Unfortunately, the "There are nine planets, dammit, nine!" crowd would have collective aneurysms if we started classifying the Galilean moons as planets.
Even with this definition, there are estimates that we will end up with over 50 planets - the vast majority even further out than Xena.
Semantics, I mean. The IAU is attempting to maintain a logically consistent definition for a technical term of art which, unfortunately has an overlapping but divergent meaning in the public's mind.
This can happen a lot with scientific terms; psychiatric terms come to mind - "manic" and "psychotic" have technical definitions that are only vaguely related to what the public thinks those words mean...
Calling Jupiter a "failed star" is like calling me a "failed super model" - I mean, yeah, there's some similarities between me and a super model but it's extremely unlikely anyone would ever mistake me for one.
IIRC, Jupiter has only about 1% of the mass needed to achieve fusion, so it's a long, long way from being a star. I, on the other hand easily have ten times the mass required to be a super model.
Obviously, people care tremendously, which is why we ended up with this half-assed bandaid of a definition - which is an attempt to use a single word to describe three wildly divergent phenomena in a way that makes scientific sense and will pass muster with every pseudoscientist who thinks they have a right to an opinion on the matter.
The brutal truth is that there are at least three types of bodies that orbit the sun - rocky planets, gas giants, and bodies made up primarily of ices like Pluto and his friends. Lumping them together as a single thing is stupid; excluding bodies like Titan, Ganymeade and Europa from their "club" also makes little sense - but imagine bruhaha that would happen if astronomers simply stopped talking about moons and planets and started talking about rocks, gasballs and iceballs...
a sublight ship goes to the center of the galaxy and back, and when it returns the Earth has been moved to an orbit around Jupiter? (IIRC, we did it by mounting engines onto Neptune...)
The problem here is that people want things to be neat and tidy and to be able to say "planet are not moons and asteroids are not planets and Pluto is a planet because it just is!"
This is the same thing that happens every time a biologist mentions that "species" is a vague and arbitrary term.
It's kind of a race, isn't it? Eventually, the Earth will become tide-locked to the Moon and the orbit will stop changing. I wonder which will happen first?
I read the article and, in fact, know more about astronomy than you do. I know what the definition is, and I know what is being implied. If the Moon moves far enough away from the Earth, we become a double planet instead of a planet-satellite system. Since the Moon is, in fact, larger than Pluto that is perfectly appropriate.
What, with the speaking tours, book deals and all.
I'm sorry, but Wilson brought most of it on himself and, as far as I can see, has benefited from it. The Dixie Chicks weren't hounded out of anything, their fans simply stopped buying their records or listening to their music - which is hardly the same thing.
Those events are the same as what's been going on in Korea in the same sense that Charon is a planet - technically and, even then, barely.
You're one of those people who hears a pekinese yapping and screams "wolf", aren't you?
The article, supposedly written by the developer, says you can hook up a GPS through the PSP's serial port. Last time I checked, the PSP doesn't have a serial port...
In other words, when the Moon sufficiently escapes the Earth's gravitational pull, it will no longer be our moon.
How.... bizarre. It would be as if we stopped calling babies "babies" simply because they got older or stopped calling lakes "lakes" just because they dried up!
As someone who wrote Java programs professionally, the write-once-run-anywhere hype is just that, hype. Even now, Java apps don't look or run the same between OS X, Windows and Linux.
And as someone who writes Linux device drivers for a living, I assure you my problems with DVDs were a lot deeper than the pseudo encryption.
Standards are only the "key" if everyone standardizes their hardware, too. Which, come to think of it, is the main advantage of Macs.
couldn't do something so simple as using a file manager.
Believe it or not, iTunes hides the Shuffle from Windows. If you plug a shuffle into a machine that doesn't have iTunes installed, it will appear as a drive.
At least, mine did when I first got it. Maybe newer ones are different?
Yeah, it's the peripherals. It was the constant fussing with Linux patches just to watch DVDs, or to do USB that drove me to give OSX a try when it first appeared, back in the day.
But virtualization can change that. The ability to run Linux or Mac OS X or Windows as a virtual machine on top of Linux, or OS X, or Windows is a huge win. It means that you can have your cake and eat it, too - you can use what ever OS you need to run the app or connect to the peripheral, then switch back to the OS you'd rather use for whatever it is you need to do next.
making a public shaming a part of a legally determined punishment for a crime and allowing people to randomly persecute individuals on the basis of rumors that the police have actively denied.
Ten years ago you would get this kind of harrassment (from authority figures, but not on the PC) because you were young and didn't feel like getting killed in some endless insane war.
You might want to check your calendar. I don't remember the USA being in a war in 1996. Or young people being harassed into quitting their jobs, dropping out of school and moving because they didn't want to volunteer for military duty.
25 years ago you would get this ship if your were anti-war, gay, negro (the term at the time for African-American), Spanish-speaking, or cannibus friendly.
25 years ago was 1981. I'm pretty sure that the term "negro" hadn't been used for at least 15 years before that. In addition, the United States wasn't in any wars in 1981, either.
150 years ago you would get this ship if your were anti-war, gay, negro (the term at the time for African-American), Spanish-speaking, Jewish, Irish, or female.
This is like shooting fish in a barrel. I defy you to produce any evidence that in 1856 American citizens were hounded out of their homes for the crime of being female.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough.
Till Galileo made it a generic term. Pity no one thought to maintain the trademark.
Unfortunately, the "There are nine planets, dammit, nine!" crowd would have collective aneurysms if we started classifying the Galilean moons as planets.
Even with this definition, there are estimates that we will end up with over 50 planets - the vast majority even further out than Xena.
Semantics, I mean. The IAU is attempting to maintain a logically consistent definition for a technical term of art which, unfortunately has an overlapping but divergent meaning in the public's mind.
This can happen a lot with scientific terms; psychiatric terms come to mind - "manic" and "psychotic" have technical definitions that are only vaguely related to what the public thinks those words mean...
Calling Jupiter a "failed star" is like calling me a "failed super model" - I mean, yeah, there's some similarities between me and a super model but it's extremely unlikely anyone would ever mistake me for one.
IIRC, Jupiter has only about 1% of the mass needed to achieve fusion, so it's a long, long way from being a star. I, on the other hand easily have ten times the mass required to be a super model.
Obviously, people care tremendously, which is why we ended up with this half-assed bandaid of a definition - which is an attempt to use a single word to describe three wildly divergent phenomena in a way that makes scientific sense and will pass muster with every pseudoscientist who thinks they have a right to an opinion on the matter.
The brutal truth is that there are at least three types of bodies that orbit the sun - rocky planets, gas giants, and bodies made up primarily of ices like Pluto and his friends. Lumping them together as a single thing is stupid; excluding bodies like Titan, Ganymeade and Europa from their "club" also makes little sense - but imagine bruhaha that would happen if astronomers simply stopped talking about moons and planets and started talking about rocks, gasballs and iceballs...
a sublight ship goes to the center of the galaxy and back, and when it returns the Earth has been moved to an orbit around Jupiter? (IIRC, we did it by mounting engines onto Neptune...)
That's exactly the model we're working with.
The problem here is that people want things to be neat and tidy and to be able to say "planet are not moons and asteroids are not planets and Pluto is a planet because it just is!"
This is the same thing that happens every time a biologist mentions that "species" is a vague and arbitrary term.
Because the IAU's definition is only talking about secondary bodies, not solar orbits.
It's kind of a race, isn't it? Eventually, the Earth will become tide-locked to the Moon and the orbit will stop changing. I wonder which will happen first?
Whatever. So, if I use terms correctly, and some lamer doesn't understand them, it's my fault?
As the other reply to my comment indicates, apparently the jack where you hook up the PSP's "headphone remote" is actually a serial port.
I read the article and, in fact, know more about astronomy than you do. I know what the definition is, and I know what is being implied. If the Moon moves far enough away from the Earth, we become a double planet instead of a planet-satellite system. Since the Moon is, in fact, larger than Pluto that is perfectly appropriate.
I did not know that. Thanks.
What, with the speaking tours, book deals and all.
I'm sorry, but Wilson brought most of it on himself and, as far as I can see, has benefited from it. The Dixie Chicks weren't hounded out of anything, their fans simply stopped buying their records or listening to their music - which is hardly the same thing.
Those events are the same as what's been going on in Korea in the same sense that Charon is a planet - technically and, even then, barely.
You're one of those people who hears a pekinese yapping and screams "wolf", aren't you?
The article, supposedly written by the developer, says you can hook up a GPS through the PSP's serial port. Last time I checked, the PSP doesn't have a serial port...
In other words, when the Moon sufficiently escapes the Earth's gravitational pull, it will no longer be our moon.
How.... bizarre. It would be as if we stopped calling babies "babies" simply because they got older or stopped calling lakes "lakes" just because they dried up!
As someone who wrote Java programs professionally, the write-once-run-anywhere hype is just that, hype. Even now, Java apps don't look or run the same between OS X, Windows and Linux.
And as someone who writes Linux device drivers for a living, I assure you my problems with DVDs were a lot deeper than the pseudo encryption.
Standards are only the "key" if everyone standardizes their hardware, too. Which, come to think of it, is the main advantage of Macs.
couldn't do something so simple as using a file manager.
Believe it or not, iTunes hides the Shuffle from Windows. If you plug a shuffle into a machine that doesn't have iTunes installed, it will appear as a drive.
At least, mine did when I first got it. Maybe newer ones are different?
Yeah, it's the peripherals. It was the constant fussing with Linux patches just to watch DVDs, or to do USB that drove me to give OSX a try when it first appeared, back in the day.
But virtualization can change that. The ability to run Linux or Mac OS X or Windows as a virtual machine on top of Linux, or OS X, or Windows is a huge win. It means that you can have your cake and eat it, too - you can use what ever OS you need to run the app or connect to the peripheral, then switch back to the OS you'd rather use for whatever it is you need to do next.
Why, just the other day I was talking to a guy who had to quit his job and change his phone number because he didn't like Bush.
making a public shaming a part of a legally determined punishment for a crime and allowing people to randomly persecute individuals on the basis of rumors that the police have actively denied.
Ten years ago you would get this kind of harrassment (from authority figures, but not on the PC) because you were young and didn't feel like getting killed in some endless insane war.
You might want to check your calendar. I don't remember the USA being in a war in 1996. Or young people being harassed into quitting their jobs, dropping out of school and moving because they didn't want to volunteer for military duty.
25 years ago you would get this ship if your were anti-war, gay, negro (the term at the time for African-American), Spanish-speaking, or cannibus friendly.
25 years ago was 1981. I'm pretty sure that the term "negro" hadn't been used for at least 15 years before that. In addition, the United States wasn't in any wars in 1981, either.
150 years ago you would get this ship if your were anti-war, gay, negro (the term at the time for African-American), Spanish-speaking, Jewish, Irish, or female.
This is like shooting fish in a barrel. I defy you to produce any evidence that in 1856 American citizens were hounded out of their homes for the crime of being female.
You need to put down the bong and pick up a book.
42,000 people file formal complaints with the police and you consider that "a few anecdotes"?
only for hysterical raisins.