NASA Scientists Propose New Definition of Planets, and Pluto Could Soon Be Back (sciencealert.com)

Rei writes: After several years of publicly complaining about the "bullshit" decision at the IAU redefining what comprises a planet, New Horizons program head Alan Stern and fellow planetary geologists have put forth a new definition which they seek to make official, basing planethood on hydrostatic equilibrium. Under this definition, in addition to Ceres, Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects, large moons like Titan and Europa, as well as our own moon, would also become planets; "planet" would be a physical term, while "moon" would be an orbital term, and hence one can have a planetary moon, as well as planets that orbit other stars or no star at all (both prohibited under the current definition). The paper points out that planetary geologists already refer to such bodies as planets, citing examples such as a paper about Titan: "A planet-wide detached haze layer occurs between 300-350 km above the surface; the visible limb of the planet, where the vertical haze optical depth is 0.1, is about 220 km above the surface."

Comments

That's no moon

[Anonymous Coward]

oh wait, it is just a moon.

Re:That's no moon

[quenda]

Moons are next on the hit list.
At last count Jupiter has 67 so-called moons: The four Galilean moons, plus 63 rocks.
We really need to clamp down on what counts as a moon, or every bit of space-trash will demand to be listed.

Re:That's no moon

[mysticgoat]

Any "space-trash" that demands to be listed as something else needs to be immediately identified as a "sentient being", and on behalf of all of us Earthlings the UN needs to publicly apologize to him/her/it. That is simple playground rules: you don't want to insult anybody that much bigger than you are.

As to everything else, I think the planetary geologists have it right. If it is big enough to be rounded of its own volition, it is a planet. And planets that go around another planet more quickly than they go around their star are also moons.

Corollary: that makes Earth the larger part of a binary planetary system. Which puts proper emphasis on the way the Moon creates tides that keeps the hydrosphere stirred up, which has had a major impact on how life has evolved here. Exoplanetary explorers should look for other binary planets in the Goldilocks zone as these are much more likely to have life that is similar to Earth life.

(Is a "bazinga!" called for here? Was this just another Sheldon impersonation, or did I accidentally say something insightful?)

Re:That's no moon

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree with a new definition that Jupiter only has four moons. If you take a look at images of all of them, they are the only four that deserve that distinction. The rest are literally just tiny asteroids.

Re:That's no moon

[quenda]

that makes Earth the larger part of a binary planetary system.

There is a rule to avoid that. If the common centre of mass is inside one body, Earth in this case, it is considered a planet & moon, not a binary.

Re:That's no moon

[mysticgoat]

That's one of those foolish rules put forth by the idiocy contingent of the IAU.

The barycenter of the Earth - Moon binary is outside of the Earth's hard inner core, in the region of the liquid outer core. This is the center or neutral point of the tidal forces acting on the Earth. No one has yet looked at the effects of these tides on the outer core's liquidity, or its electromagnetic properties, mostly because astronomers look upward and geologists look downward and there is a very serious failure for either to look at what the other group is finding.

How significant is the displacement of the Earth's core from the barycenter? It is significant enough to cause the Earth's orbit about the Sun to deviate 6,000 miles twelve times a year from what it would be if the Earth was a solitary body, instead of part of a binary system. Depending on your frame of reference, that deviation is twice to four times as much as the radius of the Moon.

In practical terms up until now this has had no direct impact on human activity. That now changes: when we start using laser beams to communicate and control exploration vehicles beyond Earth orbits, we will have to take the binary nature of the Earth - Moon pair into account or the lasers will miss their targets by thousands of miles.

Re:That's no moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. What a reasonable definition. I still call Pluto a planet because of exactly what you suggest.

Re:That's no moon

[dataspel]

So interesting, thanks!

Re:That's no moon

[x_t0ken_407]

Very insightful stuff. Out curiosity, what are your thoughts on formally recognizing the Sol/Jupiter binary system -- it's barycenter being outside of the Sun entirely? All of this terminology just goes so many levels deep...fun stuff haha.

Re:That's no moon

[mysticgoat]

My thinking has been too Earth-bound to consider the Sol - Jupiter relationship. But I see others are thinking about it; there are several lay articles and apparently some more serious articles on the web. But I haven't done any critical reading on the subject.

There does seem to be a correlation between Jupiter's orbital period and the sunspot cycle as both are roughly 11 years. But if there is an underlying mechanism (not conveniently dismissible as "coincidence"), it seems more likely that the mechanisms are electromagnetic rather than gravitational. Which would suggest a 3 body problem, with Saturn's impact on the electrodynamics modifying any solar - jovian model.

This is not some resurrection of an "electric universe" theory. Jupiter, Saturn, and even Earth all create distortions in the solar wind, and it should hardly be surprising if these large scale distortions did not feedback in some way to the coronal events. Whether this feedback is a significant moderator of coronal activity should be the question; that there is some feedback can be stipulated.

Re:That's no moon

[RockDoctor]

But I haven't done any critical reading on the subject.

There does seem to be a correlation between Jupiter's orbital period and the sunspot cycle as both are roughly 11 years. But if there is an underlying mechanism

I'd advise you to do your critical reading. Look at the numbers and you'll find that the range of solar sunspot cycles is from 8.8 years to 14 years ; the corresponding orbital period for Jupiter is 11.875 years - 4331 days - with a variation of a lot less than a day. Remember that Ole Roemer was using apparent errors in the position of Jupiter's moons to prove that the speed of light is finite in the 1720s, for which they needed to know the orbital period of Jupiter to better than 10 minutes (~0.7% of a day).

We all know the line about "correlation is not causlity" ; but you don't even have a correlation.

Re:That's no moon

[mysticgoat]

As I know I mentioned before, I doubt that there is a gravitationally mediated interaction between Jupiter and the solar cycle, and if there is a electromagnetic interaction, then that would involve Saturn as well as Jupiter, and probably Earth. Both Saturn and Jupiter have a strong impact on the solar wind. During the years when they are in close heliocentric conjunction, Jupiter's magnetotail and the bow wave of Saturn's magnetosphere are trying to occupy the same space. There has got to be some interesting things happening there. I leave it to the Reader to look up the big words.

The Jupiter - Saturn heliocentric conjunction occurs on the average every 20 years, plus or minus 1 year. The last 18 solar cycles occurred on an average every 11.0 years with standard deviation of 1.03 years. But NOTE THIS: what we call the 11 year solar cycle is only half of the full cycle as it takes another half to reverse the Sun's magnetic poles yet again and return Sol to the same state. Running the numbers on the last 8 completed full cycles, the average time is 22 years with a standard deviation of 1.3 years.

This is using a simple model that excludes a third planet that affects the heliosphere, which is Earth. While Earth's magnetosphere is much smaller than Jupiter's or Saturn's, it is active in a nearer-to-the-Sun region where the solar wind is more dense, and it sweeps through the solar wind at a much higher velocity than the more distant planets. I do not pretend to be competent at building a model that would incorporate Earth's possible effects. It is however a reasonable supposition that Earth could bring about the difference between the 22 year full solar cycle and the 20 year Jup - Sat cycle, as well as the occasional breaks in rhythm of the solar cycles, such as the Maunder and Dalton Minimums.

This stuff is not my area of expertise. However I know how to do basic research which is now quite easy with the internet, and I know how to use simple math tools. I also know my limits. I am good for casting doubt on the verbiage of persons who think they know more than is actually within our current universe of knowledge. I am good for suggesting avenues of exploration, especially those that lie between defined areas of study. I refrain from doing anything more than suggesting the possibility of a different, and maybe better, mind map of What's Really Out There.

Re:That's no moon

[RockDoctor]

Well, if you want to get handwavey instead of siency, that's your choice. It doesn't strengthen your arguments in the slightest.

Without getting into essential complexities (e.g., the orbits are not circular, but elliptical), there's one very simple check that you don't seem to have considered. The 1.3 difference in orbital inclination between Earth and Jupiter means that the projection of the Earth's magnetotail out to Jupiter's orbit will be up to 23 million km (nearly 1/4 AU) above or below the line of Jupiter's motion. Without doing the maths (but eventually the maths must be done), I'm not at all convinced that the magnetotail of Earth encounters the magnetic bow-shock of Jupiter with any degree of frequency. I'm also sceptical that if such an interaction occurs (more than a few times a millennium) then the forces involved are going to be any appreciable fraction of the varying forces projected from the Solar wind onto the magnetic field of Jupiter.

You do raise a sort-of plausible scenario. but if you were saying this across the desk from your MSc or PhD supervisor, they'd tell you to go away and do the maths to estimate the frequency of such an interaction in the real Solar system, and the forces generated compared to stochastic variations. It's called doing a feasibility study.

The Ulysses probe probably has some of the best data for you to consider, in respect of actual measurements of magnetic interactions in the middle part of the Solar system.

Re:That's no moon

[RockDoctor]

When did bloody Slashdot's atrocious entity-handling stop being able to present the degree symbol, "& deg ;" (without, of curse, the spaces)?

Re:That's no moon

[mysticgoat]

You don't bother to look up anything you've never been taught, I guess.

The magnetospheres of the planets that have them are several times the radius of the physical planet. But even greater than that, the field effects of standing waves and turbulence in the solar wind extend well beyond the magnetospheres that shape them. Remember (or look it up since it seems like you've never been taught about it) that the solar wind is composed of mono-atomic ions and free electrons moving at very high speeds. What lies within the disk of the heliopause is not some simple outgassing of a steady breeze in all directions, like water welling up from a feeder pipe at the bottom of a circular pond. It is a highly complex dynamo continuously stirred up by Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth.

The same electromagnetic forces that bend and fray comet tails (and cause comets to outgas for that matter) also influence the Sun's corona and possibly deeper structures. The question is not whether there is an influence, but how great is that influence. The correlation between the full solar cycle and the heliocentric conjunctions of Jupiter with Saturn suggest that in some way that influence is rather large.

This is my last post on the subject. Trying to talk sense to someone who does not read up on the topic he claims expertise in is not worthwhile, and I have said everything that is worth saying to the silent audience of this conversation.

Re:That's no moon

[RockDoctor]

"Mystic" and "goat" in the same user name should probably have been a good warning.

Anyway, for the silent audience, I did a couple of other calculations last night. (Something you seem remarkably resistant too. Whether that's the "mystic" part of your chosen persona, or the "goat", I neither know nor care.) Given the respective diameters of the Sun and the Earth, and their spacing, it is a simple matter to calculate that the optical tail, the umbral shadow, of the Earth is around a million km long. How long the detectable terrestrial magneto-tail is, I don't know (it is a much more complex system). Say it's 10 times the length of the "optical tail" - 10 million km. That would mean that it had decayed into the noise background some 990 million km before it reached to the bow shock of Jupiter's magnetosphere. There's a lot of room in that estimate for the Earth's magneto-tail to be a lot longer and still have no significant influence on Jupiter on those (fairly rare) occasions when the two planets do come into a magnetic alignment.

This argument also explains why - as if it were needed - there has never been a recorded eclipse of the Sun by Earth, as seen from Jupiter. We've never seen Jupiter dimming as the Earth's shadow passes across it. Not just because such alignments are going to be very rare, but also because the Earth would occlude about 0.13% of the area of the Sun as seen from Jupiter.

Mr Goat also mystically proclaims a true fact - that a magnetic field for a planet extends to several times the radius of the planet. That is great, fine and marvellous ; and given the diameter of Jupiter at 143000km, that could easily mean a magnetic field a couple of million kilometres across. I'm totally relaxed with this fact, as I showed that the maximum separation of the projection of the Earth's orbit onto Jupiter's orbit is around 23 million km. So ... since the orbits are not far from circular, the projection of the Earth's magneto-tail will fall outside the magnetic field of Jupiter for arounf 90% of Jupiter's orbit (if the Earth's magneto-tail is detectable at that range, which I'm deeply sceptical of for reasons set out above).

Nope, I feel no qualms at all about rejecting Mr Goat's hypothesis flat out. Unless he comes up with some quite strong mathematical arguments in support of his hypthesis, I don't consider it worth consideration. Sorry, Goat-mysticiser, but that's how science works. Because it's not mysticism.

Pluto's back?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far a I am concerned, it never went away.

Re:Pluto's back?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, right there with you.

they say it's only a planet based on size, well what happens when the small size has a lot of mass? Or they say it must have a spherical shape, but what happens when they have a jupiter size but odd shaped object with atmosphere orbiting a star? Then they say it's only a planet if it has a stable orbit, or if the center of gravity is inside the object, but I can think of combinations the would debunk all of them.

Pluto is a sphere, it has a moon and although small, it is a planet.

Re:Pluto's back?

[dave420]

Take it up with NASA and get a medal. Of course, they might tell you that you don't know what you're on about, but then you might just accept that as evidence of just how right you are.

Re:Pluto's back?

[frovingslosh]

No, that's wrong. Nothing can be considered a planet if it is smaller than Neil DeGrasee Glactus' ego. Dwarf planets are no more real planets than dwarf people are real people.

Re:Pluto's back?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't know what a planet is, but I'll know it when I see it" should not be how we define "planet".

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Things are finally going back to normal.

Re:Wow

[ShanghaiBill]

Things are finally going back to normal.

Nope. I am fine with Pluto going back to being a planet, but MOONS ARE NOT PLANETS. The concept of a "planet" has been around for millennia, and the moon (and later Jupiter's Galilean moons) have never been considered planets. We need to stop with the arbitrary redefinition of common words. If astronomers want a term to refer to hydrostatically stable bodies, they should make up a new word rather than trying to steal one that is already in use.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the ancient Gteeks, who originally defined the term "planet" actually counted the sun and moon among them as did other ancient civilizations.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the ancient Gteeks, who originally defined the term "planet" actually counted the sun and moon among them as did other ancient civilizations.

The ancient Greeks classified the objects in the sky in several categories.
The objects that moved across the night sky were of 2 types : wandering stars (as opposed to fixed stars) that's where the name planet comes from. And then we had the comets.
Of course the Greeks had no knowledge about the physical nature of these wandering stars.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I'd like the use of "world" to refer to a hydrostatically-stable body, and "planet" to refer to a world orbiting a star. ("Star", of course, means that it achieves nuclear fusion.)

That would give us 15-or-so planets, including Ceres, Pluto, and a growing bunch of objects in the Kuiper belt. We can then divide "planets" into "major planets" (the big eight), and "minor planets" (everything else) by fiat, when we feel the need to make such a distinction.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

"The concept of a "planet" has been around for millennia"

That concept was "a bright spot in the sky moving differently from the stars". The first moons discovered 500 years ago were in fact planets by the then current definition, which later changed. You see, they changed a useless definition when presented with new evidence, so it can be done again.

"If astronomers want a term to refer to hydrostatically stable bodies, they should make up a new word rather than trying to steal one that is already in use."

Everybody already refers to hydrostatically stable bodies as "planets". You see it in science fiction. You see it in publushed research (have you read the summary?). You see it in the news (what about the seven "earths" discovered on Trappist-1?). Pretty much the only people who refuse it are in geeky forums and message boards trying to defend a wrongheaded definition that rules dwarf planets as NOT planets, because they mistake every criticism of it as anti-intellectualism or american exceptionalism.

Re:Wow

[MightyYar]

I sympathize with the sentiment, but first, words change. Even technical terms. Second, fixing scientific classification terms based on levels of knowledge far, far out of date is not practical. I mean, planet comes from Greek - and they quite literally had no idea what they were.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Like people try to steal the word male or female based on the sex the "feel" like.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to base your definitions on millenia-old cosmologies then a planet should be required to orbit Earth, so the Moon is the only one...

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

If astronomers want a term to refer to hydrostatically stable bodies, they should make up a new word rather than trying to steal one that is already in use.

Alternative planet?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes the most sense.
Which is basically what we had before they started screwing it all up.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they're planets - satellite planets. It seems silly to define something based on where it is rather than what it is. Titan has more in common with Earth and Venus than it does Thebe or Deimos. Just like Earth has more in common with Pluto and Charon than it does Jupiter or Neptune.

Re:Wow

[amicusNYCL]

The concept of a "planet" has been around for millennia, and the moon (and later Jupiter's Galilean moons) have never been considered planets.

Right, and if there's one thing I know, it's that the things that people thought millennia ago should never ever be challenged, ever. Tradition is sacrosanct and if they thought it was true 2,000 years ago, then damnit it's still true today. This is why everyone still prays to Zeus up there on Mt. Olympus, and why we always will. It's also why I know that the heliocentric model is bullshit, because for millennia we knew that the sun goes around the Earth. It's just common sense.

I also know that the so-called "theory" about micro-organisms is bullshit, they don't exist. If they did, we would have known about them millennia ago. Everyone knows that if you make a hole in a brick, put some sweet basil in it, cover that brick with another brick, and leave the bricks out in the sun, then that basil is going to transform into scorpions. Everyone knows that. It's how the world works.

Oh, what's that, you don't want scorpions, you want mice? Fine, have it your way. Take a dirty shirt and stuff it into a vessel containing a little corn. The ferment proceeding from the dirty shirt will mix with the odor from the corn, and in about three weeks it will transmute the grain to full-grown mice of both sexes. Boom, now you can feed your snake.

I don't want to know how you got that snake though, those things are just unnatural.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. By the way, if they wanted a term to refer to a union between two homosexuals, they should have made up a new word for that too rather than trying to steal one that has been in use for centuries.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to point it out, but it is people who keep telling me that white thing in the sky is Moon, my first impression was that: as is above, is below, so I kind of think of it as planet even if Moon jumps at the outset over the almost always supressed word. Planet. This seems to have been the norm of thought throughout, besides, till... exactly who was first? Even Munchhausen made a very good effort at imagining how life in the other planet was. The rest is just blinking lights and the occasional bright line. Oh, and Sun. Moon seems like a word too many. I think some people call this Phenomenology, but who knows?

Re: Richard Feynman was an athiest

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha.... Atheists are real sweetheart. Unlike any and every notion of a god. If you wipeout all humans and let something else evolve they'll never not once get back to your same religion. Because religion isn't science, it's nonsense.

Maybe

[sexconker]

Maybe stop changing arbitrary definitions. Pluto was always a planet. Fuck you, NASA and shitty celebrity "scientists" like Neil Tyson.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe stop changing arbitrary definitions.

Definitions like this will be arbitrary, and it just comes down to what makes it easier to write journal articles (where IAU has any authority). If Pluto was included in planets, there are quite a few orbital dynamics and evolution papers that would need to use the phrase, "The planets excluding Pluto....". There are plenty of papers on geology and atmospheric dynamics that wouldn't care about the orbit and would benefit from a definition like proposed here. There are others that would need to take a definition like proposed here, and modify it to say "All planets that aren't moons" or such.

Changing the definition of planet like this has zero effect on the science, it only changes the number of words needed to describe different groups.

It is like how you could define prime numbers such that one is a prime number. Math wouldn't be changed, just many, many theorems would require a few extra words due to saying "where p is any prime except one" instead of "where p is any prime."

Fuck you, NASA and shitty celebrity "scientists" like Neil Tyson.

You're putting too much importance on this. Even if you said "fuck you" to every rain drop that hits your car's windshield, saying fuck you to NASA or the IAU is putting too much importance on this. All of this drama seems to show a severe lack of understanding of the science and how disjoint the naming is from the actual science and more a matter of convenience.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe stop changing arbitrary definitions. Pluto was always a planet. Fuck you, NASA and shitty celebrity "scientists" like Neil Tyson.

Science is not a dogma you piece of shit. And definitions in science are to a certain extent arbitrary. Wether Pluto is "a planet" or not is not an existential question (like you seem to think) but rather a question about classification. Knowledge about planets has changed drammatically over the course of the last 2 centuries. Classification is the first step in scientific understanding. We classified Pluto as a planet for 70 years because we had no better classification in place, and because we didn't know about the thousands of Pluto-like objects orbiting in the fringes of our solar system. Now that we know about these so-called Kuiper objects, Pluto has physical and orbital characteristics much closer to those of the kuiper belt objects than it does to the 8 planets of our solar system.

Re: Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, never understood why this Tyson guy gets so much attention. What did he ever do, except beat up some people in a ring and biting off someone's ear, and beating his wife and stuff?

Re:Maybe

[sexconker]

Who said anything about dogma, you ass clown? Words have definitions and wantonly changing them means every written use of the word now needs to be dtae checked to determine which version of the definition was intended. It's the same with the "kibibyte" horseshit. STOP CHANGING THINGS FOR NO REASON.

The definition of "planet" was, is, and always will be arbitrary. They've been obsessed with "correcting" an arbitrary definition for about a decade now, and they show no fucking signs of stopping. Have we have always been at war with Eurasia?

Re:Maybe

[Rei]

Clearly given that people like Stern have regularly given interviews decrying the decision, and going so far as to call it "bullshit" (can you say that at NASA?), it's clearly not the storm in a teacup that you want to present it as.

What the proponents did was take a term widely used by planetary geologists and have it mean something completely different - akin to dentists suddenly declaring to doctors that the heart is no longer an organ and to stop referring to it as one. And contrary to your presentation of why they did it ("to make it easier to write journal articles") without fail every last supporter I've seen interviewed about their vote has given some variant of the following reason for why they voted the way they did: "I don't want my daughter having to memorize the names of hundreds of planets." Which is so blatantly unscientific it's embarrassing that such a thing would influence their decision at all on a scientific matter.

The IAU vote was narrow, at a conference only attended at all by a fraction of its membership, on the last day when a lot of the people opposed to the definition they passed had already left because it had looked up to that point like there was either not going to be a vote at all , or one on a hydrostatic equilibrium definition - all options that they were fine with. Only 10% of the people who attended were still around.

I have a lot of issues with the last vote, and that's just the start. Here's my full list:

1. Nomenclature: An "adjective-noun" should always be a subset of "noun". A "dwarf planet" should be no less seen as a type of planet than a "dwarf star" is seen as a type of star by the IAU.

2. Erroneous foundation: Current research agrees that most planets did not clear their own neighborhoods, and even that their neighborhoods may not always have been where they are. Jupiter, and Saturn to a lesser extent, have cleared most neighborhoods. Mars has 1/300th the Stern-Levison parameter as Neptune, and Neptune has multiple bodies a couple percent of Mars's mass (possibly even larger, we've only detected an estimated 1% of large KBOs) in its "neighborhood". Mars's neighborhood would in no way would be clear if Jupiter did not exist - even Earth's might not be. Should we demote the terrestrial planets as well?

Note that the Stern-Levison parameter does not go against this, as it's built around the ability of a planet to scatter a mass distribution similar to our current asteroid belt, not large protoplanets.

3. Comparative inconsistency: Earth is far more like Ceres and Pluto than it is like Jupiter, yet these very dissimilar groups - gas giants and terrestrial planets - are lumped together as "planets" while dwarfs are excluded.

4. Poor choice of dividing line: While defining objects inherently requires drawing lines between groups, the chosen line has been poorly selected. Achieving a rough hydrostatic equilibrium is a very meaningful dividing line - it means differentiation, mineralization processes, alteration of primordial materials, and so forth. It's also often associated with internal heat and, increasingly as we're realizing, a common association with subsurface fluids. In short, a body in a category of "not having achieved hydrostatic equilibrium" describes a body which one would study to learn about the origins of our solar system, while a body in a category of "having achieved hydrostatic equilibrium" describes a body one would study, for example, to learn more about tectonics, geochemistry, (potentially) biology, etc. By contrast, a dividing line of "clearing its neighborhood" - which doesn't even meet standard #2 - says little about the body itself.

5. Mutability: Under the IA definition, what an object is declared as can be altered without any of the properties of the object changing simply by its "neighborhood" changing in any of countless ways.

6. Situational inconsistency: (Related) An exact copy of Earth (what the vast majority of people would consider the prototype for what a planet s

Re:Maybe

[mysticgoat]

Good points. But they are basically off topic.

It doesn't matter one whit what terms scientists use in their cloistered jargons. That's why they have jargons.

It does matter when a body of scientists attempts to mold the common tongue to their narrow purposes. Which is what happened with the IAU: they overstepped their area of authority, which is astronomy, to dabble in an area where none of them have any training or standing, which is the study of natural languages, or linguistics. It makes them look like a troop of highly educated baboons, and is one more proof that some people with advanced degrees have been educated beyond the level of their intelligence.

Scientific communities do have an appropriate role in shaping the common tongue, but that is done through education and continued discussion. Never by fiat.

Re:Maybe

[mysticgoat]

Wow.

TL;DR but I got through enough of it to realize that most, and maybe all, the points are cogent. Above post should be stuffed down the throats of every IAU member who voted for their absurd definition of planet until they can regurgitate those points, with meaning.

Some astronomers are stupid. The phrase "educated beyond the level of their intelligence" comes to mind. This idiots should have been taught somewhere along the way that their expertise in one narrow field does not endow them with the authority to mess about in other disciplines like linguistics.

Re:Maybe

[stealth_finger]

Maybe stop changing arbitrary definitions. Pluto was always a planet. Fuck you, NASA and shitty celebrity "scientists" like Neil Tyson.

Wow, who actually gives a shit, really? What difference does it make if Pluto is defined as a planet, a dwarf planet, an ice cube or numero uno place in the galaxy? How does that effect anyone enough to get uppity about it? Move on with your life.

Re:Maybe

[arth1]

The problem, as I see it, is that journalists have stopped translating, and echo the jargon even when it doesn't translate well.

Even worse than the astronomical definition for planet being out of touch with the rest of the world is the astronomical definitions of gas (only hydrogen and helium), metal (all other elements), and ice (any molecules comprising both "gas" and "metal" atoms). To an astronomer, nitrogen is a metal, and methane gas is an ice.

Re: Maybe

[Nidi62]

Yeah, never understood why this Tyson guy gets so much attention. What did he ever do, except beat up some people in a ring and biting off someone's ear, and beating his wife and stuff?

Picturing Neil deGrasse Tyson with a face tattoo just made my day. I imagine it would either be something like a comet under his eye instead of a tear drop, or maybe something just totally out there and not even physics/space related.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that if Pluto is a planet, a bunch of other shit in our solar system counts as planets too. They're trying to jigger the definitions so that Pluto is a planet so they can get funding to study the New Horizons data, but in such a way that the other shit (Eris or Ceres for instance) are not planets. None of that is very scientific. This is just science's version of gerrymandering.

Re:Maybe

[athmanb]

There's a lot of words but most of the points don't seem to make a lot of sense.

1. "Adjective nouns" need to have similarity to "noun" but aren't necessarily a subset. Gummy bears aren't a subset of bears either.

2. I'd like to see a citation on this. I highly doubt that you can simulate the formation of a solar system where multiple Mars analogues can coexist in the same orbit over billions of years without an accident happening to one of them.
Alone the fact that neither of the terrestrial planets have an orbital buddy tells us a lot about the chance of that happening.

3. In a geological sense yes. But the current definition of planets is based on orbital mechanics, after which Earth is a lot closer to Jupiter than to Ceres/Pluto.

4. Hydro-static equilibrium as a dividing line is way worse. There are roughly 100 TNOs where we don't really know whether they are elliptical. We'd have to visit each and every one of them with a probe just to put them in the proper category.
Meanwhile, it's completely clear which bodies qualify for the "clearing its orbit" rule. All currently qualifying planets have roughly 99% or more of the mass in their orbit in themselves. Ceres has 30%. Maybe there'll be an edge case eventually (Planet X or some Exoplanet) but that's a thing we can deal with in the future.

5. The definition should be mutable. Why should a planet that gets ejected keep counting as a planet?

6. I highly doubt life could form in a non-cleared orbit. There'd be late heavy bombardment style impacts all the time scouring the surface.
As for a life bearing celestial in orbit around another (gas giant) planet: I don't think anybody feels bad about calling that one a moon? As in "Yavin 4".

7. "Within each other's periapsis and apoapsis" seems like a reasonable enough definition that neither Ceres nor Pluto qualify for.

8. Yes that's silly but that'll probably be changed easily enough and has no effect on Pluto.

9. How are you planning to ascertain hydro-static equilibrium for an exoplanet if we can't even do it for Varuna.

etc etc the later points get even wordier and more politically minded.

Re:Maybe

[Rei]

1. "Adjective nouns" need to have similarity to "noun" but aren't necessarily a subset. Gummy bears aren't a subset of bears either.

Gummy bears are not a scientific term. Besides, the IAU itself already uses the word dwarf in this manner. Dwarf stars, dwarf galaxies... but carved out an inexplicable exception for dwarf planets.

I'd like to see a citation on this. I highly doubt that you can simulate the formation of a solar system where multiple Mars analogues can coexist in the same orbit

False equivalency. There's a difference between "two Mars sized planets existing in the same orbit" and "Mars' orbit having been cleared". And more to the point, the biggest problem with the concept of Mars clearing its orbit is that its orbit was already largely cleared when it formed. According to our best models, Jupiter reached all the way in to around where Mars' orbit is today, and had cleared almost everything to around 1 AU. Earth and Venus accreted from planetesimals between each other. Mars accreted from planetary embryos ejected to the space in-between Earth and Jupiter. Without Jupiter's migration, simulations produce an Earth-sized Mars and several planetary embryos in the asteroid belt on eccentric / high inclination orbits, something akin to the situation between Neptune and Pluto - except with the embryos nearly Mars-sized.

3. In a geological sense yes. But the current definition of planets is based on orbital mechanics, after which Earth is a lot closer to Jupiter than to Ceres/Pluto.

Huh? By what aspect of orbital mechanics? By semimajor axis and velocity, Earth is much closer to Ceres than Jupiter. Are you talking inclination and eccentricity? Then we should boot Mars in favour of low inclination / eccentricity asteroids.

4. Hydro-static equilibrium as a dividing line is way worse. There are roughly 100 TNOs where we don't really know whether they are elliptical.

Hydrostatic equilibrium can be very easily estimated based on mass, which can be approximately deduced within a range of feasible albedos and densities, and very accurately deduced if the body has a moon. By contrast, it's almost impossible to estimate neighborhood clearing to any distance beyond Neptune, or at all in the case of extrasolar planets. Which, to reiterate, the IAU definition says aren't planets, even though they have an extrasolar planet working group.

We'd have to visit each and every one of them with a probe just to put them in the proper category.

This is utter nonsense.

Meanwhile, it's completely clear which bodies qualify for the "clearing its orbit" rule.

No, it's not. We have virtually no clue what lies in the outer reach of our solar system. As we speak there's a search for a new planet that could be as big as an ice giant. It's a huge open question as to whether it would have cleared its neighborhood, and it will be very difficult to ascertain.

All currently qualifying planets have roughly 99% or more of the mass in their orbit in themselves. Ceres has 30%.

You seem to have some weird concept going on that "semimajor axis = orbit". Ceres has nothing of significance in its orbit. The asteroids are not all in the same orbit. They're certainly more likely to cross each others orbits, but that's not the same thing.

And again, since you apparently missed it: the reason that the inner solar system is largely cleared except for the asteroid belt (and the reason that the latter exists) is Jupiter. Mars did not clear its own neighborhood.

5. The definition should be mu

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

TL;DR but I got through enough of it to realize that most, and maybe all, the points are cogent. Above post should be stuffed down the throats of every IAU member who voted for their absurd definition of planet until they can regurgitate those points, with meaning.

He's made the same points over and over again on every Slashdot story, and some of us have got tired of giving rebuttals every single time only to find them ignored. It is not that his points are flat out wrong like some regular posters around here, but it is not as simple and clear cut as he makes it out to be (yeah, planetary geologists have a preferred definition that is a more helpful category to them, but they are not the only planetary scientists around, and others agree with the current problematic definition).

The point it is it is not something that should be shoved down someone's throat when it is arguable and one "narrow field" vs another "narrow field" (neither of which is linguistics). Slashdot doesn't reward cogency (even if the above post was above average), but confidence and familiarity, which makes it weak to spamming and those with the most free time.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics is full of jargon words that have very specific definitions that differ from their common usage. Some of them (like force, velocity vs. speed, jerk, etc.) can be similar to common meanings, but different enough to cause problems if you try to interchange them. This doesn't mean physicists are trying to rewrite common language. You simply use the science specific and narrowly defined versions in science contexts, and then pick your battles in terms of whether recommending someone use the jargon word when discussing things in a science context or just warn them that there is a difference between the colloquial use and science use. This isn't a single case and issue never dealt with before.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly given that people like Stern have regularly given interviews decrying the decision, and going so far as to call it "bullshit" (can you say that at NASA?), it's clearly not the storm in a teacup that you want to present it as.

You can't use that someone is upset in an interview as some sort of proof that this isn't a tempest in a teapot. Even a well respected professional can find themselves making a mountain of a molehill. Most of us working on such things and having to use IAU definitions in papers don't really give a damn, because it doesn't change any of the actual work. It is just window dressing, and there is no reason to get upset or waste this much time on it. There is some potential impact on PR work, but if anything, this debate has gotten far more attention and probably positive outreach than any saner definition that faded into the background would have. It isn't even some dig at the IAU, as a vast majority of the votes are done by some minority of people attending .... again, because most don't give a damn outside of some of the governing body aspects and housekeeping votes, as votes on things like definitions and naming is mostly superficial.

Your individual points are highly arguable and from a bias perspective, not some clear and dry manifest. But arguing over them, especially when already done so in the past, is a bullshit waste of time (yes, that word gets used plenty at NASA).

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

3. In a geological sense yes. But the current definition of planets is based on orbital mechanics, after which Earth is a lot closer to Jupiter than to Ceres/Pluto.b

That's a weak response to the argument that the current definition should be changed.

4. Hydro-static equilibrium as a dividing line is way worse. There are roughly 100 TNOs where we don't really know whether they are elliptical.

The dividing line is the mass necessary for hydro-static equilibrium to occur, which absolutely can be measured without probes. And so what if there are 100 new planets? We don't change the definition of "beetle" to avoid having too many species of beetle. There are however many there are.

5. The definition should be mutable. Why should a planet that gets ejected keep counting as a planet?

Because nothing has changed about the planet other than its location. If it's a planet in one place, it's a planet wherever it is.

Re:Maybe

[phantomfive]

And more to the point, the biggest problem with the concept of Mars clearing its orbit is that its orbit was already largely cleared [nature.com] when it formed. According to our best models, Jupiter reached all the way in to around where Mars' orbit is today, and had cleared almost everything to around 1 AU.

How did the asteroid belt get there, then? That's a question, not a polemic.

Re:Maybe

[Rei]

The short of it, Jupiter moves things around; it's very good at scattering other bodies, even large ones. First it dragged outer populations into the inner solar system, then scattered inner solar system material out, and then on its retreat pulled outer solar system material back in. It's actually a very big deal that it did that, as it brought ice into the inner solar system.

Re:Maybe

[DarkSkiesAhead]

So, so very much is wrong with this.

The IAU vote was narrow,

Really? Their notes from conference indicate that the resolution "was passed with a great majority.": https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau0603/

1. Nomenclature: An "adjective-noun" should always be a subset of "noun". A "dwarf planet" should be no less seen as a type of planet than a "dwarf star" is seen as a type of star by the IAU.

No. A dry lake is not a type of lake, for example. "adjective-noun" can mean "something in the category described by adjective but resembling the nouns". You can't make Pluto a planet by playing a cheap word game.

2. Erroneous foundation: Current research agrees that most planets did not clear their own neighborhoods

Nothing from the IAU's resolution indicates a purpose to consider the historical conditions. Your objection is semantic pedantry and can easily be fixed by wording the requirement as "has a cleared neighborhood". Also, yes Mars and Neptune vary in Stern-Levison values by 300x. That doesn't make the value unhelpful. And it doesn't change the fact that there's a gap of 10 orders of magnitude between any of the planets and the high Stern-Levison value of any dwarf planet (Pluto).

3. Comparative inconsistency: Earth is far more like Ceres and Pluto than it is like Jupiter, yet these very dissimilar groups - gas giants and terrestrial planets - are lumped together as "planets" while dwarfs are excluded.

Since was grouping of astronomical objects done by atmospheric similarity? That would be the worst rule yet.

4. Poor choice of dividing line: While defining objects inherently requires drawing lines between groups, the chosen line has been poorly selected. Achieving a rough hydrostatic equilibrium is a very meaningful dividing line - it means differentiation, mineralization processes, alteration of primordial materials, and so forth. It's also often associated with internal heat and, increasingly as we're realizing, a common association with subsurface fluids.

You are describing differentiation for a different purpose than the IAU's planet definition and then jumping to the claim that it is better. Your answer begs the question of what the purpose is for distinguishing a planet.

5. Mutability: Under the IA definition, what an object is declared as can be altered without any of the properties of the object changing simply by its "neighborhood" changing in any of countless ways.

Yes, we live in an evolving and mutating universe. Each of these planets came into existence at one point, so any definition involves some mutability unless you believe in a static, eternal universe.

6. Situational inconsistency: (Related) An exact copy of Earth (what the vast majority of people would consider the prototype for what a planet should be), identical down to all of the life on its surface, would not be considered a planet if orbiting in the habitable zone of a significantly larger star (harder to clear zone), or a young star (insufficient time to clear), a star without a Jupiter equivalent (no assistance in clearing), or so forth.

The definition is aimed at defining planets within our own solar system and not intended to be applied to exoplanets. You abuse this same limitation in another point below.

7. Ambiguous definition: There is still no consensus on what defines having "cleared the neighborhood" - in particular, what the "neighborhood" is.

While it's true that Resolution 5a didn't specify which discriminant to use, that doesn't make it ambiguous. There are multiple discriminants, and a common theme of all of them is that the 8 planets have disc

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

What the proponents did was take a term widely used by planetary geologists and have it mean something completely different - akin to dentists suddenly declaring to doctors that the heart is no longer an organ and to stop referring to it as one.

I only opened this thread to see what you had to say. Your failure to disappoint is matched only by the IAU's failure to apply sense and reason to their definition of "planet".

Thank You

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

You seriously have to ask why something that hasn't changed but is in a different location shouldn't suddenly be declared to be something entirely different? If you take a rabbit to Canada does it suddenly become a dwarf rabbit?

Rogue planet has a nice ring to it, as well it imparts additional information.

The fact that you bring up Varuna makes me think that you feel it shouldn't be a planet because it's an oblate spheroid.

The Earth is also an oblate spheroid, so it would be an odd reason to exclude a body from being a planet.

Re:Maybe

[Rei]

Indeed, on both counts. And in particular I like the word "rogue planet". Again you have an adjective imparting additional information about another object ("Rogue X"), "rogue" can be readily quantified ("Not in a stable orbit around any particular star or cluster of stars"), and it's a very evocative term. And rogue planets are absolutely expected according to our current models. They'll be incredibly difficult to find, but they're out there.

We're also coming to the realization that there's a lot of objects, potentially including large ones, that are only tenuously bound to our solar system. And it's likely that we readily exchange this mass with other nearby stars over cosmologic timescales; parts of our solar system (primarily distant ones) likely formed by other stars, and things that condensed during the formation of our star system are likely now orbiting other stars.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I got to number 12 or so before becoming overcome with boredom and passing out.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

"2. I'd like to see a citation on this. I highly doubt that you can simulate the formation of a solar system where multiple Mars analogues can coexist in the same orbit over billions of years without an accident happening to one of them."

Why does it need to be over billions of years? We don't refuse to calls extinct species "mammals" or "reptiles" (or "species" indeed) just because they were quickly wiped out by a random volcanic eruption. Orbital mechanics is a messy thing too, and sometimes bad things happen: our moon was possibly formed by the smashing against Earth of something the size of Mars that was orbiting for millions of years in L4 or L5, possibly perturbed by Venus or Jupiter. It's crazy calling something that big anything other than a planet in its own right, "cleared orbit" be damned. It's also crazy not to call Earth a planet while it was still "clearing its neighborhood" like that. Similarly Mars is going to soon loose the two asteroids that it captured some time ago, turning them into small moons: should we stop right now calling them asteroids or moons because in 2 million years they will be gone? That's nonsense.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Planet person means very wealthy person. So Dwarf Planet means: the very wealthy person is short in stature. Do not be so specific AND promote shortness of stature! Walls speak... er, I mean, (walls hear...). Or people may get confused believeing short wealthy guy discussions mean Astronomical discussion and viceversa and be calling Astronomer around anyone speaking of short millionaires! Just because you do NOT want to spread around double meanings, does not mean people will NEVER fall into one. No Dwarf Planets is erring on the cautious (or fearful) side.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

We need you designing orbital system generators for Spatial 4x games.

And what are the other terms?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> "planet" would be a physical term, while "moon" would be an orbital term

OK, but do you call something that orbits a star (like a, er, planet).

Re:And what are the other terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

"planet" would be a physical term, while "moon" would be an orbital term"

If our Moon was ejected from its orbit and started wandering into outer space (like in Space 1999) would it be automatically transformed into a planet ?
Under your definition Earth would be a moon (hey it orbits around the sun). In fact anything orbiting around anything else would be a moon. Which is pretty senseless.

Re:And what are the other terms?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

OK, but do you call something that orbits a star (like a, er, planet).

A space station? On the account that it's no moon...

Re:And what are the other terms?

[sexconker]

And what do you call things that orbit barycenters, like all things do?
This is what happens when eggheads aren't put to task building weapons for war and aren't bullied enough - they lose all discipline and just faff about willy-nilly.

As an egghead myself, FUCK YOU OTHER GUYS! Stop senselessly changing existing definitions and creating MORE ambiguity! You're ignoring basic principles of your field!

Re:And what are the other terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, like an asteroid, comet, etc. There's a ridiculous number of things that orbit our star alone - would you call each individual spec of dust "a planet"? Defining a planet purely in terms of stellar orbit isn't particularly useful. The older definition of "planet"... actually didn't exist - it was an arbitrary designation.

To answer your question: you could call something that orbits a star a stellar satellite.

Of course, TFA's proposal is only one possible proposal. The arguments are good, but adding the requirement that the celestial body orbit a star is also reasonable, and would cut down on the number of planets considerably. However, the author seems to be concerned about the practical outcome of a definition regarding how public perception affects a scientist's ability to study a body ("why study Pluto - it's not a planet anymore?", "why study Europa? It's not a planet").

Re:And what are the other terms?

[silentcoder]

That's no egg... it's a testicle !

You're not an egghead, you're a testicle head. And frankly for somebody who seems to think the primary purpose of science is building instruments of death (as opposed to the reality where that is a major perversion of science) - that's the kindest and most euphemistically polite term I can think of.

Re:And what are the other terms?

[silentcoder]

Indeed, he is flagrantly biassed. He was the head of the New Horizon's project - which just sent us a huge amount of data to study on Pluto. Studies which cost money, and having Pluto not deemed a planet anymore has, he says, made it harder to drum up funding for that research.

The answer of course is: because everything in our solar system should be studied - not just planets. One of the greatest achievements in recent astronomy has been landing a probe on a comet, because it taught us a great deal about comets (things we couldn't learn from the remnants that sometimes fall on earth). Studying mars is cool - but we SHOULD be putting probes on Eris as well.

Good probes to Titan, Europa and Ganymede are important studies to undertake in the near future - they are among the highest likelihood cases for life elsewhere in the solar system. Europan bacteria would be a fantastic discovery - Europan 'fish' an unlikely but amazing bonus - but we will never know if we don't go look.

If anything looking at planets is near the bottom of the priority list. Most of the planets are gas giants - there's only so much you can learn from something you can't land on.

Re:And what are the other terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what do you call things that orbit barycenters, like all things do?

Satelites

This is what happens when eggheads aren't put to task building weapons for war and aren't bullied enough - they lose all discipline and just faff about willy-nilly.

As an egghead myself, FUCK YOU OTHER GUYS! Stop senselessly changing existing definitions and creating MORE ambiguity! You're ignoring basic principles of your field!

Please turn down your retardedness. It is at 11 we need it at 10 or below.

Re:And what are the other terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Europa to Europan should be an easy transition but I can't help reading it in my head as Euro pan.

Re:And what are the other terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just remembered Egghead Software. Hadn't thought about that place in many years.

Re:And what are the other terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Go bully someone who can build nukes or kilowatt lasers. That sounds like a good plan . . .

Re:And what are the other terms?

[MindStalker]

Pluto would be a Planet orbiting Sol. The Moon would be a Planet and moon of Earth. So you have Astroids, Planets, and Comets (Comets being Asteroids that have tails). Earth has one planet orbiting it, Luna or the Moon, It has many Astroids orbiting it. This system works no matter what star system you are dealing with.
 

The definition is fine

[ceview]

The definition as proposed is prefaced as a 'geophysical definition of a planet' which already admits that it is using the definition based mostly on if the geophysics of the body is planet like. Saying pluto is a dwarf planet seems pretty good to me as it gives it a special place among planet like objects already. To increase the number of planets to over a 100 objects seems a bit silly. Astronomical bodies that orbit the sun include thousands of things, if the object is really big and clear most of the orbit and is dominant massive object that makes it a proper planet. If it is round but not a big mass then it's a dwarf planet, which still suggests it has planet like qualities.

Re:The definition is fine

[thinkwaitfast]

to over a 100 objects seems a bit silly

Why? Why not further classification to rocky planets and gas giant planet also? Note I come from a geophysical background.

Re:The definition is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Rocky and giant gas planets are subsets of planets that are just slightly more descriptive and do not force a massive re-evaluation of the word planet itself.

Hey why not remove the word planet altogether and define new unique words to define each celestial body uniquely? What, that would be "silly"?

Well to most people so is loosening the definition of planet to the point where it conflates with other words we have been using for a long time, like moon.

Re:The definition is fine

[Rei]

Saying pluto is a dwarf planet seems pretty good to me as it gives it a special place among planet like objects already.

If they had simply stopped there, that wouldn't have been a problem. The problem is that they didn't. They declared that dwarf planets aren't planets at all - which is nonsense. Mars has far more in common with Pluto than, say, Jupiter. If anything should have been separated out, it's the gas and ice giants from the rocky/icy planets.

Hydrostatic equilibrium is a very meaningful dividing line to split groupings on. If a body is in hydrostatic equilibrium, it's experienced dramatic geologic change in its history - differentiation, tectonics, internal heating, generally fluids (particularly liquid water), and on and on. It's the sort of place you go if you want to learn about planetary evolution or search for life. If a body is not in hydrostatic equilibrium, it's made of primordial materials, preserved largely intact. It's the sort of place you go to learn about the formation of our solar system and its building blocks.

It's rare that nature gives you such clear dividing lines, but when it comes to planets, it has. It's not perfect - you can (and do) have bodies that straddle the border and are only partially or slightly differentiated. But in general, nature has drawn an obvious line in the sand, and we should respect that.

if the object is really big and clear

Is Earth's orbit clear? No, we have a huge massive object co-orbiting with us. Is Neptune's orbit clear? No, it has Pluto in it. They try their hardest to pretend that the IAU actually chose a "gravitationally dominant" standard, but that's not what they actually put in the definition. The standard in the definition is "cleared the neighborhood".

And it's based on a false premise - that each planet cleared its own neighborhood. Which is just pseudoscience. All of our models show that Jupiter, and to a lesser extent Saturn, cleared most of the solar system, including the vast majority of the clearing around Mars, and a good fraction around Earth (lesser around Venus). Mars did not clear its own neighborhood. Nor is it gravitationally dominant in its neighborhood; the vast majority of asteroids are in orbital resonance with Jupiter and not Mars.

And I've heard some people try to sneak around this by saying "Okay, maybe it isn't gravitationally dominant / cleared its neighbood now, but it has enough of a Stern-Levison parameter that it would have been had Jupiter not existed". First off, that's changing the definition yet again (to "would have cleared its neighborhood if no other planets were there"). But beyond that, it's abuse of the Stern-Levison parameter. The Stern-Levison parameter is built around a body's ability to clear asteroids - bodies with the current size and orbital distribution of our asteroid belt. Not protoplanets. In the early solar system it was the ability to clear protoplanets that caused neighborhoods to be cleared. Jupiter got rid of some really massive things that were forming in and near the inner solar system. There's a reason why our planetary system has such an unusual size distribution: the inner planets start getting bigger, the stop getting bigger, then get small, then debris, then something huge. That "something huge" stripped the building blocks out of the inner solar system, preventing it from becoming dominated by super-Earths. Saturn appears to have been our savior - its (delayed) formation appears to have stopped Jupiter's inward migration.

And even just going with the Stern-Levison parameter - Neptune has a Pluto-sized body in its "neighborhood". Now, Pluto may be small compared to Neptune, but compared to Mars it wouldn't be - yet Mars has a much lower Stern-Levison parameter than Neptune. Again: the only reason Mars doesn't experience stuff like this is because Jupiter cleared its neighborhood for it.

Re:The definition is fine

[Rei]

Exactly. I think Stern's always been on the right side of this. The original paper that the Stern-Levison parameter comes from has a great system laid out, where you have a bunch of adjectives that you can apply to different bodies based on their varying physical (composition, size) and orbital parameters, and you can use any combination of them as needed. Which seems to me to be so obviously the right solution.

Re:The definition is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

"if the object is really big and clear most of the orbit and is dominant massive object that makes it a proper planet."

1) the IAU definition is still wrong and will need to be changed because it excludes all extrasolar planets. And note that it is currently impossible to check if an extrasolar planet has cleared its orbit, so none of them should be ever called "planet"?
2) once again, no reason is ever given to include its orbital companions in the definition of a "planet", other than that "having hundreds of planets seems silly", which is eminently subjective, and completely wrongheaded when considering wandering planet: what the hell are they supposed to clear if they are not in any orbit?
3) there may be a planet bigger than earth 20 times farther than neptune, and it may not have cleared its orbit by the IAU definition because the orbit is ridiculously large.

Hydrostatic equilibrium is really the only meaningful and consistent metric we can reasonably associate with all the planets we have discovered and will discover in the future, if that means there are more than 8 in the Solar system who cares? You won't have to memorize them all in school.

Re:The definition is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

To increase the number of planets to over a 100 objects seems a bit silly.

If that's how many planets there are, that's how many planets there are. We don't redefine what a "beetle" is to avoid having too many species of beetles.

Re: Richard Feynman was an athiest

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you had to answer an obvious troll shows how weak your lack of faith is.

Back? It never left.

[Gazzonyx]

Pluto will be "back" as a planet? Funny, that. It never ceased to be one so far as I was ever concerned. I'm glad valuable time was spent catching back up to what I've known.

Re:Back? It never left.

[dbIII]

You can call it whatever you like just as so many office workers call their PC "the hard drive" and the monitor "the computer".

Astronomers apparently decided they wanted a little more precision in their terms when talking to other astronomers. The rest of us appear to just be getting angry when overhearing a conversation not intended for us and I don't think it really matters to us whether astronomers define Pluto as a planet or a different technical term.

Re:Back? It never left.

[thegarbz]

Demonstrating stubbornness by ignoring approved and internationally recognised scientific definitions doesn't help anything. You can only fix this problem at the root, not doing so makes you look ignorant, especially when your kids come up to you and tell you you're wrong because a textbook only has 8 planets listed.

Re:Back? It never left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Demonstrating stubbornness by ignoring approved and internationally recognised scientific definitions doesn't help anything. You can only fix this problem at the root, not doing so makes you look ignorant, especially when your kids come up to you and tell you you're wrong because a textbook only has 8 planets listed.

God forbid that scientific knowledge evolves over time !!!
Think about the children in the 1930s that said to their parents that the universe wasn't limited only to the milky way and that it was expanding.

Re: Back? It never left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those uppity astronomers better understand that there is way more honest, hard-working people like us than there are la-di-da heads-in-the-sky prissy little types like them. I would suggest they learn to respect honest, hard-working people's opinion and that we hear very, very well. One could get angry and shove one of those shiny telescopes up their arses after beating them over the egghead with it. Just sayin'.

Re: Back? It never left.

[Anonymous Coward]

My kids know better. They show me any goddamn textbook that says I'm wrong, they can get their allowance from the textbook. And they can eat the textbook instead of steak. Just sayin'.

Re:Back? It never left.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Astronomers apparently decided they wanted a little more precision in their terms when talking to other astronomers."

So they came up with a definition that excludes all extrasolar planets (already confirmed to exist) and wandering planets (almost certain to exist)? A definition that is defied every time a planetary scientist refers to a "planet-wide detached haze layer" in a moon? What if some astronomers this time got it wrong? They are people too, you know...

Re:Back? It never left.

[dbIII]

So they came up with a definition that excludes all extrasolar planets (already confirmed to exist) and wandering planets (almost certain to exist)?

Who are you and I to correct astronomers? After all those office workers who call the beige box a "hard drive" think we are getting it wrong when we try to correct them, have you considered that this may be a similar situation?

Re:Back? It never left.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who are you and I to correct astronomers?"

Astronomers are trying to correct other astronomers. I gave some reasons to agree with the former ones. If you don't have any opinion you can just shut up.

"After all those office workers who call the beige box a "hard drive" think we are getting it wrong when we try to correct them, have you considered that this may be a similar situation?"

The idiots calling the beige box a "hard drive" are the ones pretending that a dwarf planet is NOT a planet, or that an extrasolar planet is NOT a planet, or that a wandering planet is NOT a planet. Ger a clue, the definition is just wrong.

Re:Back? It never left.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can call it whatever you like just as so many office workers call their PC "the hard drive" and the monitor "the computer".

Astronomers apparently decided they wanted a little more precision in their terms when talking to other astronomers. The rest of us appear to just be getting angry when overhearing a conversation not intended for us and I don't think it really matters to us whether astronomers define Pluto as a planet or a different technical term.

Mostly I think they're just mad that the pizzas they "were promised" in grade school are not actually coming.

Re:Back? It never left.

[phantomfive]

not doing so makes you look ignorant, especially when your kids come up to you and tell you you're wrong because a textbook only has 8 planets listed.

It's a good chance for a teaching moment for your kids: that the establishment, and especially textbooks, can be wrong.

Re:Back? It never left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Astronomers study stars. Planetary scientists should get to define what constitutes a "planet".

Re:Back? It never left.

[thegarbz]

that the establishment, and especially textbooks, can be wrong

And what are you teaching them? To distrust current scientific consensus in favour of a feeling? Leave that to the sunday school, they do enough to fuck up kids minds as it is.

The textbooks aren't wrong. In fact they are correct at the time they were written. A better thing to teach kids is that scientific understanding and definitions get refined as time goes on. Then maybe we can finally have a generation of kids who are able to trust in scientific method and finally piss off homeopathy and all those other things that feel like they ought to work, but what would science know because my dad said my textbook didn't even know how many planets there are, and science changes so it must always be wrong.

Re:Back? It never left.

[phantomfive]

And what are you teaching them? To distrust current scientific consensus in favour of a feeling?

Hopefully not. Hopefully you'll teach them how to think for themselves. To look at the evidence, and not blindly follow. That way leads to insanity.

Re:Back? It never left.

[thegarbz]

Hopefully you'll teach them how to think for themselves.

That's a natural part of it, but we don't have the ability to test every scientific fact that is published. So when all the textbooks, wikipedia, the majority of astronomers and the actual association responsible deciding what to call something decide Pluto is not called a planet, the options are to go with it or disprove it manually. I certainly will not be teaching someone to just say "what do these experts know anyway, this one person thinks differently, by the way pass the kale, David Wolfe says it cures cancer and what do scientists know anyway."

Re:Back? It never left.

[phantomfive]

Let's take your homeopathy example. Suppose your kid comes to you and says, "Crystals can cure cancer." Start by getting her to think in a scientific way, with questions like, "That's interesting. How would you devise an experiment to test that idea?" You want to at least get them thinking scientifically. If there a little older, you can ask her what experiments have been done to test that idea. This is really easy now with the internet. When I was a teenager my dad taught me to do research at the library, and it was a pain.

As for the 'definition of Pluto,' you can tell her that it's just a definition, and it doesn't fucking matter, you could call it a rose and it wouldn't change the actual physical nature of the object, and arguments over definitions are a waste of time, best left for potheads and morons.

Re:Back? It never left.

[thegarbz]

and it doesn't fucking matter

Good thanks for clarifying your original position on the matter. So then you're actually okay with your kids learning correct definitions. Nice to know

Re:Back? It never left.

[phantomfive]

Please say something that at least indicates you understood what I wrote. "A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet" that's a pretty clear principle.

What's the point

[nyri]

What's the point of these taxonomical exercises? Like, who gives a fuck?

Re:What's the point

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of these taxonomical exercises?

Classification goes to the heart of the scientific method. Don't they teach that anymore in science classes ?

Like, who gives a fuck?

Scientists do give a fuck.

Re: What's the point

[Anonymous Coward]

As a scientist, I don't give a fuck. Classification is important in science. However, chosing which of many different classifications to associate with a historic word is not that important. Regardless of what definition is given to planet, all of those other classifications will still exist, even if they require a less concise name.

Re:What's the point

[Black Parrot]

What's the point of these taxonomical exercises? Like, who gives a fuck?

Those that do, and those that don't?

Re: What's the point

[sexconker]

If you were to categorize planets by race, what race would Pluto be? In my opinion Pluto would be a Negro.

That's offensive, AC.

Pluto is clearly a non-first-born asian. Small, cold, and distant.

Words...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why so many people get so worked up about words. The chains of letters we humans on earth use to refer to Pluto doesn't change anything about what it is. It isn't influenced by it at all, and as its properties aren't influenced by our choice of words for it our reasons for being interested in it shouldn't either.

So why do so many people behave as if the words we use to describe an object fundamentally change the object?

Moons a step too far

[Anonymous Coward]

How about it needs to orbit or have started life orbiting a star? Do we have to go from nothing is a planet except 8, to everything is a planet if it's round?

Re:Moons a step too far

[Black Parrot]

Do we have to go from nothing is a planet except 8, to everything is a planet if it's round?

We could rename the first category to "plan8".

Re: Moons a step too far

[Anonymous Coward]

And Pluto could be called "plan9", from outer space.

how about the obvious definitions?

[ooloorie]

A planet is any body in hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly spherical) orbiting a star.

A moon is any solid body orbiting a planet.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

A planet is any body in hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly spherical) orbiting a star.

A star is a body (nearly spherical) in hydrostatic equilibrium. So stars are planets ?

A moon is any solid body orbiting a planet.

Can a moon orbit a star ? Stars are bodies in hydrostatic equilibrium.
Can a moon orbit around another moon ?

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[athmanb]

The problem with that definition is that it'd include a lot of random TNOs. We'd be up to like 15 planets by now, with an additional maybe 100 yet to be found in highly eccentric orbits, and probably tens of thousands more in the Oort cloud. In my opinion, those rocks hardly belong in the same category as Jupiter and Mars.

Also, if that definition gets chosen you can look forward to decades of drama after every new TNO discovery about whether that object is in hydro-static equilibrium or not. Can you imagine if a Chinese astronomer finds such an object barely on the edge of the definition, but we only have a few single pixels of images available, and the IAU needs to make a finding on whether it qualifies as a planet or not?

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[athmanb]

Actually I was wrong with my numbers, if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... there are already 45 "likely" candidates for planetary status by your definition.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, stars are stars. Not planets.

You'd need a definition of "star" as a precondition to applying the grand-parent's definition anyway. Stars would be identified by that definition ("massive bright hot thing", or something more precise) and planets are the round things going around the stars.

Similarly, moons could not orbit around stars or other moons, because they must orbit around a planet (in GP's definition).

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about a planet that doesn't orbit around a star ?

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I was thinking along the lines of a planet that looks like it should orbit a star, but instead just sits there doing nothing. It just stays in the same place all the time. No orbit. No rotation. The star is there; the planet is there. But nothing happens.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[stealth_finger]

Then your solar system goes from this
http://vignette3.wikia.nocooki...

to this

https://i.redd.it/q6kn9ox71tmx...

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine. We can just define the big eight planets a "major planets", and teach them in schools - and the rest as "minor planets".

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the OP's definition doesn't exclude stars, since they all orbit the black hole star at the centre of the galaxy, even if they are lone stars. And many aren't.

And a liquid is in hydrostatic equilibrium VERY easily even at miligramme scales, whilst hard rock has to be quite massive. So the geophysical definition ("hydrostatic equilibrium") was thrown out as sufficient very early on, since it's unusable for many objects yet to be determined accurately because they're so fucking far away we can't see their damn shape, only their mass.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

"But the OP's definition doesn't exclude stars"

The OP's definition is flawed because incomplete, but you are nitpicking: its meaning is quite obvious and should be read as an amendment of the current IAU definition where star are properly defined (having nuclear fusion) before other stuff (not having nuclear fusion).

"And a liquid is in hydrostatic equilibrium VERY easily even at miligramme scales"

Not in free space, where most liquids turns into ice quite quickly or if close to the sun evaporate and are scattered by the solar wind. To have water ice in somewhat hydrostatic equilibrium you need at least the mass of Mimas (the smallest known body in hydrostatic equilibrium, almost entirely made of water ice) or close, but then we can start talking talking about dwarf planets. I think no definition will ever be perfect, but if you want to include space junk like floating little balls of mercury, well you are just trying very hard to find insignificant flaws in this definition while ignoring the huge holes in the current IAU one.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Star: heated to incandescence by fusion, held together by gravity. Orbit does not matter
Planet: orbits a star (or possibly binary star etc.), big enough that gravity makes it round. I.e. too big to be solid through. Dark object, not (significantly) heated by internal fusion.
Smaller things in orbit around the star are neither planets nor moons. Asteroids, comets, etc.
Planets not in orbit are mythical - show us one before we bother classifying such objects
Moon: orbits a planet and is noticeably smaller. Earth could be a moon if it orbited jupiter. Binary planets might be possible but since there are no examples yet, we don't need to draw a line now. May need a limit on how small a moon can be.

Classifications are exclusive, so a star is not also a planet/moon.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[avandesande]

So what? I guess nuclear scientists should have stopped at protons and neutrons because more particles would be too hard to remember.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no sense in being deliberately obtuse.

A star is a celestial object that by it's own gravity reaches fusion (aka, it emits light). This definition supersedes any other as a condition for it to be a star. that's why planets are not stars.

A moon is a celestial object orbiting a planet. (Yes, you can nitpick and say it's around the gravitational equilibrium it orbits, but that doesn't change anything. The lighter objects is/are called the moons, the most massive object - within this context (thus, not with a star) is the planet. If the difference in mass is about equal, it's warranted to call it a double planet, mayhaps, but that doesn't change the core definition neither.

So, no, a 'moon' - without it orbiting a planet - can not orbit a star, or it's called a planet. That's because it misses already one of the defining aspects of it, and so it's NOT a moon to start with.

A more to the point question would be if there is something like a planet without a star, for instance, a planet that got catapulted out of orbit. the answer is: no. The moment it's not in orbit around a star anymore, it's not a planet anymore. Astronomers, however, sometimes refer to it as 'wandering planet', but technically, this can be disputed. It would be better to use another name. Or maybe they use it because it's self-explanatory: namely an object that was a planet, but got ejected out of orbit.

And no, a moon can not orbit another moon. As said, the one with the most mass is considered to be the planet.

There, all solved for you.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[ooloorie]

The problem with that definition is that it'd include a lot of random TNOs. We'd be up to like 15 planets by now, with an additional maybe 100 yet to be found in highly eccentric orbits

So? That's bad how?

Also, if that definition gets chosen you can look forward to decades of drama after every new TNO discovery about whether that object is in hydro-static equilibrium or not.

For almost all bodies, this is pretty obvious. For objects directly on the border, you can call them "borderline" or "indeterminate". It happens a lot in science.

Can you imagine if a Chinese astronomer finds such an object barely on the edge of the definition, but we only have a few single pixels of images available, and the IAU needs to make a finding on whether it qualifies as a planet or not?

If that bothers you, it's because you are confusing an IAU finding with fact.

Re:how about the obvious definitions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know right!?! Like with chemistry, there are only eight elements in the periodic table, any more would be absurd.

Go ahead, make the public more science cynical

[Anonymous Coward]

There will NEVER be a perfect definition. Just after the dust started settling from the last upheaval, they want to stir the pot again? This is a totally counterproductive proposal. The public will view scientists with even more disdain and cynicism. Let sleeping dogs lie.

Pluto could soon be back

[maroberts]

That's a relief, Mickey's been searching for him for ages.

Makes Sense

[djinn6]

This is a much more sensible definition of planets. Not perfect, since many moons would become planets, which is confusing. But it's miles better than the current IAU definition, because a planet's planetary status wouldn't depend on where it is, and potentially where other planets are.

Imagine a planet orbiting a star, that due to gravitational influence of other planets (or another passing star) was kicked out of the system. Under the current definition, it's suddenly no longer a planet. Likewise, if two planets share a part of their orbit, even though they're in a stable resonance that prevents them from ever colliding, neither are planets because neither has "cleared its neighboring region". In fact, Neptune and Pluto are in such a configuration, so neither are planets (except they also arbitrarily declared Neptune a planet and Pluto a dwarf planet). Oh and it's only a planet if it's in the Solar System. Exoplanets be damned.

Re:Makes Sense

[Baron_Yam]

> many moons would become planets

They could be satellite planets. Just as we now have dwarf planets, rogue planets, terrestrial planets, and gas giant planets.

For objects like Pluto vs. those like Earth, we could use a terms like 'major' and 'minor' (eliminating the term 'dwarf') to denote those bodies that 'dominate their orbit' or whatever measure the current definition of planet uses. Yes, this would involve also messing with the current definition of 'minor planet'.

I really do like the idea of a more or less empirical definition. Has gravity crushed it into a ball, and has it ever undergone fusion? Yes and no? Good. It's a planet. Now let's move on to the details, like what, if anything, it is orbiting, whether it's a tiny rock or a big ball of gas, and if it's the only significant object in its orbit.

Question...

[Freischutz]

Personally I think the whole Pluto being a planet vs it being a dwarf planet makes about as much sense as arguing about whether American football deserves being called a football because players spend most of their time holding the ball and running around with it. Having said that, Pluto is a fascinating place regardless of it's label and, and since I'm not an astronomer, I am left wondering: Is the fight to make Pluto a planet again (or for that matter the original decision to demote it) based on sound scientific reasoning or is it just an ego driven pissing contest born injured national pride because Pluto is the only planet in the Sol system found by an American?

Re:Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you hit the nail on the head my friend. You have no ideea how many times I have heard people belittling Clyde and his work. Some say he did not actually build his own telescopes and just stole the discovery while on his travels.

hopefully DJT will bring back all those astronomy jobs from Mexico, and then make them pay for all the planets that we Americans rightfully discover.

Re:Question...

[Nidi62]

Personally I think the whole Pluto being a planet vs it being a dwarf planet makes about as much sense as arguing about whether American football deserves being called a football because players spend most of their time holding the ball and running around with it.

Off topic, but it's because the game evolved from a game where the primary mode of advancing the ball was either kicking it or batting it with your arms or hands.

Re:Question...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The American Football is called football because it is played with an oblong leather ball that is 1 foot long from tip to tip.

Re:Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Americans are too dumb to know that Pluto was discovered by an American.
The etymology of the word planet comes from an ancient Greek term that roughly translated to "wandering stars" because that is what we knew in 4000BC. We looked at the sky and we could see lights in the sky. As we looked closer and for longer amounts of time we started being able to make predications about where these lights would be. There were some notable lights that moved differently from all the others, and these were called planets. At the time, there was no inkling that these were any different from stars except the odd movement. We would later learn that the od movement was because these bright objects were in orbit around our sun instead of being very distant stars. With the advent of optical telescopes, it would extend our ability to see planets across our solar system.

In modern astronomy, we have comets and planets and stars and moons and asteroids and ...
Using the historical term of planet seems a bit quaint to me. Because Pluto was discovered by an optical telescope by noticing an unusual movement of a celestial body against a backdrop of stars, it really makes sense to use the term planet for it. However, in astronomical jargon, they should probably some up with specific terminology that does not harken back 6000 years to describe a poorly understood observable phenomenon.

Re:Question...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Correction, WAS, not is. When the game started back in the days, they used a foot long ball. Now the official spec is 11.25 inches, apparently. Measured along the curve the distance is almost 13 inches.

Re:Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the heel will become of football when we finally go Metric? :)

Re:Question...

[jbengt]

Just think of the size of the hands of the quarterback who could throw a perfect spiral with a meterball.

In related news

[BinBoy]

Pluto declares humans to be an insignificant flash in the lifetime of the universe.

Common Sense Planet & Moon semantic

[Anonymous Coward]

What would one call a moon of a moon? A sub-moon? What about a moon of a moon of a moon? These are the things that the general public has no idea about. We're all pretty sure what the F*** a planet and a moon are simply by using common sense.

Re:Common Sense Planet & Moon semantic

[Anonymous Coward]

And how small would the orbiting body have to be before it instead qualifies as space crud rather than a true moon? Could I add another moon to the hierarchy by putting a toenail clipping in orbit around it?

Pluto: Kick me all you want, but ... I'll be back.

[grep -v '.*' *]

You want to have a single, one-ring-to-rule-them-all to handle planets? Why? Just deem Pluto (my precious) and whatever else a planet and be done with it -- an administrative decision. No problem, just ask your local PHB secretary about these.

Oh, you actually want a real rule? Then how about any large body that directly orbits a sun? Now, define large: diameter, atmospheric pressure (Do we call it a planet if it doesn't have an atmosphere?) "weight", mass, temperature, internal composition, a definable surface or what-not AND remember to define exactly what a sun is and we're done.

And if you find two wanna-be "planets" orbiting each other while both orbit around a sun -- just break out the Death Star. It's got to earn it's keep SOMEhow.

Ceres is A PLANET

[Anonymous Coward]

Ceres is a planet, because FUCK YOU PLUTO.

Re:Ceres

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: How many Negroes does it take to eat a possum?

A: It takes two. One to direct traffic, and the other to do the eating.

smaller than Eris

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Mercury should be dropped as a planet. Smaller than Ganymede.

Re:Trump is wasting money with this

[silentcoder]

Actually New Horizons was mostly funded by Clinton, since it was launched in 1997 and all...

Re:Pluto: Kick me all you want, but ... I'll be ba

[sexconker]

Oh, you actually want a real rule? Then how about any large body that directly orbits a sun? Now, define large: diameter, atmospheric pressure (Do we call it a planet if it doesn't have an atmosphere?) "weight", mass, temperature, internal composition, a definable surface or what-not AND remember to define exactly what a sun is and we're done.

All (non-accelerating) reference frames are equally valid. The sun orbits Earth just as much as Earth orbits the sun. Barycenters and whatnot.

Re: Richard Feynman was an athiest

[mysticgoat]

Truth, justice, and The American Way are not science either. Yet these irrational things have more impact on your life than the tiny little subset of the universe that is all that science can ever know.

I do not disagree with you, but I find that your statement has no inherent value and that you are contributing nothing worthwhile to the conversation.

TFS needs some serious work.

[Anonymous Coward]

It should say "After bullshit complaints about the IAU's definition by butthurt merkins who see it as a demotion when no such friigging thing was inteneded or is even resulting unintended from the change, NASA is trying to get the IAU to change their minds when they were completely able to turn up for the meeting BUT DID NOT CARE TO. YOU LOST GUYS. GET OVER IT. Pluto is still there. Now shut up and look at it."

Re:Jesus saves

[stealth_finger]

TL:DR

Really? Well I'd just kill you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck, I'll wait until you're asleep then nail your hands to your bedstead and burn your house down with you in it.

Hey, if we're not going to be nice to one another, why the fuck should YOU decide where the new limits are???

PS stop calling christianity a religion, call it what it originally was called: a cult.

Re: Really? Well I'd just kill you.

[Anonymous Coward]

At no point in his obviously sarcastic post the author stated he was a Christian. You on the other hand showed your true colours with your lack of humour and amusing aggressiveness, wannabe terrorist atheist nerd. I bet you still taste the dog shit in your mouth from high school days.

Re: Really? Well I'd just kill you.

[Anonymous Coward]

At no point did I indicate it was not sarcasm, moron.

Chicken.

Sorry, I refuse to enter your death cult. Thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are atheists. The religious are just the victims of an overactive imagination and a desire to be a baby again. I've grown up now and no longer need a security blanket. Especially one that worships death because it's only AFTER death that you get your "real" life. I prefer to live this one and see what happens at the end of it.

Beliefs

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the major problems with science is exactly the same as the core problem with our current civilization. We exist in a world where feelings trump facts.

How many times have you heard a scientist say 'I believe that X...Y'?
How about fuck you and your feelings?
How about you teach me something that you don't know?

Rather than march on Earth day, how about just continuing to ask good questions?

TL;DR something you claim is cogent...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dare say that your concluisions cannot be from what you read in that post, therefore must be from the conclusion. IOW it wouldn't mattter if it were nonsense and ungrammatical rubbish, you'd still say the same thing.

The IAU spend months in total hashing out this issue and three days talking in meetings before the vote, and the GGP (sort of) points were there and discarded BY PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT THE FRIGGING ISSUES ARE and found unusable compared to "Dwarf Planet" introduction and the 8 planets around our Sun.

If the OP had wanted, they could have gone to the meeting and presented those points and voted, but they didn't.

Re:TL;DR something you claim is cogent...?

[Rei]

The IAU spend months in total hashing out this issue and three days talking in meetings before the vote

That's just the issue: that's not what happened. The IAU discussion was a disaster. Here's the timeline:

2005: The IAU appoints a committee to investigate the issue and generate a proposal. The committee investigated the issue for a year.

The IAU meeting is scheduled from 14-25 August 2006.

16 August: The committee recommends a definition based on hydrostatic equilibrium. No "cleared the neighborhood" nonsense. They publish their draft proposal.

18 August: The IAU division of planetary sciences (aka, the people who actually deal with planets) endorses the proposal.

Also 18 August: A subgroup of the IAU formed which opposed the proposal. An astronomer in the group (aka, someone who studies stars, not planets) - Julio Ángel Fernández - made up his own "cleared the neighborhood" definition. While most of the membership starts to trickle away over the next week, they remain determined to change the definition.

22 August: The original, hydrostatic equilibrium draft continued to be the basis for discussion. There were some tweaks made (some name changes and adjusting the double-planet definition), but it remained largely the same.

Late on 22 August: Fernández's group manages to get to just over half of the attendance at the (open) drafting meeting, leading to a very "heated" debate between the two sides.

22 to 24 August: The drafting group begins to meet and negotiate in secret. The last that the general attendance of the conference knew, they'll either end up with a vote on a purely hydrostatic definition, or (more likely) no vote at all due to the chaos. Attendence continues to dwindle, particularly among those who are okay with either a hydrostatic definition or none at all.

24 August: The current "cleared the neighborhood" definition is suddenly proposed and voted on on the same day. Only 10% of the conference attendance (4-5% of the IAU membership) is still present, mainly those who had been hanging on trying to get their definition through. They pass the new definition.

It's not generally laypeople who are upset about how it went down, it's IAU members. Many have complained bitterly about it to the press. The IAU's own committee of experts was ignored, in favour of a definition written in secret meetings and voted on by a small, very much nonrandom fraction of people, the vast majority of whom do not study planets.

If there's one thing I hate, it's people who pretend that anyone who opposes the IAU definition does so because they're ignorant morons overcome by some emotional attachment to Pluto, when in reality it's been planetary scientists themselves who have been the definition's harshest critics, because it's an internally self-inconsistent, linguistically flawed, false-premise-based definition that leads to all sorts of absurd results and contradicts terminology that was already in widespread use in the scientific literature.

Re:TL;DR something you claim is cogent...?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of members with work or teaching commitments can't attend the whole meeting, and often that correlates with more senior researchers that can have more clout. Regardless, the IAU meetings continue like this all the time (and from what I've heard, other professional societies do it the same way), because they have a long list of things to get done and have to assume members will work will prioritize their own schedules as they see fit. I don't think I've been able to go to a full week long or longer meeting since I've been a voting member. That does mean you will find a sizable number of members who disagree with some decisions made, and it depends highly on which subfield you check in some cases, but that is quite different than saying they are upset. When people do get upset, decisions can easily be changed because these meetings happen all the time and things do get overturned if it turns out most members do disagree strongly enough to care.

And my problem is not with people opposing the definition being idiots (idiots exist on all sides of arguments), but when people pretend their one sided argument is the one and only way things should be interpreted and as if there are no other sides.

Re:TL;DR something you claim is cogent...?

[Trogre]

Also 18 August: A subgroup of the IAU formed which opposed the proposal. An astronomer in the group (aka, someone who studies stars, not planets) - Julio Ãngel FernÃndez - made up his own "cleared the neighborhood" definition.

While we're taking role titles literally, don't forget that as an astronomer, Sr Fernandez is only responsible for naming stars, not actually studying them.

Re:TL;DR something you claim is cogent...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Double meaning! Foul! The message is: we are already HERE TOO, there is no one left alive who can remember the neighborhood nor anything related to it, at least beyond this small group, but no direct witnesses. We will NOT let any name that could vaguely remember, celebrate, grant, be cofused with or acknowledge THAT name (we are supressing), end up falling ontp a Star and into the Annals (double word) of Science!! Take it or leave it, it is yours and theirs risk, if you are not responsible for studying the stars, why anyone would let you NAME THEM? Sounds like an Authoritarian appointed title just in case...

Re:TL;DR something you claim is cogent...?

[Trogre]

But... but he did it first!

Re:Trump is wasting money with this

[Anonymous Coward]

Only off by 9 years. Impressive.

Science cannot control language

[azcoyote]

The ultimate stupidity of all of this is the misguided notion that language is simply rational, and that it can be defined beforehand in its rational character by a committee decision. The fact of the matter is that language is developed by use. It's stupid that we are told "a spider is not a bug because a bug is an insect and an insect has six legs." Who ever decided that a bug meant a thing with six legs? Certainly "insect" does, but "bug" has always in actual use meant just about anything small. We sometimes even call a germ a "bug." Likewise it's silly that we are told an American bison is not to be called a "buffalo." Again, it may not be what is more rightly called a buffalo, but Americans have been calling it a buffalo so long that it's more its name than "bison." It's just like how a jackrabbit is not really a rabbit but a hare. Normal human language was never designed to be a taxonomical system.

Instead of having a committee-accepted pure definition of "planet" beforehand, the scientific community needs to realize that people will call something a planet for reasons that have little or nothing to do with science. Live with it. Normal people need to be allowed to set the "pure" concept of planet aside as something to work with in its own proper context.

To that extent, I think this new recommendation could be good. The reason why is because it already conforms to an established language pattern; planetary geologists, they say, already consider (some?) moons to be planets. A broader definition should be taken to mean that some things can be considered planets in certain linguistic contexts and not in others.

Re: Science cannot control language

[Anonymous Coward]

Precise definitions of terms like "planet" or "moon" are crucial for performing science accurately. It happens all of the time and anybody who has submitted an article to peer review knows that committee-determined meanings really are enforced. The stupidity comes when non-scientific people feel obliged to control their own language based on scientific definitions. I'm an astronomer, but I don't correct people when they call Pluto a planet, because for their purposes it doesn't matter.

Taxonomy is always arbitrary

[sjbe]

Maybe stop changing arbitrary definitions.

Why? If the definitions already were arbitrary then what's wrong with changing them to a different variety of arbitrary? Especially if the new definition makes more sense. We're talking about taxonomy here, not some law of physics.

Frankly the term planet is probably too broad to be super useful by itself. It's kind of like a genus for space objects and we need to define the species. Jupiter and Earth are both considered planets but they aren't even remotely similar to each other aside from being big and round. Ganymede and Titan are both larger than Mercury and all of the dwarf planets. It's not entirely unreasonable to call them Moon Planets even if that seems a little odd to us currently.

People get WAY too attached to the word planet. It's just a word and it doesn't matter what we attach the word to as long as we are clear about what it means. If we want to call large moons a Moon Planet, why is that a problem so long as the definition is clear? We probably should call planets like Jupiter something different than planets like Earth. It's completely fine to have multiple categories of planets and I'm pretty sure we are going to find out that there are far weirder things in the universe than what is in our little solar system.

Re: Richard Feynman was an athiest

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious trolled is obvioused.

What's irrational about them?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a social species, all of those aid in the survival of the group. Hell, even vampire bats see benefits in truth and justice. You irrationally add "the american way", but maybe you have a definition of it that isn't just meaningless BS that would make it non-irrational.

As to the impact on your life from science, it's what means you're still alive, idiot. Can't think of a better method of having meaning in your life then actually letting you live it at this old age.

The problem with this new definition...

[swamp_ig]

That there's something sure big enough, and sure round enough, so your momma would have to be a planet too.

This needs to be put on hold for a while

[Anonymous Coward]

In all seriousness, we need to stop messing around with this for a bit.

We are living in a time of major discoveries -- today's TRAPPIST1 announcement is a timely example, but it'll really kick into overdrive once the James Webb scope is launched. And there's still the chance we'll discover that hypothetical big planet that's said to be there out beyond the Kuiper belt.

Once these sorts of discoveries start becoming routine and we start getting a real understanding of what kinds of objects a typical system contains, that's the point at which we should sit down and seriously discuss a new classification system for planets.

Trying to shoehorn Pluto into this category or that without the deeper knowledge of what the actual categories should be isn't going to help anyone; it just means we're doomed to be forever re-writing text books and making ourselves look silly.

So let's just leave it alone for now and come back to it maybe in ten years time. Right now, the whole thing just comes across as a really petty bun fight between people who ought to know better.

Re:Jesus saves

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave up my invisible friends when I was about 5, and so should you.

Re:Jesus saves

[Anonymous Coward]

DUDE, what's wrong with you? You typed an entire book over totally unrelated issues. This is supposed to be about the definition of "planet" and that's it. Save your religious crap for a religious thread.

Not going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuff said.

A liquid will always be at hydrostatic equilibrium

[Anonymous Coward]

Therefore it really doesn't make any sense calling something "big enough" when it can be a few mm across to fit your definition of planet.

Get over it, there was a vote, most people didn't care and didn't show up, and the experts who have to deal with it have decided on a definition that has a manageable number of planets people know as planets. Hydrostatic doesn't work because stars are in hydrostatic equilibrium. And all of them orbit Saggitarius A*..

Mike Brown was the Clown Responsible

[RobotRunAmok]

...for "downgrading" Pluto. He went on to write a snarky book, the title of which -- "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" -- tells you all you need to know about this self-absorbed douche.

Re:Mike Brown was the Clown Responsible

[Quirkz]

I find that title hilarious.

Re: Mike Brown was the Clown Responsible

[Anonymous Coward]

Your dumb. If he was self-absorbed he wouldn't have changed what qualifies as a planet so he could claim responsiblity for the discovery of more planets than any other person in history.

Is it obvious?

[Kludge]

Is the moon orbiting the earth? Or are the two orbiting each other as they orbit the sun?
In the case of the earth, the barycenter is within the earth. But the barycenter for Pluto and Charon is outside of Pluto...

Re:Is it obvious?

[ooloorie]

Is the moon orbiting the earth? Or are the two orbiting each other as they orbit the sun?
In the case of the earth, the barycenter is within the earth

You just answered your own question.

Re:Richard Feynman was an athiest

[belthize]

2+2 is equal to 5 for arbitrarily large values of 2.

I'll make you a deal, you get your god to stop being such a petulant ass and I'll give him the respect he deserves.

Everything round is a "planet" now.

[T.E.D.]

Here's the new proposal:

"A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape adequately described by a triaxial ellipsoid regardless of its orbital parameters."

If that's a little too jargony for you, their 'layman's version' is simply: "Round objects in space that are smaller than stars."

I don't know about this. By this really simplistic definition, not only are most moons now "planets", but so are a lot of asteroids and comets (of all sizes). Untold thousands of objects in our solar system will now become "planets". There's also no real clear dividing line on shape. What's the objective definition of "a spheroidal shape"? Even the Earth is far from perfectly round, so where's the line on jagged asterorids?

Under this definition, if I throw a marble out of the ISS, it will magically become a planet. Every loose ball bearing in orbit today is now a planet too.

Anyone who thinks this will return Pluto to its former special status, well, it does quite the opposite.

Re:Everything round is a "planet" now.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, only those who have sufficient self-gravitation (a function of mass) would be considered planets. Being round is not enough - it has to be round due to its own mass. No known asteroids or comets are sufficiently massive to fit the definition. The new definition would add as many as 45 or so bodies to the class of planet.

Re:Everything round is a "planet" now.

[T.E.D.]

OK, but what does "sufficient self-gravitation" mean? There's clearly no actual number objective number there, because if there were it should be calculable and put right in the proposal. They are hand-waving based on the empherical evidence that the body in question is roughly round.

So what they are saying is that a particular largish body that happens to be round may have originally had some outside help, but *currently* has sufficient gravitation to KEEP itself round (barring some collision with a large enough object), and that makes it a planet. And I can say the exact same thing about a marble.

Re:Jesus saves

[rgbatduke]

There are none who do not believe in Pink Unicorns! How can any man say, who has not travelled to the farthest end of the Universe, that Pink Unicorns do not exist? Indeed, anybody who says so secretly is claiming to BE a Pink Unicorn. Pink Unicorns hate fags and commies so you -- I'm talking to you, you apostatic Pink Unicorn believer wearing the halloween costume -- need to pass draconian laws punishing commies and let us arrest fags and send them against their will to a special school that will teach them to find only members of the opposite sex attractive, and then only within the bounds of holy matrimony. I'm talking about you, Robert De Niro and you, Billy Joel! You claim not to believe in the Pink One's Perfect Horn, but deep in your heart you have seen its Cornute Majesty as the twist in every spiral galaxy, especially those that radiate high in the Pink part of the spectrum.

DON'T BLAME ME, you anunicornists, if the great Pink Unicorn shows up one day and impales you on its Horn of Perfect Justice! It could happen! Seriously! You haven't BEEN to Alpha Centauri -- it could be liberally populated with Pink Unicorns for all you know! I have had a Holy Vision of Pink, and I Know! So sayeth the prophets, and everybody knows that people who wrote stuff down LONG AGO are always right and never made mistakes! Only that liberal commie activity known as "science" makes mistakes -- imagine, insisting on POSITIVE evidence for the existence of Pink Unicorns when the Holy Fathers among the ancients speak of "walking with the Unicorn" and tell of the many miracles performed by the Pinkest of them all. What more evidence do you need?

Oh, and by the way, pay no attention to the deluded fools in that cult over there who claim that Unicorns are not Pink, they are really Blue. Or that group -- Purple Dinosaurs (that walked with men back before the flood) are clearly right up there with Winkie-Tink, thinly disguised Faggery intended to corrupt the morals of our children and distract them from Pink! Besides, they have no evidence to back their claim, as clearly THEIR ancient prophets were just smelly old men who are lying to you to corrupt you. But the one true Pink Unicorn knows all and sees all, peering out from behind every rock and stone in the Universe, and...

What's that? Take your hands off of me, sir! I protest! Well of course I stopped taking that medicine! It was distracting me from my holy duty! I could no longer see Pink when I closed my eyes, my mortal body was in danger of being Holed and the prophets say that sinners who turn their back on the Unicorn will be trampled under hoof for all eternity! Let me go!

I will not be silenced! No! Don't put me in there! No! No! Not the needle! The TRUTH will soon be known! BEWARE, you foul, white jacketed sinners, the Unicorn that comes to trample you and everyone you love in the ni

What BS

[Maury Markowitz]

"To wit: a common question we receive is, “Why did you send New Horizons to Pluto if it’s not a planet anymore?"

I call BS on this.

So there's all these people out there who are aware that Pluto exists, and that it was demoted to non-planet, and that we're sending a probe there, yet these same people cannot figure out why we would send a probe there? And these same people are also *unaware* that we send probes to things like the Moon and various asteroids, let alone deep space?

Suuuuuuureee.

Re:Richard Feynman was an athiest

[rgbatduke]

Thankfully, God has made a way of escape through Jesus Christ, His Son (John 3:16). The choice is yours alone to make. Do you really believe that the Creator is âoeThe God who wasn't thereâ as atheists allege. Every watch has a maker, and I assure you that the universe has a Maker as well. It is not only improbable; but impossible that this universe just happened, let alone that it evolved from some chaotic explosion... A BIG BANG! Please, what a joke! Chaos never leads to order. Order can only come from careful planning and meticulous precision, which God has certainly accomplished. It is man that steals, kills, and destroys as Satan wants them too (John 10:10).

So let's get this straight. The Universe is a big, complex place that doesn't show the slightest evidence of actual design or intervention. You assert without proof that it must have been created, even though all the laws of nature based on observation are CONSERVATION LAWS that suggest that NOTHING has ever been created in the history of the Universe itself. Everything that you think of as being the "creation" of something is just preexisting stuff moving around. You have never observed one single thing actually being created -- or destroyed -- only the changing of forms of that which already is. In some very deep sense, your error comes from this -- you misinterpret the actual, literal meaning of the verb "to create" as it applies to every single actual thing you've ever seen or experienced. A potter does not "create" a pot, not in the sense you are using the term to refer to an act of a hypothesized deity. A potter reshapes preexisting clay to -- very temporarily, on a cosmic scale -- have the form of a pot. You are conflating your experience with pots -- one day not there, another day there -- to misapply common language to Universes, forgetting that you've never seen anything actually come out of nothing and have no reason whatsoever to think that it ever has.

This big, complex place, then, is supposed to be like that pot, something shaped by some intelligent hand. You assert it because (implicitly) nothing can have complex shapes unless intelligence produces them. If we ignore for the moment the fact that every snowflake that has ever existed or will ever exist refutes you -- complexity arising out of thoughtless matter interacting with remarkably simple rules -- and grant the premise, then you immediately encounter a consistency issue and problem with recursion. The potter is without doubt more "complex" than the pot he creates. But that (according to you) is why we cannot view the pot as having been produced by a natural process, or the potter as being produced by a natural process. The Universe itself, with all of its apparently natural processes is really really complex, and complex things are NEVER to be found without being put there by intelligence that is even more complex.

If we ignore the long string of unprovable, unfounded assumptions (in most cases, assumptions that are easily refuted by actual examples in physics, chemistry, even formal mathematics) we find that your conclusion -- that God must exist to have been the greater intelligence that designed the Universe that -- through the pure unfolding of natural law -- evolved the potter that -- following the inevitable path of his life determined by those same natural laws -- appeared to "design" a pot that he then assembled out of some stuff that he dug out of the ground which was eventually sold, used for a dozen years, broke, and was then ground over centuries back into dust once again -- is inconsistent. God is more complex than the world, complexity only can happen through intelligent design, therefore God was intelligently designed, therefore God was designed and "created" by a still more complex God and isn't really God. There is no terminus to the chain thus induced -- any God you postulate must always have been "created" by a still smarter, still more powerful and more intellig

This is great news...

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously the plutonians have stopped their mining operation and started refilling the inner planet.

Pluto lobbyists at work

[mveloso]

This is a prime example of how money corrupts science. The scientist in question needs grant money, and he can't get it if Pluto isn't a planet.

Likewise, the citizens of Pluto now can't exercise their planetary rights because Pluto isn't a planet anymore. As a non-planet they aren't eligible for grant money designated for planetary authorities; they now have to get their monies from the less-funded "heavenly bodies" fund, which already has a waiting list.

The demotion has also caused issues with the accreditation of the various educational institutions on Pluto; the accreditation body only deals with planet or supergiant objects, by charter. All of Pluto's institutions need to be re-accredited, and until that happens credit transfers cannot be processed. When processed they will be processed at non-planetary rates.

Doesn't seem that hard

[cmdr_klarg]

To properly define what a planet is, I think you need to first define what a moon is.

Moon: a body that orbits another non-stellar body where the center of mass is within the larger body's radius.

Planet: a spherical body that is not a moon or star. Sub-groups include gas giants, terrestrials, minor planets, double planets, etc.

I'm probably missing some nuance or details but you get the picture.

How Is Any of That Bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that like it's a bad thing. How is 15 planets a bad thing? How is 100 planets a bad thing?

Science discovers stuff. Discovered stuff often has unknown parameters or attributes. Do we "have" to know everything, the instant we discover something? How? Why?

Your whole post reeks of post-hoc justifications. You also seem to have a basic resistance to, if not fear of, the scientific process. Why?

I don't care if our Solar System ends up with 15 planets, or 100, or 1,000! It's irrelevant, so why do you keep bringing it up? Is the Solar System not "big enough" for 100 planets? Jeez, your points are pointless!

Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was settled science!

Re:Pluto: Kick me all you want, but ... I'll be ba

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you actually want a real rule? Then how about any large body that directly orbits a sun? Now, define large: diameter, atmospheric pressure (Do we call it a planet if it doesn't have an atmosphere?) "weight", mass, temperature, internal composition, a definable surface or what-not AND remember to define exactly what a sun is and we're done.

Okay, I'll submit a hypothetical object with an orbit like Sedna, but while Sedna's ranges from 76 AU to 936 AU away from the sun, this object will be moved closer - 1 AU to 860 AU.

When it's near perhilion, the object has an atmosphere.

When it's near aphelion, the object lacks an atmosphere.

According to your definition, this object is a planet at some times and not a planet at other times.

Prez

[Anonymous Coward]

If the president says it's a planet it is.

But Ceres and Pluto are dwarf planets?

[Uranium Willy]

But Ceres and Pluto are dwarf planets, how does that not make them planets? Adding moons that are large enough to be round as planets makes sense. But it also makes sense to differentiate between any old round body and one that is the major body within its orbit.

Beating a dead horse

[Chalnoth]

During the IAU meeting which categorized Pluto as a dwarf planet (or plutoid), there were two competing definitions. One of them was functionally identical to this definition. It was struck down.

and Pluto could soon be back

[Anonymous Coward]

and he's going to be pissed. Pluto will be taking names and kicking asses.

Calling the moon a planet

[GuB-42]

That's from the same guys who call oxygen a metal I suppose

Finally

[whitroth]

"Pluto is a planet! Equal rights for Pluto!" - alien from Pluto, award winner in the young fan division in the Masquerade at Worldcon 2008.

"Planetary Geologists"

[tedcloak]

That expression seems close to an oxymoron. Shouldn't they be called "planetologists"?

Re:Trump is wasting money with this

[Anonymous Coward]

About as accurate as your posts on libertarianism.

Re:Jesus saves

[syntotic]

Hey! Pink Unicorns exist! We already have plenty of planning to recreate them with **to the farthest star!** technologies! Have you not seen any videogames ever? It is a BILLIONAIRE FORTUNE for the first laboratory who manages to create small Pony like, naturally tame horses with pink crins and regrowable, breetle horn(s)! Well, the regrowable and breetle horn is sales pitch, but call them upgraded model and get the patents, copyrights, trade secrets and niche markeing ready. Just think of the possibiliities to play Chase the Unicorn, and keep your unicorn horn collection as memento! Should they be sold the size of small dogs... But anyway, any idea what these symbols mean: âoe , â and â" ? I am at odds at producing accents in my plain US keyboard Windows keyboard wuthot falling into acrobatics, though I ll admit I shun draconically all weird drawing alpha-bets from my system. Maybe a UNIX source? Perplexing, because his reduction ad absurdum is surreal, It was already said: Thour Art Gods, a basic tenet, which feeds back the solution of the problem to YOU individually. Now, where did you say is Pluto?

Re:Trump is wasting money with this

[syntotic]

New Horizons is a homeless shelter that is or used to be under a bridge outside some central bus station, not Grand Central Terminal, which features tables and chairs to sleep on and one meal in the nights, in NYC. Is that what you mean? Because relating Homeless to Clinton in an Internet forum about Astronomic Science can only be pure coincidence. Are you sure Clinton is well and alive? Everything OK?

Re:Trump is wasting money with this

[silentcoder]

New Horizons is also the name of the satellite that sent those pretty pix of Pluto last year.

Re:Jesus saves

[rgbatduke]

You mean to say Pink Unicorns COULD exist -- if we build them -- and I agree. And they could exist even if we don't. For a long time, Europeans thought that there were no black swans because they'd never seen any. They were wrong -- they just hadn't looked in the right place. Now we would say that there are no paisley dayglo multicolored swans because we've looked everywhere that one could reasonably find swans, we've catalogued swan DNA, we understand the process of evolution that gave rise to swans and the artistic human process that produces paisley and concluded that they are pretty much orthogonal, and concluded that it is very, very,.... very unlikely that there are swans whose natural feather color pattern is a riotous mix of dayglo colors arranged in perfect swirls against (say) a dark blue or violet background. But not impossible. It is likely that SOME DNA pattern, possibly intercalated from peacock DNA and then hacked a bit, could produce an animal with 99.99% Swan DNA -- morphologically a swan -- that naturally expresses paisley on its feathers. Maybe even an animal that could breed true with other swans.

As for Shetland Ponies with horns -- it's a lot easier to just drill their skulls under anesthetic and install a screw-in socket that will accept a spiral horn. Or an iron plate that one can attach a rare-earth magnetic horn to without any break in the skin. Pink dye is a lot easier than recombinant DNA. One could do that "tomorrow", if one didn't have to contend with those silly animal cruelty laws, and it isn't clear that they'd protect the pony even from this insult if the result didn't really hurt them...

Now try to do the same thing with God(s). That's why I (sarcastically) suggest that they aren't really even conceivable. Humans imagine God by:

a) Taking a purely human concept, such as that of a Human Despot (Lord, King, Emperor). They say to themselves "Hey, Lords are pretty powerful, but Kings are more powerful. And Emperors are even more powerful -- Kings of Kings as it were. I therefore can understand the sequence from me = not powerful, to my feudal lord = more powerful, to my king = still more powerful, to my emperor = most powerful in the worldly realm as an ordinal set in "power".

b) Adding other concepts -- artist/creators from me (fingerpainter) to a high school art instructor, to a modern artists who is well enough known to get shows in museums and galleries, to the Renoir's, Da Vinci's, Picasso's of the world -- an ordinal set in "creativity"; dumb as a post (e.g. farm animals), to a high school graduate, to a college graduate, to brilliant mathematicians and physicists e.g. Einstein or Ramanujan -- an ordinal set in "knowledge" or "reasoning ability".

c) Extrapolating the set. Suppose we imagine a being that is more powerful than any other being as the limit of this ordinal set. Same being is also more creative, more knowledgeable, more intelligent, more compassionate, more loving... name any positive ordinal quality, imagine a being with that quality, extrapolate to a hypothesized most whatever of that quality, possessing perfection in that quality, all with conjunctions, so that they are the most loving and most just. Don't worry too much if the two qualities are consistent, that in some sense one cannot be the most just (giving people what they deserve) and the most loving (NOT giving people what they deserve but rather what they want) -- just keep your thoughts vague enough that they don't have to confront any contradictions and imagine each "most" quality one at a time.

d) The result is God. God is bigger than the biggest, hence larger than the Universe. He is smarter than the smartest, so he knows EVERYTHING. He's more creative than the most creative, indeed anything that exists was created by God; even my fingerpaintings are really God's fingerpaintings, planned out in complete detail to the subatomic scale long before I was born. He's perf