As far as I know, the question of whether Jupiter is producing energy through some core fusion or fission process remains unresolved. Jupiter might well be reclassified as not a planet, but as a dwarf brown star.
So perhaps we are in a binary star system.
Furthermore, the Earth's orbit is so strongly perturbed by the Moon that the time of perihelion shifts over more than 24 hours from year to year, depending on where the Moon is in its orbit on Jan 3 through 5. This is an angular variance of about 1 degree, which would be obvious to any outside observer capable of resolving the Earth, Venus, and Mars. They would almost certainly list the Earth - Moon pair as a binary planet.
So perhaps we are on a binary planet in a binary star system. It pretty much all depends on how you look at it. And science progresses when a large number of different models are all considered. It does not progress when the IAU attempts to shove one particular model, and one that has not been very well constructed, into everybody's head.
Spirit of Galileo, save us from those astronomers who have been educated beyond their level of intelligence.
Adding a new categorization scheme to an existing taxonomy makes a lot of sense. But destroying an existing system that is very much being used to distribute still valid knowledge to students and others with an interest but no experience as yet in the field-- that is a classic sin of hubris.
Actually working astronomers do a lot of lab work. They do spend a good bit of time refining theoretical models, but a lot more time working out ways to test those models with existing laboratory equipment. Some of that equipment is now in orbit and much of the remainder is in "observatories". You know, research laboratories with telescopes instead of microscopes.
Astronomers are also a very resourceful bunch who are continually looking for ways to test their theories against laboratory observations that have already been done. If you can find what you need to test a hypothesis in last year's download of Hubble material, or the digitized images of telescopic photos taken in the 1930s, that still counts as laboratory research.
One possible reason for calling the active members of the IAU "pseudo-scientists" is because they have shown a propensity for public behaviors that have long been associated with persons who have been educated beyond the level of their intelligence. That is not possible for a true scientist, who necessarily works from a carefully nurtured basis of self-doubt.
The IAU's attempt to redefine very active nouns in living languages, which if it were even possible would be within the scope of action of linguists and not astronomers, is the most glaring example of their failure to grasp the basic principles of the acquisition and distribution of knowledge. They could instead have developed some neologisms to go along with their new taxonomy, but no, rather than doing the astronomical equivalent of defining "quarks" with "charmed", "top", "bottom" and "strange" qualities, they attempt to redefine existing language and shove that down every school child's throat.
This is not what scientists do. Scientists are involved in developing new ways of looking at reality that provide new insights into how things might actually work. Scientists do not set out to destroy the mechanisms of intelligent discourse just because it would be so gratifying to tell others that "we are right and you are wrong because we have made new words that say that is so". That is the childish act of someone who thinks they can exercise the authority of their position. But there are no authorities in Science; Science is based on empiricism alone, not on what anyone with an alphabet soup after their name might say is so.
Of course I could be wrong. There are many other reasons why the active members of the IAU should be called pseudo-scientists, and the OP may have meant one of those instead.
If the Earth was not present, the Moon would continue in its present orbit about the Sun, so it meets the other major criterion for planet status.
You have some 'tense' mistakes near the end.
Yes, if the Earth was not present, then yes the Moon would then be a planet.
But that isn't the case. The Earth is present, so the moon does Not match either definition of planet right now.
The verb tenses in the sentence of mine that you quoted above are precisely correct. It is the failure of the reader to grasp the concept described that has caused him to regard them as mismatched.
Either a planet is a planet or it is not. If it is a planet when some external conditions exist, then it cannot miraculously change to not being a planet if those external conditions are not present. Much as the IAU would like that to be the case.
What the IAU have come up with is an absurd logic where you can make direct measurements of any object in relation to its nearest star and be unable to say whether that object is a planet until you have also looked at its potential relationships with every other object that is also near the same star. Any clauses in a definition of planet that make reference to objects other than the object in question and its nearest star have no place in determining whether the object is a planet or not. Such matters are definitely important in describing the object's relationships with other objects in that star system, but that is an entirely different matter. That is a thing of celestial mechanics, with no direct impact on the planetary sciences (geology, chemistry, biology, etc).
Returning to the point at hand, the Moon's intrinsic properties are sufficient to have cleared its orbit about the Sun even if the Earth did not exist. That is the only part of the IAU definition that stands up to serious scrutiny. So the tenses as I used them in the above quote are in fact correct: since the Moon would be considered a planet if it had no relationship with the Earth, it is, under the only parts of the IAU definition that have validity, still a planet (that happens to be in a binary relationship with another planet).
This suggests that several of the larger satellites of Saturn and Jupiter are probably also planets under the valid parts of the IAU definition. That might actually make sense in terms of the planetary sciences: these objects are massive enough to have layers-- atmospheres, oceans, stratified lithospheres-- with active geologic and chemical systems. And it might even make sense with regard to Jovian moons, since as we learn more about what is happening within Jupiter, we may want to drop it from the list of planets and put it in the category of dwarf brown stars. Which would make the Solar System a binary star and the Jovian moons planets of Jupiter (under any definition).
But my basic point is that the IAU has not advanced science at all with its self-serving venture out of its area of expertise in its attempt to change the common language. Someday this will be used as a classic example of the errors of hubris that happen when a group that has been educated beyond the level of their intelligence attempts to impose its limited point of view on the wider community.
Would it have been so hard for these guys to come up with some brand new label for their new scheme of classification? Physicists were able to get away with absurd labels like "quarks"-- both "charmed" and "strange"-- are astronomers suddenly lacking in that kind of vision? There was once a time when astronomers enriched the common discourse with excelllent new terms like black holes, blue stellar objects, quasars, and a bunch of other neologisms. Can they not do that any more? Can they no longer come up with something new to label the "large objects orbiting stars that we think are interesting" group?
Or perhaps the IAU thought that redefining the common language would get them more publicity. Everyone knows
Meaning, apparently, that "they" (interesting that there has been a change from "we" to "they") used a dictionary or thesaurus or some other tool developed by linguists. Or perhaps "they" (probably means the IAU) even phoned a linguist or maybe emailed one and asked a question or two. In any case, either "they" did not pay the linguist enough to get him to bring his full attention to the matter at hand, or "they" did not get their money's worth. Or perhaps "they" did get good advice, but with their lofty far-seeing view of things, "they" decided to ignore such miniscule details.
How hard would it have been to construct a neologism for "big thing orbiting a star that is kind of interesting" and leave the word "planet" alone? Apparently that is much more difficult to reason out than the IAU is capable of handling.
I cannot reconcile the rest of the post with what I know about the way this new proposed terminology came into existence. There are however a couple of things that are very clear:
1. The Moon has contributed considerably to clearing the orbital path of the Earth - Moon pair, as anyone with binoculars can see just by looking at the craters;
2. The evidence is clear that the Moon would have been capable of clearing its orbit around the Sun if it had been alone, so it meets the major new criterion for being listed as a planet;
3. If the Earth was not present, the Moon would continue in its present orbit about the Sun, so it meets the other major criterion for planet status.
The Moon meets all the appropriate tests for being a planet in its own right. Additionally, any observer outside of the solar system who is capable of resolving Venus and Mars would recognize the Earth - Moon pair as a binary planet: each one being a planet in its own right. IAU is not only wrong-headed in its efforts to pervert the common language, it is logically inconsistent in applying its new terminology.
As an aside: in our quest for exoplanets that might harbor life, we should pay particular attention to any other binary planets we find, especially if they are within or near the Goldilocks zone. Life is much more likely to develop if there is a stirring rod mixing the brew.
First, you could, and probably should, have coined some new word to distinguish your eight "interesting" objects from everything you do not find interesting. That is what most scientific confabs do, and it would have been the sensible thing for a bunch of astronomers to do. But instead you chose to do the stupid thing and muck about in a field of study that not a single one of you have any degrees or expertise or even experience in. I am quite confident that there were no astronomers who know anything at all about linguistics involved in the decision to redefine "planet". Nor had any of you stupid stupid yokels bothered to bring in a linguist (or any other language expert) as you decided to alter the language.
Second, you also got the thing wrong. If you were going to be self-consistent, then as you excluded Pluto from your list of planets, you would also have had to elevate the Moon to planet status and accord the Earth - Moon pair the unique distinction of being a binary planet system. For not only does the Moon have a significant effect on the Earth's orbital mechanics (try calculating the date and time of perihelion without taking into account the Moon's phase in early January), anyone who has spent a day at a beach knows that the Moon is also a stirring rod that has a profound influence on a multitude of Earth's systems.
Which is a pretty damn hokey and arbitrary distinction. The Earth's orbit is significantly affected by the Moon's gravitation: its path around the Sun is sinusoidal, quite far from a true elipse, far enough that the locations of perihelion and aphelion shift from year to year depending on the Moon's phase in early January and early July, and these points cannot be predicted without accounting for the Moon's influence.
The points of perihelion and aphelion of the barycenter of the Earth - Moon pair can be predicted using the same simple formula that works for all the other visible planets, plus Uranus and Neptune. But the Earth itself is sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes closer to the Sun, sometimes further away than the barycenter, all due to its partner's influence. That is the mark of a double planet, not a planet that has a Moon.
That the most unique feature of the Earth, the presence of our kind of life, could not have come about without the Moon's action as a constant stirring rod is an entirely separate and equally valid argument for regarding the Earth and Moon as parts of a binary planet system.
While the intention of putting the blame on human error might be to let the technology shine unblemished, this is just the latest large example that nuclear power generation requires a lot more attention to safely engineering the incredibly failure-prone human component than has ever been done.
We know people and organizations screw up. And we know that the only safe way to prevent that is to put in place very expensive and very inefficient mechanisms of checks and balances between different groups of humans who have very different value systems. Nuclear power cannot be done safely until coalitions of grandmothers interested in the best thing for their grandkids and tree huggers interested in the best thing for the ecosystems have veto power over engineering and financing proposals... and over decisions about daily maintenance.
We can probably do this. Some of the various governments in the USA (city, county, State, and Federal) almost work this way. But safe, long term power from fissionables is not going to come about without this kind of oversight.
And not all the interest would need to spent, either. Only enough of the previous year's investment income has to spent to continue to qualify as a tax exempt charity-- the rest of that year's income can, in the case of Bill and Melinda's Foundation, be folded back into the ever increasing investment portfolio. And choosing where to invest all that money can have a significant effect on some industries. Which, if past personal history is any indication, would be of great interest to Mr. Gates. He is still a man with a vision, who would like to change everyone's world into the shape that he thinks is best.
Unless, like the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation, the point of your charity is to give away some small part of your investment earnings so that you can avoid paying more in taxes on the whole of your earnings. It is true that these tax shelters are also called "charities" but as Honest Abe once pointed out, if you choose to call a dog's tail a leg, that does not mean you have a dog with five legs. To be blunt, calling a tax avoidance scheme a charity does not make it something other than a tax avoidance scheme, especially when the "good works" contributions are necessary incidental expenses to the main point, which is to use the massive investment portfolio as a big club to beat the industries of interest into the shape you want.
I too use both both my.yahoo (I like its news service) and iGoogle (my primary search engine). In my opinion, each one is the product of a more reputable company than any of the.msn offerings. I'm a pragmatic ethicist: I prefer to do business with companies that are less likely to screw me over.
Until Microsoft dumps its current CEO there is no reason to consider any of their products if there are any reasonable alternatives. It is not that I think all the evil is bound up in that one potty-mouthed monkey dancer; it is that his continued presence at the helm is a clear indication of a deep and pervasive "screw your partners and clients for fun and profit" attitude within the corporation. His continued presence is an excellent litmus test for evil within that corporation. At the moment, there are reasonable alternatives for every product that Microsoft offers.
I live in Oregon. It is not suitable for refugees from the Flood.
Eastern Oregon lacks the water supplies needed to support any more people than it already has. In fact it probably has too many already, there are indications that too much is being drawn out of the aquifers. Western Oregon has plenty of water, and with the weather changes that go hand in hand with a rise in sea level, it will have way too much. The Willamette Valley will lose the dams that are critical to preventing its frequent flooding. When those go, so goes the railroads and the highways... and a lot of neighborhoods. Oregon will be doing all it can to handle the needs of its own refugees.
I believe Washington State is in the same situation.
I suggest that Flood refugees from east of the Rockies seek shelter in the church or synagogue of their choice.
Too right, Not to mention that the coastal flooding will increase inland rainfall, and there will be refugees from flooded neighborhoods of cities on the Missouri, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers who will need to resettled, too.
If only all that water would just stay in the oceans.
It will not, of course. That one foot rise is going to flood a lot of marshes. Which will act like big evaporation trays, adding a lot more humidity to the air. And water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere, driving increasing, albeit localized, greenhouse effects. But that is not the main point here.
The main point here is that all that water vapor is not going to stay in the air. It is going to come down as rain in the hills. That one foot rise in sea level is going to turn small streams into large creeks and large creeks into raging rivers.
Aside from what used to be 100 year flood plains becoming flooded every decade or so, you can expect whatever part of your economy depends on truck or rail transportation to become much more expensive and less reliable as bridges and roads wash away.
What we can expect as the Gulf of Mexico expands is much more moist air blowing into the central region of the country. Northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas: there will be a long, hard rain a-coming. The Missouri and Mississippi River drainages have not had to deal with that kind of wetness for quite some time: expect that the rivers will change course and not pay much attention to human contrivances like dams and bridges when they do so. Decisions will need to be made about which interstate highways and railroads should be kept open, because nobody would tolerate the tax burden needed to keep everything in repair.
Oh, wheat fields will become rice paddies, the cost of steak and hamburgers will go way up as feedlots shut down (directly from flooding but also the loss of cheap transport of feed), gas and diesel will become very expensive (much of the USA refinery infrastructure will be lost to floods).
On the bright side, some of the younger slashdotters may live long enough to see the return of shallow fresh water seas in eastern Colorado and Kansas. Of course travelling to some place where it rains 370 days a year would not be much of a vacation.
Yes, a one foot rise in sea level might cause some economic harm.
I am comfortable with the distinction between "hard" sciences where it is often possible to use the scientific method without reliance on statistical analysis of results, and "soft" sciences, where statistical analysis is critical to determining the findings of most experiments.
But I do not understand at all how mathematics can be considered any kind of science within this context.
Mathematics is not based on experimentation; empiricism has no place in its derivation. Every branch of mathematics is based on assuming postulates and deriving rules from those postulates. Certain postulates and rules seem to reflect what is going on Out There, and those are highly useful in both the hard and soft sciences, but that is an application of maths within a particular domain and has nothing to do with what the maths themselves are. On rare occasion, experimental results suggest that a different set of postulates or changes in the rules might better reflect what is Out There, but that is not a "math is science" thing; that is merely a change in which kind of math is more appropriate for that given field. Never does a field of application invalidate the maths that are applied to it; the most that ever happens is that those in the field decide that some other maths would work better for them for some reason.
So are these undergraduate courses teaching mathematics, or are they teaching the application of mathematics in certain fields? Probably since they are undergraduate courses, what they should be teaching is a mixture of both. A little on what the pure maths underlying the bell curve are, and then how the bell curve can be used in chemistry to isolate a main reactive pathway from the noise of incompleted or low probability reactions. Or in psychology to determine the norms of group behavior.
"It's not rocket science, you know. Hell, it isn't even sociology" --Barbara W.
A laser system that can deflect even a very small asteroid is also going to be one heck of an accurate lidar system at lower power. It makes sense to explore laser systems. In fact it makes sense to build a low power lidar system as soon as possible, so that risks can be identified while there is time enough to find a Bruce Willis to neutralize them.
If high power lasers are developed, they could be added into the system later. We might even know at that point how many and what type of high powered laser we will need.
Agree with parent and grandparent posts. The juvenile Heinlein stories are a good place to start. The only real problem is in remembering whether with that author it is "i before e" or the other way around.
My suggestions would be to start with _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_, then the one with the Lumox, I do not recall the title but someone here will. _The Rolling Stones_, of course. _Door into Summer_ would be good in a year or so, but not one of the very first books.
Andre Norton also wrote several juveniles that would be good for his age. One was titled _Plague Ship_ or something like that (it is no where near as dark as the title suggests).
If you want to take the time, Hal Clement's _Mission of Gravity_ would be an excellent introduction to hard science scifi. You will need to read it with him in short, digestible settings, probably with the keyboard in reach so that you can also show him how to use Google, Wikipedia, and so forth to explore some of the physics involved. The story is as engaging as the Sinbad The Sailor stories; the science is as solid as it can be.
I cannot offer any citations since the research I did on plague was back in the day before Internet and if I kept the notes I have lost track of where they might be. But as I recall there was strong evidence that bubonic plague and pneumonic plague were the same bacterium; that the only difference was in the mode of transmission. If bubonic plague got to the lungs, y. pestis was dispersed in aerosols as the victim coughed, and inhalation of the bacterium would assure a lung infection. This mode of transmission can be very deadly, with onset of symptoms, including cough, in hours and death within one or two days.
I live in Oregon, where we have a documented case of plague every couple of years. At the time I read up about plague I was studying to be a Registered Nurse, and would occasionally see a doctor's order for a blood test to rule out plague.
the ability of bacteria to exchange genes, even between different species of bacteria.
This is a good time to remind everyone that the whole concept of different species is an intellectual model that we have found to be convenient in simplifying reality enough that we can understand it, sort of. We might all be in agreement about where the lines are between different species, but that does not impose any limitations on the reality Out There: it might be this way, or it might not.
Most of the time the taxonomy of species, genus, phylum, etc is a good enough model to be useful. But when it comes to things that can affect inheritance of traits, it is important to remember that what we have is just a model, and is certainly wrong at some of its edges. With activities like prophylactic antibiotics and genetic engineering of food crops the species model just does not work. A more conservative, and saner, way of looking at antibiotics in cattle feed and GM corn is that we are monkeying with the genetics of an entire ecosystem, not just the target "species".
At this level the concept of "species" is just wrong. In fact it is worse than wrong, it is entirely inappropriate.
Someone needs to read up on epigenetics, and then think about the implications this has for their model of genetic inheritance. Especially for a species that utilizes cultural inheritance along with genetic inheritance.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I know, the question of whether Jupiter is producing energy through some core fusion or fission process remains unresolved. Jupiter might well be reclassified as not a planet, but as a dwarf brown star.
So perhaps we are in a binary star system.
Furthermore, the Earth's orbit is so strongly perturbed by the Moon that the time of perihelion shifts over more than 24 hours from year to year, depending on where the Moon is in its orbit on Jan 3 through 5. This is an angular variance of about 1 degree, which would be obvious to any outside observer capable of resolving the Earth, Venus, and Mars. They would almost certainly list the Earth - Moon pair as a binary planet.
So perhaps we are on a binary planet in a binary star system. It pretty much all depends on how you look at it. And science progresses when a large number of different models are all considered. It does not progress when the IAU attempts to shove one particular model, and one that has not been very well constructed, into everybody's head.
Spirit of Galileo, save us from those astronomers who have been educated beyond their level of intelligence.
Adding a new categorization scheme to an existing taxonomy makes a lot of sense. But destroying an existing system that is very much being used to distribute still valid knowledge to students and others with an interest but no experience as yet in the field-- that is a classic sin of hubris.
Actually working astronomers do a lot of lab work. They do spend a good bit of time refining theoretical models, but a lot more time working out ways to test those models with existing laboratory equipment. Some of that equipment is now in orbit and much of the remainder is in "observatories". You know, research laboratories with telescopes instead of microscopes.
Astronomers are also a very resourceful bunch who are continually looking for ways to test their theories against laboratory observations that have already been done. If you can find what you need to test a hypothesis in last year's download of Hubble material, or the digitized images of telescopic photos taken in the 1930s, that still counts as laboratory research.
One possible reason for calling the active members of the IAU "pseudo-scientists" is because they have shown a propensity for public behaviors that have long been associated with persons who have been educated beyond the level of their intelligence. That is not possible for a true scientist, who necessarily works from a carefully nurtured basis of self-doubt. The IAU's attempt to redefine very active nouns in living languages, which if it were even possible would be within the scope of action of linguists and not astronomers, is the most glaring example of their failure to grasp the basic principles of the acquisition and distribution of knowledge. They could instead have developed some neologisms to go along with their new taxonomy, but no, rather than doing the astronomical equivalent of defining "quarks" with "charmed", "top", "bottom" and "strange" qualities, they attempt to redefine existing language and shove that down every school child's throat.
This is not what scientists do. Scientists are involved in developing new ways of looking at reality that provide new insights into how things might actually work. Scientists do not set out to destroy the mechanisms of intelligent discourse just because it would be so gratifying to tell others that "we are right and you are wrong because we have made new words that say that is so". That is the childish act of someone who thinks they can exercise the authority of their position. But there are no authorities in Science; Science is based on empiricism alone, not on what anyone with an alphabet soup after their name might say is so.
Of course I could be wrong. There are many other reasons why the active members of the IAU should be called pseudo-scientists, and the OP may have meant one of those instead.
If the Earth was not present, the Moon would continue in its present orbit about the Sun, so it meets the other major criterion for planet status.
You have some 'tense' mistakes near the end.
Yes, if the Earth was not present, then yes the Moon would then be a planet.
But that isn't the case. The Earth is present, so the moon does Not match either definition of planet right now.
The verb tenses in the sentence of mine that you quoted above are precisely correct. It is the failure of the reader to grasp the concept described that has caused him to regard them as mismatched.
Either a planet is a planet or it is not. If it is a planet when some external conditions exist, then it cannot miraculously change to not being a planet if those external conditions are not present. Much as the IAU would like that to be the case.
What the IAU have come up with is an absurd logic where you can make direct measurements of any object in relation to its nearest star and be unable to say whether that object is a planet until you have also looked at its potential relationships with every other object that is also near the same star. Any clauses in a definition of planet that make reference to objects other than the object in question and its nearest star have no place in determining whether the object is a planet or not. Such matters are definitely important in describing the object's relationships with other objects in that star system, but that is an entirely different matter. That is a thing of celestial mechanics, with no direct impact on the planetary sciences (geology, chemistry, biology, etc).
Returning to the point at hand, the Moon's intrinsic properties are sufficient to have cleared its orbit about the Sun even if the Earth did not exist. That is the only part of the IAU definition that stands up to serious scrutiny. So the tenses as I used them in the above quote are in fact correct: since the Moon would be considered a planet if it had no relationship with the Earth, it is, under the only parts of the IAU definition that have validity, still a planet (that happens to be in a binary relationship with another planet).
This suggests that several of the larger satellites of Saturn and Jupiter are probably also planets under the valid parts of the IAU definition. That might actually make sense in terms of the planetary sciences: these objects are massive enough to have layers-- atmospheres, oceans, stratified lithospheres-- with active geologic and chemical systems. And it might even make sense with regard to Jovian moons, since as we learn more about what is happening within Jupiter, we may want to drop it from the list of planets and put it in the category of dwarf brown stars. Which would make the Solar System a binary star and the Jovian moons planets of Jupiter (under any definition).
But my basic point is that the IAU has not advanced science at all with its self-serving venture out of its area of expertise in its attempt to change the common language. Someday this will be used as a classic example of the errors of hubris that happen when a group that has been educated beyond the level of their intelligence attempts to impose its limited point of view on the wider community.
Would it have been so hard for these guys to come up with some brand new label for their new scheme of classification? Physicists were able to get away with absurd labels like "quarks"-- both "charmed" and "strange"-- are astronomers suddenly lacking in that kind of vision? There was once a time when astronomers enriched the common discourse with excelllent new terms like black holes, blue stellar objects, quasars, and a bunch of other neologisms. Can they not do that any more? Can they no longer come up with something new to label the "large objects orbiting stars that we think are interesting" group?
Or perhaps the IAU thought that redefining the common language would get them more publicity. Everyone knows
So yea, they did actually reference linguists.
Meaning, apparently, that "they" (interesting that there has been a change from "we" to "they") used a dictionary or thesaurus or some other tool developed by linguists. Or perhaps "they" (probably means the IAU) even phoned a linguist or maybe emailed one and asked a question or two. In any case, either "they" did not pay the linguist enough to get him to bring his full attention to the matter at hand, or "they" did not get their money's worth. Or perhaps "they" did get good advice, but with their lofty far-seeing view of things, "they" decided to ignore such miniscule details.
How hard would it have been to construct a neologism for "big thing orbiting a star that is kind of interesting" and leave the word "planet" alone? Apparently that is much more difficult to reason out than the IAU is capable of handling.
I cannot reconcile the rest of the post with what I know about the way this new proposed terminology came into existence. There are however a couple of things that are very clear:
1. The Moon has contributed considerably to clearing the orbital path of the Earth - Moon pair, as anyone with binoculars can see just by looking at the craters;
2. The evidence is clear that the Moon would have been capable of clearing its orbit around the Sun if it had been alone, so it meets the major new criterion for being listed as a planet;
3. If the Earth was not present, the Moon would continue in its present orbit about the Sun, so it meets the other major criterion for planet status.
The Moon meets all the appropriate tests for being a planet in its own right. Additionally, any observer outside of the solar system who is capable of resolving Venus and Mars would recognize the Earth - Moon pair as a binary planet: each one being a planet in its own right. IAU is not only wrong-headed in its efforts to pervert the common language, it is logically inconsistent in applying its new terminology.
As an aside: in our quest for exoplanets that might harbor life, we should pay particular attention to any other binary planets we find, especially if they are within or near the Goldilocks zone. Life is much more likely to develop if there is a stirring rod mixing the brew.
First, you could, and probably should, have coined some new word to distinguish your eight "interesting" objects from everything you do not find interesting. That is what most scientific confabs do, and it would have been the sensible thing for a bunch of astronomers to do. But instead you chose to do the stupid thing and muck about in a field of study that not a single one of you have any degrees or expertise or even experience in. I am quite confident that there were no astronomers who know anything at all about linguistics involved in the decision to redefine "planet". Nor had any of you stupid stupid yokels bothered to bring in a linguist (or any other language expert) as you decided to alter the language.
Second, you also got the thing wrong. If you were going to be self-consistent, then as you excluded Pluto from your list of planets, you would also have had to elevate the Moon to planet status and accord the Earth - Moon pair the unique distinction of being a binary planet system. For not only does the Moon have a significant effect on the Earth's orbital mechanics (try calculating the date and time of perihelion without taking into account the Moon's phase in early January), anyone who has spent a day at a beach knows that the Moon is also a stirring rod that has a profound influence on a multitude of Earth's systems.
Which is a pretty damn hokey and arbitrary distinction. The Earth's orbit is significantly affected by the Moon's gravitation: its path around the Sun is sinusoidal, quite far from a true elipse, far enough that the locations of perihelion and aphelion shift from year to year depending on the Moon's phase in early January and early July, and these points cannot be predicted without accounting for the Moon's influence.
The points of perihelion and aphelion of the barycenter of the Earth - Moon pair can be predicted using the same simple formula that works for all the other visible planets, plus Uranus and Neptune. But the Earth itself is sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes closer to the Sun, sometimes further away than the barycenter, all due to its partner's influence. That is the mark of a double planet, not a planet that has a Moon.
That the most unique feature of the Earth, the presence of our kind of life, could not have come about without the Moon's action as a constant stirring rod is an entirely separate and equally valid argument for regarding the Earth and Moon as parts of a binary planet system.
this report points out the 800-pound gorilla in the corner, whistling past the graveyard, hoping to not attract attention.
What an incredibly bad mixed metaphor. This is a real Fukushima hash of a sentence. :-)
While the intention of putting the blame on human error might be to let the technology shine unblemished, this is just the latest large example that nuclear power generation requires a lot more attention to safely engineering the incredibly failure-prone human component than has ever been done.
We know people and organizations screw up. And we know that the only safe way to prevent that is to put in place very expensive and very inefficient mechanisms of checks and balances between different groups of humans who have very different value systems. Nuclear power cannot be done safely until coalitions of grandmothers interested in the best thing for their grandkids and tree huggers interested in the best thing for the ecosystems have veto power over engineering and financing proposals... and over decisions about daily maintenance.
We can probably do this. Some of the various governments in the USA (city, county, State, and Federal) almost work this way. But safe, long term power from fissionables is not going to come about without this kind of oversight.
And not all the interest would need to spent, either. Only enough of the previous year's investment income has to spent to continue to qualify as a tax exempt charity-- the rest of that year's income can, in the case of Bill and Melinda's Foundation, be folded back into the ever increasing investment portfolio. And choosing where to invest all that money can have a significant effect on some industries. Which, if past personal history is any indication, would be of great interest to Mr. Gates. He is still a man with a vision, who would like to change everyone's world into the shape that he thinks is best.
Unless, like the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation, the point of your charity is to give away some small part of your investment earnings so that you can avoid paying more in taxes on the whole of your earnings. It is true that these tax shelters are also called "charities" but as Honest Abe once pointed out, if you choose to call a dog's tail a leg, that does not mean you have a dog with five legs. To be blunt, calling a tax avoidance scheme a charity does not make it something other than a tax avoidance scheme, especially when the "good works" contributions are necessary incidental expenses to the main point, which is to use the massive investment portfolio as a big club to beat the industries of interest into the shape you want.
I too use both both my.yahoo (I like its news service) and iGoogle (my primary search engine). In my opinion, each one is the product of a more reputable company than any of the .msn offerings. I'm a pragmatic ethicist: I prefer to do business with companies that are less likely to screw me over.
Until Microsoft dumps its current CEO there is no reason to consider any of their products if there are any reasonable alternatives. It is not that I think all the evil is bound up in that one potty-mouthed monkey dancer; it is that his continued presence at the helm is a clear indication of a deep and pervasive "screw your partners and clients for fun and profit" attitude within the corporation. His continued presence is an excellent litmus test for evil within that corporation. At the moment, there are reasonable alternatives for every product that Microsoft offers.
I live in Oregon. It is not suitable for refugees from the Flood.
Eastern Oregon lacks the water supplies needed to support any more people than it already has. In fact it probably has too many already, there are indications that too much is being drawn out of the aquifers. Western Oregon has plenty of water, and with the weather changes that go hand in hand with a rise in sea level, it will have way too much. The Willamette Valley will lose the dams that are critical to preventing its frequent flooding. When those go, so goes the railroads and the highways... and a lot of neighborhoods. Oregon will be doing all it can to handle the needs of its own refugees.
I believe Washington State is in the same situation.
I suggest that Flood refugees from east of the Rockies seek shelter in the church or synagogue of their choice.
Too right, Not to mention that the coastal flooding will increase inland rainfall, and there will be refugees from flooded neighborhoods of cities on the Missouri, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers who will need to resettled, too.
If only all that water would just stay in the oceans.
It will not, of course. That one foot rise is going to flood a lot of marshes. Which will act like big evaporation trays, adding a lot more humidity to the air. And water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere, driving increasing, albeit localized, greenhouse effects. But that is not the main point here.
The main point here is that all that water vapor is not going to stay in the air. It is going to come down as rain in the hills. That one foot rise in sea level is going to turn small streams into large creeks and large creeks into raging rivers.
Aside from what used to be 100 year flood plains becoming flooded every decade or so, you can expect whatever part of your economy depends on truck or rail transportation to become much more expensive and less reliable as bridges and roads wash away.
What we can expect as the Gulf of Mexico expands is much more moist air blowing into the central region of the country. Northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas: there will be a long, hard rain a-coming. The Missouri and Mississippi River drainages have not had to deal with that kind of wetness for quite some time: expect that the rivers will change course and not pay much attention to human contrivances like dams and bridges when they do so. Decisions will need to be made about which interstate highways and railroads should be kept open, because nobody would tolerate the tax burden needed to keep everything in repair.
Oh, wheat fields will become rice paddies, the cost of steak and hamburgers will go way up as feedlots shut down (directly from flooding but also the loss of cheap transport of feed), gas and diesel will become very expensive (much of the USA refinery infrastructure will be lost to floods).
On the bright side, some of the younger slashdotters may live long enough to see the return of shallow fresh water seas in eastern Colorado and Kansas. Of course travelling to some place where it rains 370 days a year would not be much of a vacation.
Yes, a one foot rise in sea level might cause some economic harm.
I am comfortable with the distinction between "hard" sciences where it is often possible to use the scientific method without reliance on statistical analysis of results, and "soft" sciences, where statistical analysis is critical to determining the findings of most experiments.
But I do not understand at all how mathematics can be considered any kind of science within this context.
Mathematics is not based on experimentation; empiricism has no place in its derivation. Every branch of mathematics is based on assuming postulates and deriving rules from those postulates. Certain postulates and rules seem to reflect what is going on Out There, and those are highly useful in both the hard and soft sciences, but that is an application of maths within a particular domain and has nothing to do with what the maths themselves are. On rare occasion, experimental results suggest that a different set of postulates or changes in the rules might better reflect what is Out There, but that is not a "math is science" thing; that is merely a change in which kind of math is more appropriate for that given field. Never does a field of application invalidate the maths that are applied to it; the most that ever happens is that those in the field decide that some other maths would work better for them for some reason.
So are these undergraduate courses teaching mathematics, or are they teaching the application of mathematics in certain fields? Probably since they are undergraduate courses, what they should be teaching is a mixture of both. A little on what the pure maths underlying the bell curve are, and then how the bell curve can be used in chemistry to isolate a main reactive pathway from the noise of incompleted or low probability reactions. Or in psychology to determine the norms of group behavior.
"It's not rocket science, you know. Hell, it isn't even sociology" --Barbara W.
A laser system that can deflect even a very small asteroid is also going to be one heck of an accurate lidar system at lower power. It makes sense to explore laser systems. In fact it makes sense to build a low power lidar system as soon as possible, so that risks can be identified while there is time enough to find a Bruce Willis to neutralize them.
If high power lasers are developed, they could be added into the system later. We might even know at that point how many and what type of high powered laser we will need.
A REPUTABLE source is one who is in good standing with the puppet masters of the Republican Party. Obviously.
Agree with parent and grandparent posts. The juvenile Heinlein stories are a good place to start. The only real problem is in remembering whether with that author it is "i before e" or the other way around.
My suggestions would be to start with _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_, then the one with the Lumox, I do not recall the title but someone here will. _The Rolling Stones_, of course. _Door into Summer_ would be good in a year or so, but not one of the very first books.
Andre Norton also wrote several juveniles that would be good for his age. One was titled _Plague Ship_ or something like that (it is no where near as dark as the title suggests).
If you want to take the time, Hal Clement's _Mission of Gravity_ would be an excellent introduction to hard science scifi. You will need to read it with him in short, digestible settings, probably with the keyboard in reach so that you can also show him how to use Google, Wikipedia, and so forth to explore some of the physics involved. The story is as engaging as the Sinbad The Sailor stories; the science is as solid as it can be.
I cannot offer any citations since the research I did on plague was back in the day before Internet and if I kept the notes I have lost track of where they might be. But as I recall there was strong evidence that bubonic plague and pneumonic plague were the same bacterium; that the only difference was in the mode of transmission. If bubonic plague got to the lungs, y. pestis was dispersed in aerosols as the victim coughed, and inhalation of the bacterium would assure a lung infection. This mode of transmission can be very deadly, with onset of symptoms, including cough, in hours and death within one or two days.
I live in Oregon, where we have a documented case of plague every couple of years. At the time I read up about plague I was studying to be a Registered Nurse, and would occasionally see a doctor's order for a blood test to rule out plague.
the ability of bacteria to exchange genes, even between different species of bacteria.
This is a good time to remind everyone that the whole concept of different species is an intellectual model that we have found to be convenient in simplifying reality enough that we can understand it, sort of. We might all be in agreement about where the lines are between different species, but that does not impose any limitations on the reality Out There: it might be this way, or it might not.
Most of the time the taxonomy of species, genus, phylum, etc is a good enough model to be useful. But when it comes to things that can affect inheritance of traits, it is important to remember that what we have is just a model, and is certainly wrong at some of its edges. With activities like prophylactic antibiotics and genetic engineering of food crops the species model just does not work. A more conservative, and saner, way of looking at antibiotics in cattle feed and GM corn is that we are monkeying with the genetics of an entire ecosystem, not just the target "species".
At this level the concept of "species" is just wrong. In fact it is worse than wrong, it is entirely inappropriate.
More likely it will be some variant of the common flu, dispersed by air line passengers so that there are multiple points of origin.
Think about that the next time you are cooped up with a couple hundred other passengers at 30,000 feet and somebody sneezes.
Someone needs to read up on epigenetics, and then think about the implications this has for their model of genetic inheritance. Especially for a species that utilizes cultural inheritance along with genetic inheritance.