Search and Replace
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My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nothing
Gee, and all the fun we used to have finding new foods that started with 'P' that our moms could have served us nine of: Pickles, Pepperonis, Popsicles, Plums, Potatoes, Pimentos, Pizzas
<sigh>
So, now there are 8 planets and 1 dwarf planet. I'm still waiting for the ACLU to file suit against the International astronomers group that changed the definition citing the irreparable psychological harm done to Pluto in classifying it a "dwarf"
But, seriously, this isn't so much a new discovery (like finding out the Earth revolves around the Sun and not vice versa) as it is a change in definition. Imagine, if you would, if the group that decides how much memory is in a megabyte suddenly changes the definition to mean 1000 and not 2^10 (1024). Suddenly that new 16 GB machine you just bought becomes a 15.625 GB machine.
As such, I'm confident the definition will change again in 60-70 years and we will have 10 planets including Pluto and Xena.
-- J.T.
"I may not always know what I'm talking about, and you may not either."
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and the "We Were All Waiting For Someone To Say That" award goes to...
-- J.T.
"I may not always know what I'm talking about, and you may not either."
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What is going to happen when you explain to your 7 year old the changing of daylight savings where we will be changing the clocks one month earlier and one month later than before. Talk about a waste of time???!!!!
Job security for us IT folks I guess.
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Actually... 12 I think it what was slated. I think it was...
Mercury Venus Earth Mars (some jibberish) jupiter saturn uranus neptune pluto xena (some other jibberish)
of course, there wasn't as much news on the jibberish objects, but, they were still slated to qualify as planets, and now qualify as dwarf planets. Including the one in the asteroid belt that I believe is larger then pluto.
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Firstly: rather now than later
Secondly: if it's smaller than we previously thought, is it as far a way as previously thought?
Thirdly: we should change the classifcations for celestial bodies again please, preferably to: "habitable" (e.g earth) and "lump of inhospitable junk" (e.g. everything else known to man kind), this should make it quite clear. Don't get all depressed by the implications though: you can still sleep-in on sundays if you want to.
thoughtless scientists...
Max
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I have to agree. Although I can see that in some cases (whether the earth revolves around the sun versus the other way around), classifications need to be changed due to large differences, in this case I think Pluto deserves to keep its status as a planet. Or at least, that existing information should not need revision.
After all, as someone pointed out, Pluto's new designation as a "dwarf planet" still classifies Pluto as a type of planet. That is consistent with the fact that, say, Jupiter is a gas giant but is still considered a planet.
Also, there is probably a hole in the logic of the new system anyway. Apparently there are some moons bigger than Pluto. But those moons will not now become planets or dwarf planets, will they?
I have read that there was some discussion of this point as well, involving where the center of gravity is between a planet and a moon, but I still think that the pros and cons for Pluto as a planet are such a wash that they should just leave Pluto alone. I don't think the case is comparable to that of correcting a textbook to say the earth goes around the sun rather than the other way around.
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A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html -
For those interested. Here's the resolution. I know there was some discussion about what makes a moon, but, that wasn't part of resolution 5A.
RESOLUTION 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that "planets" and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:
(1) A "planet"1 is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape2 , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
(3) All other objects3 except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar-System Bodies".
1The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
2An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.
3These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.
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"has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit."..... thats somewhat vague.... comets pass through all orbits at some time or another... the period is the issue... also orbits are not neccessarily fixed... the mass of the sun changes and therefore affects it ability to keep planets (all of them9 or 20+) in orbit... sorry if my percision is too narrow...
but i'm emotionally affected by the fact that the brightest minds on our planet... can not come up with a more meaningful structurew to describe the objects... relatively speaking everything orbiting the sun is 'small'.
I could handle more specificity.... such as weighted planets... or a more formal classing structure....
planet saturn - class 2 - gas giant
planet Jupiter - class 1 - gas giant
planet pluto - class 2 or 3 - dwarf
planet mercury - class 1 - dwarf
planet earth - class 1 - mostly harmless
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appending said comment about everything being small... the astronomer's group's ego... seems to need to have some allowance for its planetary nature...
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"I just can't wait to try and explain to my 7 year old that last year we had 9 planets and now we have 8. "
Would you prefer to explain to him that the number of planets keeps changing every couple of years as another Trans-Neptunian Object is discovered?
And, if he went on to learn about the planets in any level of detail, would you prefer to explain why the Pluto/Charon system is so fundamentally different from the 8 classical planets?
Personally, I'd jump at that, but then, I love investigating information with an inquiring mind. Exploring through the reasons that Pluto doesn't belong in the same class as the planets might be a great way to introduce him to such concepts as Linnean classification (where groupings are made on the basis of common characteristics), set theory (Pluto is an element of the universal set of Solar System Objects, and of the subset spherical objects, and of the subset rocky objects, but not of Planets)... the list goes on. Suddenly, by introducing a discussion of the fundamental differences between Pluto's orbit and the planets' orbits, the concepts of gravity and Newtonian physics take on a whole new dimension. And no, he's _not_ too young to start thinking scientifically.
Also, the reason that Pluto was reclassified was that it didn't conform to the definition of a planet. In other words, it never really was a planet. But while it was the only odd-ball that we knew about, it was given the title of "planet" because we didn't want to bother defining a new class for one exception. But it is far better to stick with a fundamental principle of putting things in their proper scientific place, rather than where popular culture defines them. We might just as easily say, "We know that whales are really mammals, but we're going to go on calling them fish because we don't want to re-write any of the biology text books."
I'd say that once you realise that scientific understanding has been flawed in the past, correct it as soon as you can, so that errors and misconceptions are not propogated any further.
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C8H10N4O2
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Personally I am against it, but only because it suits me. Having just bought a house with an observatory in the back garden I shall take great delight in promoting my observatory demolition party as a hick kneejerk reaction to this debacle.
I was going to demolish it anyway.
On the upside it probably makes my real estate more valuable, what with there being less around now, at least in a marketing sense.
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I promise .. my last glib retort...
re
"I just can't wait to try and explain to my 7 year old that last year we had 9 planets and now we have 8. "
Just tell him it was a typo.
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alright one more... i say .. we destroy any objects that do not fit the classical definition. If its small enough to be nuked out of the solar system it certainly is not a 'planet'. wheres bruce willis or chuck norris when you need them.....
back to work...
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Interesting, thanks. But their definition still leaves some questions.
- What is the definition for "satellite" (see section 2d)? Perhaps it is explained in another resolution.
- Would they agree that saying "Pluto is not a planet" is technically incorrect, since it is a kind of planet according to their definition ("dwarf planet")? I think it would be better to call it simply a "dwarf "or simply a "planet."
See also this link, where the author states:
But the real problem is saying that "there are nine planets" in the solar system, as if this has any real meaning. As Hal Levison has said [in D. H. Freedman's 1998 article "When is a Planet Not a Planet?", Atlantic Monthly 281(2), 22], "it's very difficult to come up with a physically meaningful definition under which we'd have nine planets", because at least a half-dozen main-belt asteroids (along with several recently discovered transneptunian objects) are large, spherical objects that would also satisfy definitions of "major planethood" if sphericity is the criterion. Teachers will be doing their students a big service now to stop talking about total "numbers of planets" in the solar system as anything definitive, and rather discuss the solar system as a complex region with the following key components of both large and small objects....
I like that approach a lot. But I'm sure people who classify planets for a living would disagree.
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A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html -
"planet earth - class 1 - mostly harmless"
come on... all that classing, and not a single mostly harmless class M planet <kof>
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