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One Astronomer's Quest To Reinstate Pluto As a Planet
sarahnaomi writes: Most of us grew up believing that tiny, distant Pluto was the outermost planet in our solar system. Then, one day, the scientific powers that be decreed that it wasn't. But it seems the matter is far from settled. David Weintraub—who describes Pluto's exile as a stunt organized by a "very small clique of Pluto-haters"—would have the dwarf world rejoin the ranks of our Solar System's fully-fledged planets today. But solid evidence that Pluto deserves the title may come in July, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft slingshots around the icy rock and sends us back a detailed picture of its composition. Pluto's planethood was revoked by majority vote on the final day of the 2006 IAU conference. Over 2,500 astronomers attended the meeting throughout the week, but only 394 votes ultimately decided Pluto's fate: 237 in favor of demoting the planet and 157 against.
Does this guy want to consider a bunch of other Trans-Neptunian objects as planets too? Because if he doesn't, he's probably either letting nostalgia or some other emotional attachment cloud his judgment. I don't mind having a half-dozen more "planets", but I'm sure my kids might get annoyed at having to remember all of their names.
Neither does Jupiter. There are about 100,000 trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit, so it fails the third criteria; "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit."
In fact... Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune all fail to meet that criteria.
The definition of "planet" is a fucked up mess that a small group of astronomers threw together with the intent of classifying Pluto as not-a-planet without really thinking it through.
Is the Sun a planet?
At one time people grew up 'choosing to label' Venus as a star. Then we grew up some more and realized we may have been mistaken or at least felt we should have a more granular scale with more accurate definitions.
Holy balls, how many times have we had this conversation? Will you people ever give it a rest?
First of all, the IAU's definition is for technical and scientific discussions/communications. If you want to call Pluto a planet on your blog or whatever, go fucking wild. The IAU neither has the power (nor the desire!) to dictate language for all human beings for all time.
Now about technical language. The purpose of technical language is to provide a common agreed-upon vocabulary that is consistent, precise, and efficient. If you named everything a planet, you'd lose precision. People would inevitable invent a new set of categories for the eight 'big' planets and the other 'smaller' planets. Some people's new terms would conflict with other people's terms. It would be a mess.
On the other hand, if you named the 'big' planets anything other than 'planet', it would lose efficiency. They are the planets that are talked about most often, so it makes sense to give them a short, concise name.
Yes, the IAU's definition of planet WAS DESIGNED explicitly so that the eight 'main' planets would be the ONLY ones in our solar system called planets. There are very good reasons for this and the IAU did its job quite well in this regard.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
In fact... Most astronomers counter this opinion by saying that, far from not having cleared their orbits, the major planets completely control the orbits of the other bodies within their orbital zone.
It's a bit weird that the leading paragraph exists in both articles, while the counterpoint doesn't, but there you go.
The efforts of a very small clique of Pluto-haters within the International Astronomical Union (IAU) plutoed Pluto in 2006
Yeah, that's right. They were "Pluto-haters". Not just people who happened to hold a different opinion he doesn't agree with.
That's not to say that you have to agree with their position, nor the way they went about having Pluto stripped of its status. But to ascribe their actions to the fact they personally "hated" Pluto- rather than simply believing that it couldn't justify its status as a planet- is somewhat childish.
I don't know if he meant "haters" in present-day sense (i.e. with its "haters gonna hate" connotations et al), but I've always had contempt for that usage. It's a cheap and easy way to counter anyone you don't agree with, to depersonalise and dismiss them in as people who hate purely because they're "haters". To make it a personal beef and a partisan issue rather than one of simple disagreement on a particular matter- one which would require legitimately addressing what they're actually saying instead of trying to puff yourself up in the cod-macho bullshit "them versus us/me" manner of an adolescent who's either immature enough to see things in that light, or has nothing to say beyond the convenient "haters gonna hate".
Seriously, step away from the gangsta rap and stop acting like a f*****g fourteen-year-old.
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Holy balls, how many times have we had this conversation? Will you people ever give it a rest?
And queue yourself not giving it a rest.
First of all, the IAU's definition is for technical and scientific discussions/communications.
Scientific labels tend to be intentionally recognizably distinct from popular ones as lack of distinction is an invitation for ambiguity and confusion.
People would inevitable invent a new set of categories for the eight 'big' planets and the other 'smaller' planets. Some people's new terms would conflict with other people's terms. It would be a mess.
Yes this is what you get for "voting" rather than recognizing more work is needed to build consensus to get everyone save outliers onboard. 1/3 disagreeing isn't a consensus.
On the other hand, if you named the 'big' planets anything other than 'planet', it would lose efficiency. They are the planets that are talked about most often, so it makes sense to give them a short, concise name.
This sounds a bit lame as justifications go... lose efficiency? Since when are scientists in the business of conserving syllables? In astronomy especially they seem to be preoccupied with naming things after _all_ the principals who discovered them.
Here's an analogy I gave my students last week...
Imagine you're an alien and you land on Earth in front of a pet store. You go inside and you start meeting dogs. Some are big with a loud deep "WOOF", some are small with a quieter higher "ruff" and there's one little one that goes "meow". Some of them have big floppy ears, some of them have little floppy ears, and that little one has sharp pointed ears with tufts on the end. You think "That little meowing dog with the pointed tufted ears is an unusual dog!"
Then you go onto the rest of the pet store and find a whole bunch more small meowing things with pointed tufted ears, and you say "Oh... I see. That wasn't a funny dog, that was just the first cat I met!"
Pluto was the first Trans-Neptunian Object we met, and so we originally called it by our existing language ("planet"). But once we had a much better lay of the land, it became clear that it was just the first example of a quite different type of object.
[TMB]