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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 Pluto's planethood was revoked by majority vote on the final day of the 2006 IAU conference.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.
If Pluto self-identifies as a planet then we should respect Pluto's choice.
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.
Exactly. There are many categories of planets, including but not limited to:
* Terrestrial planets
* Gas giants
* Ice giants
* Hot jupiters
* Superearths
And so forth. Why does the concept of another category, dwarfs, enrage people?
Really, the only categorization issue that I'm adamant about is that Pluto-Charon is called a binary. The Pluto-Charon barycentre is not inside Pluto, therefore Charon is not rotating around Pluto, the two are corotating around a common point of space between them. That's a binary.
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
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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Really, the only categorization issue that I'm adamant about is that Pluto-Charon is called a binary. The Pluto-Charon barycentre is not inside Pluto, therefore Charon is not rotating around Pluto, the two are corotating around a common point of space between them. That's a binary.
The barycenter of the Sun-Jupiter system lies at 1.068 solar radii, outside the Sun. Do you think they should be called a binary?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
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]