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

That's no moon by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-22 19:07 · Score: 3, Funny

oh wait, it is just a moon.

Re:That's no moon by quenda · 2017-02-22 21:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

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 by mysticgoat · 2017-02-22 22:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

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 by quenda · 2017-02-23 03:57 · Score: 1

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 by mysticgoat · 2017-02-23 05:17 · Score: 1

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 by dataspel · 2017-02-24 05:18 · Score: 1

So interesting, thanks!
Re:That's no moon by x_t0ken_407 · 2017-02-24 07:57 · Score: 1

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 by mysticgoat · 2017-02-24 18:46 · Score: 1

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 by RockDoctor · 2017-03-01 14:02 · Score: 1

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.

--
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:That's no moon by mysticgoat · 2017-03-01 22:47 · Score: 1

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 by RockDoctor · 2017-03-02 01:01 · Score: 1

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.

--
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:That's no moon by RockDoctor · 2017-03-02 01:03 · Score: 1

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

--
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:That's no moon by mysticgoat · 2017-03-02 16:03 · Score: 1

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 by RockDoctor · 2017-03-03 07:00 · Score: 1

"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.

--
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"

Pluto's back? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-22 19:19 · Score: 1

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

Re:Pluto's back? by dave420 · 2017-02-23 01:52 · Score: 1

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? by frovingslosh · 2017-02-23 02:41 · Score: 2

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.

--
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.

Maybe by sexconker · 2017-02-22 19:29 · Score: 5, Funny

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

Re:Maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-22 19:46 · Score: 1, Insightful

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 by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-22 21:01 · Score: 2, Funny

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 by sexconker · 2017-02-22 21:58 · Score: 1

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 by Rei · 2017-02-22 22:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

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

--
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
Re:Maybe by mysticgoat · 2017-02-22 22:53 · Score: 2

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 by mysticgoat · 2017-02-22 23:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

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 by stealth_finger · 2017-02-22 23:23 · Score: 1

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.

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Re:Maybe by arth1 · 2017-02-23 00:25 · Score: 1

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 by Nidi62 · 2017-02-23 01:09 · Score: 1

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.

--
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Re:Maybe by athmanb · 2017-02-23 02:45 · Score: 1, Insightful

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 by Rei · 2017-02-23 04:57 · Score: 2

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

--
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
Re:Maybe by phantomfive · 2017-02-23 06:38 · Score: 1

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.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Maybe by Rei · 2017-02-23 06:53 · Score: 1

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.

--
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
Re:Maybe by DarkSkiesAhead · 2017-02-23 07:57 · Score: 1

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 by Rei · 2017-02-24 01:42 · Score: 1

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.

--
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"

And what are the other terms? by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2017-02-22 19:34 · Score: 2

>> "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? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2017-02-22 21:01 · Score: 1

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...

--
Ezekiel 23:20
Re:And what are the other terms? by sexconker · 2017-02-22 22:02 · Score: 1, Flamebait

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? by silentcoder · 2017-02-22 22:22 · Score: 1

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.

--
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:And what are the other terms? by silentcoder · 2017-02-22 22:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

--
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:And what are the other terms? by MindStalker · 2017-02-23 05:15 · Score: 1

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 by ceview · 2017-02-22 19:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

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 by thinkwaitfast · 2017-02-22 19:44 · Score: 1

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 by Rei · 2017-02-22 22:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

--
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
Re:The definition is fine by Rei · 2017-02-22 22:41 · Score: 1

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.

--
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"

Back? It never left. by Gazzonyx · 2017-02-22 19:45 · Score: 1

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.

--

If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.

Re:Back? It never left. by dbIII · 2017-02-22 20:27 · Score: 2

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. by dbIII · 2017-02-23 01:27 · Score: 1

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. by phantomfive · 2017-02-23 06:43 · Score: 1

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.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Back? It never left. by thegarbz · 2017-02-23 08:50 · Score: 1

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. by phantomfive · 2017-02-23 09:19 · Score: 1

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.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Back? It never left. by thegarbz · 2017-02-24 08:17 · Score: 1

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. by phantomfive · 2017-02-24 09:45 · Score: 1

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.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Back? It never left. by thegarbz · 2017-02-24 10:42 · Score: 1

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. by phantomfive · 2017-02-24 11:13 · Score: 1

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.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

What's the point by nyri · 2017-02-22 19:46 · Score: 1

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

Re:What's the point by Black+Parrot · 2017-02-22 21:15 · Score: 1

What's the point of these taxonomical exercises? Like, who gives a fuck?
Those that do, and those that don't?

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re: What's the point by sexconker · 2017-02-22 22:08 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Wow by ShanghaiBill · 2017-02-22 19:49 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

how about the obvious definitions? by ooloorie · 2017-02-22 20:09 · Score: 2

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? by athmanb · 2017-02-22 21:04 · Score: 2

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? by athmanb · 2017-02-22 21:10 · Score: 1

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? by stealth_finger · 2017-02-22 23:36 · Score: 1

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

to this

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

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Re:how about the obvious definitions? by avandesande · 2017-02-23 04:05 · Score: 2

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

--
love is just extroverted narcissism
Re:how about the obvious definitions? by ooloorie · 2017-02-23 05:41 · Score: 1

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:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-22 20:20 · Score: 1

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

Pluto could soon be back by maroberts · 2017-02-22 20:22 · Score: 2

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

--

Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon

Makes Sense by djinn6 · 2017-02-22 20:23 · Score: 1

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 by Baron_Yam · 2017-02-23 00:51 · Score: 1

> 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... by Freischutz · 2017-02-22 20:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

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... by Nidi62 · 2017-02-23 01:16 · Score: 1

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.

--
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Re:Question... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2017-02-23 01:39 · Score: 1

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

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sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Re:Question... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2017-02-23 01:42 · Score: 1

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.

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sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Re:Question... by jbengt · 2017-02-23 07:27 · Score: 1

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

Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-22 20:26 · Score: 1

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.

In related news by BinBoy · 2017-02-22 20:26 · Score: 1

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

Pluto: Kick me all you want, but ... I'll be back. by grep+-v+'.*'+* · 2017-02-22 21:08 · Score: 1

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.

--
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?

Re:Moons a step too far by Black+Parrot · 2017-02-22 21:17 · Score: 1

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".

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:Trump is wasting money with this by silentcoder · 2017-02-22 22:11 · Score: 2

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

--
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *

Re:Pluto: Kick me all you want, but ... I'll be ba by sexconker · 2017-02-22 22:12 · Score: 1

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 by mysticgoat · 2017-02-22 22:43 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Jesus saves by stealth_finger · 2017-02-22 23:16 · Score: 1

TL:DR

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Science cannot control language by azcoyote · 2017-02-23 00:21 · Score: 1

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.

--
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.

Taxonomy is always arbitrary by sjbe · 2017-02-23 00:25 · Score: 1

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:TL;DR something you claim is cogent...? by Rei · 2017-02-23 00:59 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"

The problem with this new definition... by swamp_ig · 2017-02-23 01:01 · Score: 1

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

Re:Wow by MightyYar · 2017-02-23 01:10 · Score: 1

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.

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.

Mike Brown was the Clown Responsible by RobotRunAmok · 2017-02-23 01:39 · Score: 1, Informative

...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 by Quirkz · 2017-02-23 03:04 · Score: 4, Informative

I find that title hilarious.

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The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay

Is it obvious? by Kludge · 2017-02-23 02:39 · Score: 1

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? by ooloorie · 2017-02-23 05:35 · Score: 1

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 by belthize · 2017-02-23 02:46 · Score: 1

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. by T.E.D. · 2017-02-23 02:58 · Score: 1

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. by T.E.D. · 2017-02-24 02:28 · Score: 1

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 by rgbatduke · 2017-02-23 03:27 · Score: 5, Funny

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

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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.

What BS by Maury+Markowitz · 2017-02-23 03:58 · Score: 1

"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 by rgbatduke · 2017-02-23 04:09 · Score: 2

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

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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.

Pluto lobbyists at work by mveloso · 2017-02-23 04:47 · Score: 1

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 by cmdr_klarg · 2017-02-23 05:05 · Score: 1

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.

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THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!

Re:Wow by amicusNYCL · 2017-02-23 07:52 · Score: 1, Offtopic

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.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black

But Ceres and Pluto are dwarf planets? by Uranium+Willy · 2017-02-23 08:23 · Score: 1

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 by Chalnoth · 2017-02-23 08:53 · Score: 1

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.

Re:TL;DR something you claim is cogent...? by Trogre · 2017-02-23 12:27 · Score: 1

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.

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"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife

Calling the moon a planet by GuB-42 · 2017-02-23 14:37 · Score: 1

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

Finally by whitroth · 2017-02-24 05:23 · Score: 1

"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" by tedcloak · 2017-02-24 07:05 · Score: 1

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

Re:Jesus saves by syntotic · 2017-02-25 20:16 · Score: 1

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 by syntotic · 2017-02-25 20:23 · Score: 1

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 by silentcoder · 2017-02-26 06:08 · Score: 1

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

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *

Re:TL;DR something you claim is cogent...? by Trogre · 2017-02-26 12:46 · Score: 1

But... but he did it first!

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"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife

Re:Jesus saves by rgbatduke · 2017-02-27 04:20 · Score: 1

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

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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.

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

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