven't taken this torch and run with it. Europe has at least 50% more population than the USA, and a larger economy (and it appears, stronger, despite the problems in Greece). While obviously no one country there can match the US in size and economic power, combined they easily can. They really should be doing more in the scientific realm. Their work in high-energy physics is good, but I don't see them doing that much in space.

Everyone else needs to stop looking to the USA to be the leader and do everything for them, and start doing things themselves. The USA is falling apart due to lack of education, apathy, and above all, extreme corruption. All these other nations need to stop whining about that, and start working to establish a new world order, to borrow a phrase, where the USA is not the sole superpower, but where groups of other nations lead, both economically and morally.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[tverbeek]

"Gyros and batteries wear out"

That certainly explains the discomfort I felt last night after eating a week-old Greek pita sandwich and a couple of AAs I found in my desk drawer.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[nitehawk214]

What do you mean alone except for Charon? Did you not even read the title?

Re:Pluto's Moons

[rgviza]

The USA economy is the largest of any single country in the world. The entire EU beat us very narrowly with 1.5x the number of people.

Remember this when people start talking about "lazy Americans". We're producing nearly as much as 1.5x the number of Europeans are.

US citizens are quick to claim that the US isn't this, or the US isn't that. Fact of the matter is we are still the shit.

We have the highest GDP of any country, we have the highest standard of living, and have the highest rate of scientific advancement, if you include our contributions internationally. We lead in just about every category.

About all the only category the US is losing in is in the number of jobs that a trained monkey can do where the pay standard is too high because of unions. Big surprise. THAT was sustainable...

If you aren't proud of your country, there's the door. Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out. We'll be just fine without you.

Our biggest problem is career politicians and no term limits. We'll sort that out and come back out on top. We have to.

This is a sink or swim country. Make of that what you will. While the potential for failure is greater (less socialism) so is the potential for greatness.

The USA is what you make of it. That's why people from all over the world are trying to live here. If you aren't lazy and bust your ass to make something of yourself, it's the place to be.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Grishnakh]

we have the highest standard of living,

Wrong. Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland consistently lead the standard-of-living rankings worldwide. USA is way down on the list. Having the "highest standard of living" doesn't mean your richest people live the most opulent lifestyles, it means your average people live the safest, most comfortable, and most healthy lifestyles. If you want to compare the rich peoples' lifestyles, then places like Mexico would rank high on the list, since the world's richest man, Carlos Slim, is Mexican. I don't think Mexico is what anyone thinks of when they think of the country with the best standard of living.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[morgauxo]

Those "jobs a trained monkey can do" will always orders of magnitude more plentiful than the jobs that require a college education. This means that the pay rates going to those workers will do far more to the economy than the budgets of a few engineers and scientists. This attitude that pay rate should be mostly determined by level of education will eventually destroy any economy that buys into it. I don't care how much a country develops, no population can be sustained on primarily higher education jobs. We just don't need that many people in those positions.

Further, why doesn't somebody working in a factory deserve a living wage plus health care? Do you think people build the things you buy because it is fun? Yes, in the past we had many workers pulling in what might at first glance seem to be ridiculously high pay checks for simple jobs. What the anti-working class conservatives fail to take into account is that average working hours have been huge. To get these pay checks people have been working between 70 and 80 hour weeks in most factories! How much money would it take to get to get you to turn a screw over and over for 80 hours a week? I've done that, I took a pay cut to leave for a more technical job and was happy to do so. I think someone deserves to be paid well for subjecting themselves to that kind of mind numbing routine.

I'm not saying it is good that people received these kinds of hours. Employers started paying really good overtime, things like double time on Sundays, overtime on anything on Saturday or anything over 8 hours in a single day regardless of what happened the rest of the week. Triple time on holidays was common. This sounds like a lot of money but it made sense from the employer's standpoint. It encouraged people to work longer which meant fewer employees were necessary. Fewer employees means less healthcare which was way more expensive than just cutting big pay checks.

I'm not saying people shouldn't get good health benefits either. Health care is too expensive because the healthcare industry is corrupt, not because people should be left to suffer and die without treatment. Now our corporations are being allowed to drop their retired workers' healthcare benefits. These are the people who worked 70-80 hours a week for decades. They have repetitive motion injuries. Many are in poor health, most of those jobs aren't very good exercise. They are old, their youth is gone, they spent it in a factory. I think this was a bad decision workers made to accept all that overtime but greed is a pretty universal human trait. Shouldn't they get something for what they have given? Is that socialist? I don't think so, it's just fair treatment.

A lot of stuff went on, both positive and negative from both sides. It's really sad that so many are blaming this on the unions. They were there to represent the workers. If there was a gain to be made on the workers behalf of course they took it. Sure it didn't matter if it was sensible or not. What you have to keep in mind is that the corporations are the same thing in reverse. Corporations are run by people who's job is to make more money for the corporation and only to make more money. They are legally obligated to do so. If they can get away with screwing the workers to benefit the stockholders (or themselves) that is what will happen. It's just a job and it's only numbers. In this way they are a-moral, like lawyers. Their job is to negotiate for their side, right or wrong.

No, this was not an ideal system. But what is? Without the unions the corporations are not going to up and start caring about people. They are not going to start doing what is right. They are going to walk all over anybody they can. How will the economy recover when the majority of the people are not earning a living wage? It will not, and in the end all will suffer for it, even the educated worker.

Underpaying the workers will not help companies recover either. In all the large corporations that t

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA is falling apart due to lack of education, apathy, and above all, extreme corruption.

[Citation needed]

I live in the US and I'm not aware that we're falling apart. The US has one of the best-educated populations in the world, and one of the least corrupt societies in the world.

As for 'apathy' I have to disagree there as well. No one I know is apathetic about any issue. They may disagree with me or you about various issues but they are not apathetic.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Grishnakh]

I live in the US too, and it looks like we're falling apart to me with ever more corporate corruption in government.

The US has one of the best-educated populations in the world

You've got to be kidding. Every ranking shows our public education to be near the bottom of industrialized countries. Sure, if you compare our education to Zimbabwe's or Myanmar's, we look pretty good, but that's not saying much.

and one of the least corrupt societies in the world.

You're seriously delusional if you believe that. Again, compared to someplace like Myanmar, we look pretty good with a government controlled by large corporations rather than some military religious fanatics, but that's not saying much.

Compared to the other industrialized countries, our government is extremely corrupt. Just look at the big bank bailout.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[sean.peters]

Sure, this is a fraction of what we're flushing down the toilet in futile wars, but we're already stuck in those, and they're much more difficult to pull out of than a project that's still in the planning stages.

My understanding is that we're beyond the planning stages - substantial portions of the JWST have already been built. If we quit now, we'll just end up throwing that away. From Wikipedia:

The mission had been working towards a launch date in 2014, but during the summer of 2010 an independent review panel determined that 2015 was the earliest possible launch date, and even that would require a significant influx of additional funding.[4] Notably, this review commended the JWST project for being in excellent technical shape with most flight hardware making good progress to completion. The delay and cost overruns are due to an unrealistic original budget and insufficient program management. In response, NASA instituted significant management changes in the JWST project, but the need for increased funding has led to a substantial mission delay.

Congress is great at creating programs with sweeping missions, underfunding them, and then bitching when the programs go "over budget". Maybe the problems with the JWST aren't with NASA - I'm just saying.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[JWW]

Dang, I wish I had more mod points!!

But then we're missing a +1 sad truth mod point.

For all the posturing about science education we as a culture are literally completely turning our back on it.

It frustrates me to no end that NASA is facing large budget cuts, but the military is not.

NASA funding is literally less than 3% of the total we spend on defense. 3%!!! A cut in funding of defense of 5% wouldn't even be felt, but no, lets make sure we cut NASA instead.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Required Snark]

The NIH and NSF managed to avoid major funding cuts in a year when most federal agencies got hit hard, and the DOE Office of Science, which was slated for a huge cut, also survived mostly intact.

Your examples suck. The NIH is effectively a government funded subsidiary of the drug companies. Taxpayers fund the research, the drug companies cherry pick the profitable results. The resulting commercial products are then sold back to government supported health care at obscene mark ups.

For example:

By the design of the program, the federal government is not permitted to negotiate prices of drugs with the drug companies, as federal agencies do in other programs. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which is allowed to negotiate drug prices and establish a formulary, pays 58% less for drugs, on average, than Medicare Part D. For example, Medicare pays $785 for a year's supply of Lipitor (atorvastatin), while the VA pays $520.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Part_D#Criticisms

The DOE should be called the Department of Nuclear Weapons. It's a bureaucratic trick to make the defense budget look smaller.

Yet, according to Robert Alvarez, "Even with additional stimulus money, spending for bombs and cleanup will still exceed those for actual energy-related functions. Spending for the weapons complex is currently comparable to that during the height of the nuclear arms race in the 1950s. The big difference now — half of that money is spent dealing with the Cold War's environmental legacy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_DOE#Budget

I don't know about NSF, but if the general trend is as powerful their as it is everywhere else, serious research is not the most important goal. Everything get judged by how "practical" it is. If it doesn't have an obvious use, it has real trouble getting funded.

So in fact we have given up on basic science. This trend started with the cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider. Now we are shutting down sub-atomic physics labs in the US. We now have no manned space capability. The Webb telescope looks to be dead. These are the tall tent poles of technology leadership. It's not just giving up on one of them, it's giving up on all of them. We don't care about the future.

This year the Chinese will put up the first module of their (non-international) space station. They clearly care about the future.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Approximately 75% of the JWST is already built and 3-4billion already spent. The rest of the program is integration and testing. If we cancel now, the taxpayer gets NOTHING for that money.

The fact that it is over-budget / schedule is not surprising, but IMHO it is incorrect to just place the blame on "mismanagement". Initial estimates were that it would take 1billion/10years. There is a lot of politics behind these numbers that the technical people have no influence over. In fact, the technical people at the time knew that those were both completely absurd given the level of new technology required for the JWST... but it is how every single government project gets funded! Apparently you lowball the numbers to get approval and then revise up as you go. This is not unique to the JWST or even NASA. As a result, the JWST project starved monetarily for its entire life, leading only to longer delays (e.g. corners cut, mandatory work stoppages at certain points due to lack of money, etc. etc.). Delays = even more money at the tail of the project. It's a vicious cycle.

IIRC. all new JWST technologies are now at TRL-6 or higher (demonstrated in relevant environment) and 75% of the hardware built, so we can predict costs a LOT better. There was also a huge congressional cost review completed last year (you can find a copy on the internet). If funded consistently at the revised level / schedule there is no doubt that the JWST will fly. NASA just needs a few 100 million from congress for the next decade to make it happen. That is a popcorn fart, especially in terms of NASA's relatively tiny piece of the national budget. The JWST has been noted as the top priority in the past two decadal surveys. That means at least 20 years worth of relevant experts deem this project to be of top scientific importance. Cancelling the JWST at this stage is absurd, irresponsible, and a huge waste of money IMHO... it also shafts our international Canadian Space Agency and European Space Agency partners that have spent their own funding on pieces of the project!

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Confusador]

I'd like to see more out of Europe, but some nations are actually doing this. China's first space station was just shipped to the launch site, for example, and the Daily Show has an excellent take on India's aspirations. There's something to be said for a space presence as a status symbol (which is why Iran likes to fire off SCUDs and call them indigenous), and I think once the economic torch is passed from them their successors will go to space as well. It even makes for some strange partners, e.g. Ukraine and Brazil.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[allston]

You are nuts, the shuttle gave us the high ground with access to space, so with out the shuttle we now have to rely on the damned Russians for access to space. We are now in 1957 and the Russians have the lead.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[the gnat]

Your examples suck. The NIH is effectively a government funded subsidiary of the drug companies. Taxpayers fund the research, the drug companies cherry pick the profitable results. The resulting commercial products are then sold back to government supported health care at obscene mark ups.

It's pretty telling that the only example you could cherry-pick was Lipitor, which was actually discovered by Pfizer, and the similar drugs (statins) which preceded it were also discovered by pharmaceutical companies. Not that there aren't cases where the taxpayers have gotten screwed by patents on academic research (look up Ariad Pharmaceuticals for a particularly egregious case), but your characterization of the NIH as a subsidary of the drug companies has very little basis in reality.

Re:Pluto's Moons

[Required Snark]

On Lipitor, I was talking about the anti-capitalistic practice of now allowing a bulk buyer to (the government) to get a better deal because of their large purchasing power. This is effectively corporations bribing the government to pay higher prices for the drugs. Comparimg the VA and Medicare Part D is an apples to apples comparison. I had just read about this so I put it in.

So you want a real world example. Here's one that actually killed people. People died because of Vioxx. It was a mass poisoning for profit. How come no one went to jail?

Death in drug trial has been described as a "trade secret." On Vioxx, Topol wrote: "Sadly, it is clear that Merck's commercial interest exceeded its concern about the drug's toxicity" (2). More and more concerns are raised by scholars and major journal editors about the type and the quality of published evidence, often biased towards efficacy of new products. The industry, funding over 80% of trials, sets up a research agenda guided more by marketing than by clinical considerations. Smart statistical and epidemiological tactics help obtain the desired results. Budget for marketing is by far greater than for research. Massive advertising to physicians and to the public gets increasingly sophisticated: ghost writing, professional guidelines, targeting of consumer groups and manipulating media for disease mongering. Pervasive lobbying and political ties limit the independence of regulatory bodies.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18982834

I happen to be really pissed about Vioxx because I took it, and there is a history of heart disease in my family. So Merck put my life at risk by withholding negative results. Drug companies pay the bills, and this is the result. If you think this is "cherry picking", I will personally get some Vioxx for you to take. I sure I can find a bunch of other unsafe drugs that are still on the market that you can take as well. Contact me after you take some potentially fatal drug that was put on the market for corporate profit. Until then why don't you shut the fuck up, asshole.

That's not a moon...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a Mass Relay.

Pluto it not a planet

[VincenzoRomano]

it's just an icy something.

Re:Pluto it not a planet

[JabberWokky]

Actually, it is (along with Eris, Makemake, Ceres, Quaoar and many others, mostly with technical identifiers) properly termed a dwarf planet. Not a planet, a dwarf planet. So the article is actually quite correct.

Re:Pluto it not a planet

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto

Re:Pluto it not a planet

[operagost]

Haumea is my favorite. That thing just looks FREAKY.

Re:Pluto it not a planet

[rubycodez]

looks like an icy grey egg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haumea_(dwarf_planet)

Re:Pluto it not a planet

[Anonymous Coward]

A dwarf planet is a type of planet, so Pluto is a planet.... of the dwarf type.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's no moon....."

Let's lobby for a new standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Four moons means it gets to be called a planet.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[alta]

not sure who modded you down, but I was thinking the same thing.

I spent my entire childhood thinking pluto was a planet. To me it will always be a planet. Even my 9yo was originally taught it was a planet. Where's the love? Seriously, after 76 years, NOW you're going to choose to call it a 'dwarf planet'? I think not.

If you have enough gravity to have something orbiting you, then you get to be a planet.

There's got to be an 'in soviet russia' joke here, I'm just not sure what it is yet.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[AlecC]

In which case you must add Eris, Makemake, Ceres, Quaoar, Vesta and probably others to the list. Vesta even has a man-made satellite orbiting it now. The list of planets will be open and ever extending, and there will be an insoluble argument about where you draw the line between planets and asteroids,

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[macson_g]

If you have enough gravity to have something orbiting you, then you get to be a planet.

So my wife's middle name should be 'Planet' then...

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[alta]

You make it too complicated. Here are the criteria:
1. It is not on fire (sun)
2. It has something not man made orbiting it.
3. It was discovered before 1931
4. It's larger than the smallest listed in #2 (this will pick up mercury which otherwise would have failed my tests.

Or, lets make it even easier.
A planet is any one of MVEMJSUNP...

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Grishnakh]

There's tons of tiny asteroids with their own, even smaller, moons. Are we going to call those planets too? Do we need to have schoolchildren remember the names of hundreds of moon-bearing asteroids, I mean planets?

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[vlm]

The list of planets will be open and ever extending,

Not likely. Eventually its all found. Like arguing we must redefine australia as an island, or else we'll have trillions of "continents" in the ocean. Eventually you find them all. For example, we are not likely to find any new planets within the orbit of Mars.

and there will be an insoluble argument about where you draw the line between planets and asteroids,

Easy Peasy. Does it crush itself under its own mass to an almost spherical shape? Theoretical compression stress at the core due to gravity exceeds stress limit of the rock? Then its a planet. An asteroid is a smaller lump of rock that isn't heavy enough to "round" itself under its own mass.

In an era where every kid gets a participation trophy I'm mystified at the hate toward Pluto, what does it hurt if it gets socially promoted to planet grade?

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[EvanED]

My own feeling as a non-astronomer but who has done a small amount of reading on the Pluto classification is that it is very difficult to come up with a definition of "planet" that does all of the following:
1. Includes Pluto
2. Excludes enough stuff to start giving our system well over a dozen planets
3. Doesn't include some arbitrary measurement that is pretty much specifically designed to do #1 and #2. (What I mean by "arbitrary" is something like "is at least 2000km in radius where if I say "why did you pick 2000?" you don't have an answer other than "well, it was a nice round number". Something like "has enough mass to become a near-sphere" has a physical meaning, and I'm okay with.)

Pluto has enough really weird characteristics (as compared to the other 8, or even as compared to Eris) that it seems to me that a separate category is pretty well-merited.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[vlm]

Uranus's moons joke arriving in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... "I always knew goatse was a scientific curiosity, but thought it was a biological one, not astronomical."

(was that any good?)

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[vlm]

Do we need to have schoolchildren remember the names of hundreds of moon-bearing asteroids, I mean planets?

We're already at 53 planets. Whats one more?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extrasolar_planets

The good news is the names are pretty easy. Whats the planet orbiting between Kepler-11 B and Kepler-11 D? Oh let me guess it's Kepler-11 C.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[arth1]

Let's be consistent:
Only satellites that have been pulled into a spherical shape by their mass and have cleared their orbit around the planet should be called "moons". The rest are obviously "dwarf moons".

As for what we should call a satellite that orbits a satellite, I vote for "Zappa".

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[mrchaotica]

The good news is the names are pretty easy. Whats the planet orbiting between Kepler-11 B and Kepler-11 D? Oh let me guess it's Kepler-11 C.

What happens when they find a new planet between them? Rename everything farther away, leading to questions like "did you mean the object named Kepler-11 C before [date], or the object named that after [date]?"

Interstate exit numbers suffered this same issue every time a new exit was built, by the way, which is why they all got renumbered after the corresponding mile markers a decade or so ago.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[sconeu]

NOW you're going to choose to call it a 'dwarf planet'?

Please. Pluto prefers the term "Gravitationally Challenged Planet"

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[camperdave]

So where does that leave Mars? Phobos and Diemos ain't exactly the roundest rocks in the cosmos.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Would have been better if you'd put a hyperlink reading "new hi-res pictures of Uranus" that directed to anal stretching shock porn.

Next time, suck less.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[arth1]

Four moons means it gets to be called a planet.

Surely that depends on the number of wolves.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Anonymous Coward]

So Mercury and Venus lose their status?

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Grishnakh]

I thought there were still some stupid states that hadn't done that, or are you saying the last holdouts (I'm thinking PA was one) finally changing their exit numbering?

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Four moons means it gets to be called a planet.

How about "keep complaining about a about the fact that Pluto is no longer considered to be a 'planet', and be called a cry baby." Wait... that's already the standard.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[rgviza]

What about Venus, which has no moons, but is similar in mass, bulk composition and size to the earth?

Satellites (or lack thereof) don't make or break "planet" status.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Obfuscant]

Please. Pluto prefers the term "Gravitationally Challenged Planet"

If Pluto wants to make something of it, it knows where to find us. I dare it to come complain about what we call it...

So, if Pluto isn't a planet, then what orbits it can't be moons, right? Moonoids? Moonsters? Moonites? Moonies? Moonenites?

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[rgviza]

The criteria used by everyone else is:
1. a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant
2. massive enough to be rounded by it's own gravity
3. not massive enough to be in a state of thermonuclear fusion (which would make it a star)
4. has cleared the neighboring region of planetesimals

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Anonymous Coward]

PA changed over a few years ago. I grew up in PA, and liked the old method, because you knew how many more *exits* until you got where you were going.

Then I moved to OH, and got used to exits being numbered by mile marker, and then went back to visit my folks (before the renumbering), and was seriously confused for a bit when I went 40 miles between two adjacent exit numbers, because I was just thinking I had 3 miles to go, at that point, not 3 *exits*.

These days, I prefer the mile-marker based exit numbering.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Grishnakh]

Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone would prefer sequential exit numbering. I don't care how many exits exist between my and my destination, I only care about the absolute distance. Numbering them with mile numbers also makes it easy to calculate how far different exits are from one another (suppose you have two destinations to visit in your trip, one at exit 217 and one at exit 219; that's two miles between them, versus exit 138 and exit 159, where it's 21 miles).

But of course, the biggest benefit is simply scalability. It's easy to add new exits with the mile-marker system, you just number it the same as the mile marker it's near. If there's multiple exits within that mile, you append an A or B or C. The old system is a nightmare in places undergoing expansion. In a state as long as Pennsylvania, if you add a new exit at one end of the state in between exits 2 and 3, and there's 100 exits along that road (being a highway that spans the state), that's a lot of work and money to renumber all those exits. Or you can just add an A and B, but that's just an ugly hack and will eventually be a big mess.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[theunixbomber]

I'm always a bit confused by #4. We've got a pretty good sized object (the moon) in our "region". Would that mean Earth has not cleared its region of planetesimals? Lots of other planets have this same issue. Some of which have much larger moons that Earth does?
Serious question here? What am I missing?

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Rent A Ham]

That's 53 planetary "systems"

The list of actual planets is well over 500, with 1200 more candidates discovered by the Kepler satellite to be confirmed.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[SnarfQuest]

In an era where every kid gets a participation trophy I'm mystified at the hate toward Pluto, what does it hurt if it gets socially promoted to planet grade?

For me, it was when he ralfed in my shoes. Slipping your feet into ground up bits of chipmunk is rather disquisting.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[alta]

See my rule # 4, it was specifically designed for Mercury and Venus, who are both Larger than pluto, yet have no natural orbiting rock.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[HarvardAce]

I thought there were still some stupid states that hadn't done that, or are you saying the last holdouts (I'm thinking PA was one) finally changing their exit numbering?

They haven't changed them here in CT or in nearby NY yet. There are, however gaps in the numbers sometimes...not sure if it's because the exits were removed, planned but never made, or someone didn't know how to count. For example, the first exit on I-95 in CT is exit 2.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone ever defined what to clear the region actually means. I figure it's something along the lines of "vaguely worded in order to intentionally exclude Pluto".

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[ari_j]

While the official definition that made Pluto no longer a planet does not include this, I know I have seen various discussions justifying Pluto's dwarf planet status by pointing out that the center of mass for Pluto and its natural satellites is outside the solid part of Pluto itself. So what I have wondered today with this article is this: Does the new moon change that fact and move the center of mass back to Pluto proper?

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Grishnakh]

Unless you see a place where an exit was dug up, I'll bet it's because they planned for one there eventually. But then, this again shows why such a system is dumb: doing this completely undermines the whole reason for sequential numbering. Why have your exits numbered sequentially, if they're not even sequential, because you've skipped numbers? It's like pre-numbering pages in a book that you're writing, leaving space for new pages in the future, so you end up with a book that goes 1, 3, 8, 9, 11, 15, etc. It'd almost be better to not have any page numbers at all, and you just wind up with arbitrary but increasing numbers for your exits, so all you know is that exit 9 comes before exit 22, but you don't know how far apart they are, or how many exits lie between them. Numbering them according to the mile markers gives you one of those pieces of information (arguably the more important one).

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of asteroids, some just a few miles in diameter have moons. Do they get to be called planets? Pluto isn't even massive enough to have it's large moon (Charon) actually orbit around it, instead the two orbit around a barycenter (center off mass) that is outside of either body. Pluto is smaller than our moon, and less massive than newly discovered objects in the scattered disc (see Eris). Unless you basically want to call anything that orbits the sun a planet, it's pretty clear Pluto is in a different class than the other "planets".

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Confusador]

I'm sorry, Ida is not a planet. Having something orbit you is not a function of how much gravity you have, but the difference in mass between you and the moon.

With that said, I've always referred to the dwarf planets as planets. I mean, it's right there in the name! You wouldn't say that "terrestrial planets" aren't planets, after all. That means admitting that there are at least 12 planets in the solar system, though, so either way the textbooks have to change.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Confusador]

That page is for planetary systems with more than one planet each. The page you want is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planets. "As of July 6, 2011, 565 extra-solar planets have been identified."

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Mindcontrolled]

The moon doesn't matter for #4 - as soon as an object is captured in a stable orbit around Earth, it counts as cleared away. #4 should be read as "has cleared its region of planetesimals on potential collision courses". Obviously, a "mostly" is implied. It's vague, as is any descriptive classification, I give you that.

Re:Let's lobby for a new standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! Mods must be asleep, this man needs +Funny

That's no moon..

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a space station

Queue the Pluto vs. Planet diatribes

[sl4shd0rk]

Get over it. We have a better understanding of the Cosmos now without blurry images from a couple pieces of polished glass. Think of it as an advancement in our scientific horizons.

Re:Queue the Pluto vs. Planet diatribes

[geoffrobinson]

Both sides need to calm down.

If I want Pluto to be a planet and I have inconsistent standards for my definition (which has to be somewhat arbitrary anyway), who cares?

Re:Queue the Pluto vs. Planet diatribes

[MozeeToby]

I assume you mean "if I have consistent standards..." since that seems to be the most common argument.

It boils down to how many planets do you want to have in the solar system. Most honest attempts at a scientific definition that includes Pluto also include a handful of other known bodies. That's fine, 8 planets, 9 planets, 14 planets... who cares right? The problem is that modern theory predicts dozens of Pluto-like bodies in the outer solar system, and having 70+ planets listed is seen as extremely awkward, especially when only a handful of them would be scientifically interesting as individual bodies (as opposed to a class of bodies like the predicted objects in the outer Oort cloud would be).

Re:Queue the Pluto vs. Planet diatribes

[geoffrobinson]

No, I meant inconsistent. If somebody wants to have a standard that says "... except for Pluto" I'm OK with that. And if you want to leave Pluto out, that's fine too. It doesn't change a darn thing except a label.

Re:Queue the Pluto vs. Planet diatribes

[Daniel Dvorkin]

It boils down to how many planets do you want to have in the solar system. Most honest attempts at a scientific definition that includes Pluto also include a handful of other known bodies. That's fine, 8 planets, 9 planets, 14 planets... who cares right? The problem is that modern theory predicts dozens of Pluto-like bodies in the outer solar system, and having 70+ planets listed is seen as extremely awkward, especially when only a handful of them would be scientifically interesting as individual bodies (as opposed to a class of bodies like the predicted objects in the outer Oort cloud would be).

Fair enough, but why should we want an arbitrary upper bound on the number of planets? Awkwardness isn't really an issue except for elementary school kids memorizing lists; we have these things called "computers" now that are remarkably good at keeping track of large amounts of information. If there are a bunch of planets floating around out there in the dim outer reaches of the Solar System, fine -- we'll get to them we develop the technology to make it possible. And I don't see why they should be any less scientifically interesting, individually or as a class, than the ones closer in.

If we do want a distinction that creates a memorizable list, just redefine "inner planet" to mean "any planet whose orbit lies within or crosses that of Neptune." That will include Pluto, and if there were anything Neptune-sized or bigger out there, we'd probably know about it already. That way kids can still learn My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas, and astronomers can continue studying bodies orbiting the Sun wherever they occur without wasting their time jumping through rhetorical hoops.

Obligatory Star Wars reference

[shoehornjob]

"That's no moon. It's a space station." I'm amazed no one has posted it yet.

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[Lord Lode]

Um, didn't you check the first post?

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's no moon. It's a space station." I'm amazed no one has posted it yet.

Tiny little space station though...it is barely bigger than a super star destroyer! Maybe it was a proof of concept...

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[steelfood]

We'll find out when Pluto is suddenly replaced by an asteroid field, or when this new moon suddenly disappears.

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[pluther]

It's not a space station either. It's an anchoring point for the Charon Mass Relay.

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong planet's moon... perhaps you're thinking of Saturn's Mimas

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[Piata]

They really need to make a Mass Effect movie.

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

No, they don't! Really. Please don't give them any ideas. It would suck. They always do.

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect_(series)#Film
They are!

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[shoehornjob]

Drat rebel forces stealing my glory. I'll get you yet rebel scum!!!

Re:Obligatory Star Wars reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you amazed? /. is dying.
The number of 4+ posts is staggeringly low. Either nobody bothers to make a good comment or nobody bothers to moderate. Probably both.

That's no moon!

[Anonymous Coward]

...estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles...

That's a space station!

Pluto should still be a planet

[Anonymous Coward]

It's spherical, it has its own moons. One definition of a planet used to be that it had enough gravity to pull itself spherical.

Planethood is an arbitrary definition. If we carry the argument to its logical ridiculous conclusion, we could change the definition such that Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury don't qualify as planets.

Bring back Pluto I say.

Ah, the good old days....

[macraig]

All this talk about mooning has me wistful for my wild youth.

It's too big to be a space station.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too big to be a space station.

Technically...

[Anonymous Coward]

...on Pluto, they're called "fleas".

Bad definition for planet

[JackCroww]

What I've always found peculiar regarding the definition used to demote Pluto is that by that very definition, Neptune should be a non-planet as well, seeing as it hasn't "cleared" it's orbital path either.

Re:Bad definition for planet

[Fred Ferrigno]

If you calculate the ratio of the mass of the object to the mass of all the other objects in the same orbit, there is a vast difference between the planets and the dwarf planets. The eight planets have ratios on the order of 10^4 through 10^6, meaning they are much, much more massive than everything else in their orbit combined. The dwarf planets, including Pluto, all have ratios less than one.

Re:Bad definition for planet

[JackCroww]

But ratios aren't in the definition. From the wikipedia article: "...a planet is a body that orbits the Sun, is massive enough for its own gravity to make it round, and has 'cleared its neighbourhood' of smaller objects around its orbit." These three criteria define a planet and Pluto definitely meets the first two. As for the last, Pluto's perihelion is inside Neptune's orbit, thus (in my humble opinion) still clutters Neptune's orbital neighborhood. I think the definition should have been chosen so as to expand the number of planets in the Solar System, possibly sparking a renewed interest in astronomy/space for the younger generations. Instead, the definition comes off as picayune and close-minded.

Re:Bad definition for planet

[Convector]

Thank you! This is the key point that somehow never gets discussed. And of course I never have mod points when I need them.

Re:Bad definition for planet

[Anonymous Coward]

If you interpret "cleared" that way, we'd also be excluding practically every other planet -- many have Trojan asteroid families, plus no end of orbit-crossing asteroids.

In fact, Trojans (1:1 resonance) and Pluto (3:2 resonance with Neptune), as well as many of the x-crossing asteroids, are under stable gravitational relationships with the planet in question -- it's not a case of a planet not being massive enough to clear an orbit, it's that _nothing_ can completely clear an orbit due to the existence of stable resonances on or crossing any planet's orbit.

If you can see the qualitative difference between a gas giant with a tiny nearby "planet" locked in an orbital resonance and a rock with no obvious effect on any bodies except those directly orbiting it, then you're just nitpicking over the wording of the rule (which is perfectly valid, of course); if you can't, then you have no business discussing planetary astronomy.

Re:Bad definition for planet

[camperdave]

"Cleared the neigbourhood" has a specific meaning. It means that the object has become gravitationally dominant, and there are no other bodies of comparable size other than its own satellites or those otherwise under its gravitational influence. Pluto is in a resonant orbit with Neptune. In other words, Pluto falls into the "those otherwise under its gravitational influence" category. If you want an absolutely clear orbit, the even Jupiter fails. Basically, every planet has co-orbitting asteroids.

Pluto

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Poor Pluto, it orbits around the Sun and has four Moons of its own, and yet they still insist it's not a planet.

Re:Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite sure that Pluto can't be bothered with what a degenerate race of short lived little monkeys on an ugly, steaming, festering, swampy, blue planet far far away calls it though...

Re:Pluto

[Hognoxious]

Don't talk to me about life. Brain the size of a dwarf planet.

Re:Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

Mudhole? My home this is!

Funding

[ISoldat53]

In this time of austerity the funding for the agency that supported de-listing Pluto as a planet probably needs a second look.

Mass relay...

[alendit]

I thought there'd be more Mass Effect jokes. Jeeze, people, it's 2011, get over Star Wars!

Re:Mass relay...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had mod points.

Re:Mass relay...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least move on to Crusade. One of the moons is called Nix; let's call this one Flentak.

Re:Mass relay...

[SnarfQuest]

These are not the jokes you are looking for. Move on.

Re:Mass relay...

[camperdave]

Mass Effect hasn't been released yet, so how can we make jokes about it?

Re:Mass relay...

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Maybe I'm missing some too-subtle humor here, but... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect

Re:That's no ....

[Medevilae]

It's a Mass Effect Relay, obvsly.

Pluto has not cleared it's orbit. Not a planet.

[Anonymous Coward]

It shares its own orbital neighborhood with countless KBOs.

I bet a German answers this

[Hognoxious]

Anything smaller is not a planet, anything bigger is a planet. Problem solved.

I really hope you aren't a coder on anything that matters.

See, you've left the case where something is exactly the same size as Pluto undefined.

Still, what are the odds of it happening? Can anyone name anything that could be on a dwarflist of things potentially the exact same size as Pluto?

Re:I bet a German answers this

[Anonymous Coward]

Pluto?

Re:I bet a German answers this

[Anonymous Coward]

Coworker 1: Oh, fuck... somebody assigned Pluto to itself again.
Coworker 2: Wait, we aren't checking for self equality in the assignment operator?

Rebel Scum!

[DarthVain]

Pluto is really just the debris remains of the Rebel Base Alderann.

Never again will these terrorists plague our fair and just empire!

Why are we still moving towards it?!

[FoolishOwl]

"Why are we still moving towards it?!" screeched Luke, pubescently.

Escape Velocity

[mdf356]

Using Pluto's density of 2.03 g/cm^3, I compute (at 21 mile diameter) the moon is 4.2e16 kg.

With a 4.2e16 kg mass and 1.7e4 m radius, I compute an escape velocity of 18 m/s, or 40 miles per hour.

So I suspect you could jump really hard and not come back down, assuming I didn't misplace a decimal point.

Re:Escape Velocity

[rgviza]

assuming you reach 40mph when you jump ;-p

Re:Escape Velocity

[Anonymous Coward]

Pluto is 2390 km, or 1485 miles in diameter, not 21 miles.

You didn't misplace a decimal point, you just plain have the wrong number.

According to NASA Pluto escape velocity is 1.2 km/s, or 2,684 mph, about 10% that of Earth:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/plutofact.html

Re:Escape Velocity

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be a 4 second hang time.

Re:Escape Velocity

[HarvardAce]

Using Pluto's density of 2.03 g/cm^3, I compute (at 21 mile diameter) the moon is 4.2e16 kg.

With a 4.2e16 kg mass and 1.7e4 m radius, I compute an escape velocity of 18 m/s, or 40 miles per hour.

So I suspect you could jump really hard and not come back down, assuming I didn't misplace a decimal point.

I didn't double check your math, and you're obviously intentionally exaggerating the speed of a jump, but someone who could jump at 18m/s would have a vertical leap of about 16m or 50 feet on Earth.

Re:Escape Velocity

[Anonymous Coward]

If you jumped upwards at 18 m/s on Earth, you'd reach a height of 16 metres. So that's how high you'd need to be able to jump on Earth to be capable of jumping completely off this moon.

Re:Escape Velocity

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting about the effective capture velocity the neighboring bodies in the system exert. I suspect there are moments when you could literally jump from body to body.

Re:Escape Velocity

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think any human athlete can jump at a velocity of 18 m/s !

whoopie

[Anonymous Coward]

Great news. This will really help feed the world's starving.

Re:whoopie

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than your post will. Someone actually got paid for it.

extra-solar astronomers ?

[rossdee]

"Right now, the IAU definition of planet is deliberately limited to our own solar system, just so it doesn't apply to situations extra-solar astronomers have actually already found,"

AFAIK "extra-solar astronomers" are not members of the IAU and are probably not aware that the IAU even exists. Maybe when the news of Pluto's demotion reaches them (which will take a while since there don't seem to be any habitable planets within a few LY of the sun) they could send the IAU a message about it. Of course all aliens understand and speak english in an american accent just like on star trek ...

New moon... isn't that the name of a teen movie?

[youn]

vampire movie where the vampires have feelings and stuff... have they released the sequel?

New Horizons

[Pro923]

Planet or not, I'm really looking forward to the arrival of New Horizons in a few years from now (2015?)

What we need is a MORE confusing system of naming!

[Ngarrang]

Let's make it even more confusing.

We shall now call an object in solar orbit, a Solar Orbiting Object. Size will be a secondary classification, with descriptive terms like Large (LaSOO), Medium (MeSOO) and Small (SmaSOO). If it is the object has cleared its orbit, it is the primary object of that orbit, so we have Primary (Pri) and Shared (Sha). Under this system, Pluto is a ShaSmaSOO and Jupiter is a PriLaSOO.

For the objects that orbit a SOO, it is a SOOOO, a Solar Orbiting Object Orbiting Object. Primary and Shared designations morph a bit to mean that the object is the only "moon" (Primary) or one of many (Shared). The size classification for a "moon" would be relative to a "moon" scale. Earth has a PriLaSOOOO. Mars, with its two small SOOOO, would be ShaSmaSOOOO's.

There. Are we clear as mud now?

moons!

[orn]

Earth needs more moons!

We should get some.

Re:moons!

[Confusador]

I think we're already doing pretty well on that count, thank you very much.

Re:moons!

[Khashishi]

We need to conquer Mars and make it our bitch, along with Deimos and Phobos.

Re:moons!

[Anonymous Coward]

We launch new moons for Earth all the time.

Re:That's no ....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's no space station! It's to small!

Ha! You thought I was going to say something else, didn't ya?

More hoping you'd say something else really

Question:

[fbartho]

How many moons does it take before something becomes a planet?

[Your mom]

Re:Question:

[SatanicPuppy]

Zero?

That's no moon

[istartedi]

That's no moon. It's a pointless semantic debate. Pull out! PULL OUT! Too late! It's pulling us in. We'll be sucked into the maw of the almighty Sarlac or something, where we'll debate arbitrary criteria and the numerical values for cutoff points for 1000 years as we're slowly digested.

Re:That's no moon

[Baloroth]

Mwahahaha!! My evil plan is... oh wait, I was just trying to make a joke. Ah well, shoulda figured /. would take it as an excuse to start a(nother) completely pointless debate.

Re:What we need is a MORE confusing system of nami

[Mindcontrolled]

Nope, we aren't. We still are missing a classification for really small solar orbiting objects - i wouldn't put Pluto and a random 100 m diameter asteroid belt object into the same ShaSmaSOO category - we need at least a category for really small SOOs - ReSmaSoo? So your bog standard asteroid with no ambition of being a dwarf planet would be a ShaReSmaSOO. Which leads to the problem of arbitrary size cutoffs. Also, comets are SOOs, but with particular orbits - we need categories for those, also a differentiation between ecliptic and out-of-ecliptic SOOs. There's still room for more obfuscation^Wsystematization.

famous last words

[Anonymous Coward]

That's NOT a moon!