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- DesireCampbell, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23I'm just worried that, losing Pluto, the 'end' of the solar system with be called 'Uranus'.
- ScarHawk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15"pluto the dwarf-planet?"
In other news, Xena, Sedna, and Ceres have been renamed Dopey, Grumpy, and Sneezy, respectively. - kbarrett, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Will they or won't they? The suspense is killing me.
;) - ziemkowski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12No, actually, Pluto wasn't even identified until 1930. It hasn't even been called a planet for a century and it somehow makes it immune from revision?
This is science, science revises itself from time to time.
I can only imagine how many people had sentiments for a flat earth and likewise refused to accept the reality of the universe. - apocalizer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10The U.S. should just nuke the hell out of Pluto and end this stupid debate. That'll put the fear of God into our enemies too!
- BritishGolgo13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Seeing as how Neptune is further away from the sun than Uranus, I don't see that happening.
- transfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7While I think this is a better turn of events than last week "plutons" direction, the whole question is really off base. In the old days everything in the sky that wasn't in the Celestial Sphere (eg. the stars) was a planet. That included the Sun. Obviously when we finally realized that the Sun was the central object and not the Earth, the Sun was no longer one and the Earth became a planet instead. And that is all there is to it. Every object orbiting our Sun, and by extension any other star, is a planet. That's it. No problems. No controversy. Earth is a planet. Pluto is a planet. Ceres is a planet. Even the Moon is a planet. Of course to talk about these planets it helps to divvy them up into categories. Hence:
Traditional Planets - The nine planets we've been using.
Major Planets - The 8 "region dominating" planets (Traditional minus Pluto)
Gas-Giant Planets - Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune
Terrestrial Planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
Satellite Planets (Moons) - Planets regionally controlled by other planets.
And so. We can divvy them up any way that is useful. Trying to stuff the word "planet" into some type of canned lawyer-esque techno-speak does science a disservice and will only lead us right back to the same debates in the future - mfaith, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Yeah, but for quite a while, astronomers thought the earth was the center of the universe, and everything revolved around it. Revisions can be made to more accurately present a system. I think it's good that they are more properly defining what a planet is. Pluto should not be considered a true planet.
- danwhite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Neptune is the last planet before Pluto.
- Massif, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Why can't we just live on Battlestar Galactica?
- Manhigh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Its either a body part, or its made of urine. You're screwed no matter how you pronounce it.
- Alphateam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6They better demote it.
I can't wait to hear the decision!!! - SonnyW, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Time to pack your bags and take the bus to the next solar system?
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Xenu is the evil spacelord that only scientology can rescue us from, duh....
- dietfluffy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@transfire
the problem is that definition of planet would emcompass even the smallest spec of dust in the solar system. we would literally have trillions of planets just in our own solar system.
astronomers today are trying to draw the line somewhere. - NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Sure, Pluto has been considered a planet for a long time...
Sure, it orbits the sun, even if it is an odd orbit...
But, then again, so does the asteroid belt. Originally very large objects in the asteroid belt were counted among the planets, and then, the rest of the belt was discovered. They lost their planetary status. Now, a similar thing is happening in the area of Pluto. Many objects the size of pluto are being discovered. And other objects nearby are actually sharing an orbit with Pluto. Why shouldn't the status change as we learn more about our solar system?
I mean, if we went with the established consensus and stuck with it, the earth would still be flat, and the center of the universe, circled by the sun. - nixr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"The issue has been forced on astronomers by the discovery of such a ball even larger than Pluto, nicknamed Xena by its discoverer, Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology. If Pluto is a planet, so should be Xena, Dr. Brown has argued."
That pretty much sums it up right there. The real motivation for changing the definition of a planet is so we don't end up with a planet called "Xena". Of all the names in the world Mike Brown chose to name his discovery after a friggin' TV show character. Dumbass. - airship, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You could argue that the gas giants are the only ones that really count, from a total mass standpoint, and that would mean the solar system only has 4 'real' planets. The little rocky ones are hardly worth noting.
In fact, one astronomer famously referred to our entire solar system as 'Jupiter plus debris'. - chadu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This is utterly craszy stuff... I dugg a similar story a few days ago... I really like what is going on in astronomy lately! Good to see some news here!
- mecole21, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4they were both dogs... goofy was just more advanced on the evolution scale than pluto...
- NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.
Er... My very educated mother just served us... nectarines? - SportBilly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Some moons have atmospheres
- EdwardsNH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Once I learned about all the other posible planets, and did some investigating on the Kuiper belt, I stopped thinking of Pluto as a planet.
Astronomers have been regretting giving Pluto that title for many years, but the cat had been out of the bag too long.
If Pluto was to be considered a planet, then there would have to be hundreds, if not thousands of other objects given that designation.
It seemed more reasonable to just leave Pluto with that tile, but leave it at that, and not designate any more small chunks of ice a planet (I do mean "small" in a relative sense). - SportBilly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Then we'd have 12 planets, not 11. Putos moon, Charon, would also be classified as a planet.
- tem2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5It makes sense to me. The ones named after Roman gods are planets and the one named after Mickey Mouse's dog is not.
- skeedawg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Touche blooms, touche! Well played!
- Langford, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What is to become of Mercury?
- Veritascitor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4First of all, Pluto's moon is Charon, not Ceres. Ceres is an object in the asteroid belt. Secondly, Charon does not orbit around Pluto. Both Pluto and Charon orbit around a point in space between the two (called the barycenter). This in itself is reason to not consider Charon a moon. Instead, Pluto and Charon are a binary object.
- A2TrueBlue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Obligatory Futurama:
Professor Farnsworth: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
Fry: Oh. What's it called now?
Professor Farnsworth: Urrectum. Here, let me locate it for you.
Fry: No, no, I, I think I'll just smell around a bit over here. - CiXeL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i think the reason for the fight is alot of people in the field knew the guy who discovered it or at least met him. i had a professor who said he wanted pluto to keep the planet status because he was the only guy he met who discovered a planet.
- OropheR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Planet or not, does it matter so much at the moment, we are not even on Mars.
- heffae, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The question is how large do you have to be to be a planet.
Actually your definition was basically the definition proposed earlier this week that was thrown out. Large being defined as having enough gravity that it was forced into a sphere.
(Personally I liked this definition) - Acrion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2planet: 1 b (1) : any of the large bodies that revolve around the sun in the solar system
Pluto is pretty big and revolves around the sun... oddly but it does.
moon: 1 c (2) : a natural satellite of a planet
Ceres (Pluto's moon) if it truly rotates around Pluto, then it can't be a planet if it is more specifically defined as something else. Right?
We have a (Webster) definition that works. Many things today are defined by history, why not /our/ planets. Didn't someone once say that "History is a set of lies agreed upon"?
Ref 1: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/planet
Ref 2: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/moon - ziemkowski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Did you not see the season finale? You want to live in _that_?
- transfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@dietfluffy
You have something against pebble planets? ;-) What if we discovered an intelligent life form on some distant pebble planet? Then what?
The point is lines are notorious for being crossed. If you can't draw a clean one then don't. Adjectives are a marvelous devices for clarifying subsets.
T. - RedSirus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thankfully, "Xena" is only the "planet"'s unofficial name, and will go no further than that. Dr. Brown's team has, of course, not submitted "Xena" as a possible name for UB313 (objects beyond Pluto, planet or not, have named after creation and underworld gods).
We will not have a Xena any more than we will have a Santa (2003 EL61) or an Easterbunny (2005 FY9) - KAZVorpal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Shaim is correct; this is nonsense for these alleged scientists to be wasting our time doing.
Such decisions shouldn't be made by arrogant bureaucrats getting together and trying to foist their decisions on the rest of the world, it should be by natural, popular consensus.
There is no such thing as an "objective" definition of "planet", because the word is, itself, an artifact of our ignorance. In reality there is only "satellite", anything in a stable orbit around another thing. We can break "solar satellites" into categories by adjective, like "gaseous" and "rocky", and "small, medium, and large", and "eccentric and "nearly circular", but to pretend there is some "objective" way to define what started out as a word for "the only stars which move around in the sky" is just silly.
Pluto is a planet because people think of it as a planet. For these arrogant nitwits to get a committee together and decide to tell the governments of the world to use their coercive education systems to force people to believe otherwise is the height of idiocy. They should be worrying about explaining why quazars emit impossible volumes of energy, and whether galaxies are held together by black holes or MECOs, and how to convince people that we'd all have access to space travel right now if it hadn't been nationalized for the past fifty years, that we need it privatized ASAP.
Not pimping all of this arrogant nonsense. - Langford, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with you, but Ceres is a tiny planet(asteroid, object, thingamajig?) that is between Jupiter and Mars. Charon is Pluto's main moon.
- darkstar949, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The new definition makes sense though - to be a planet (in non-scientific terms) you must be a) round, b) able to knock things out of your way, and c) not in orbit around something else. If you can't life up to those two requirements then you don't have enough mass to be a viable planet. If they do go with that scheme then odds are they could come up with another class of objects that school children would have to learn – and Pluto would be a part of those objects.
- Langford, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2At one point many years ago, there were 11 planets, and this was well before the discovery of Pluto (1930) or Neptune (1846). Some of those planets lost their "status" as planets, and are now virtually forgotten in schools. If Pluto looses it's planetary status, you can be sure that in future generations it will not be included in the textbooks of public schools. Most people in those generations won't even know that it existed.
- Sparebear75, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I guess we'll have to recall all those Pioneer and Voyager spaceships to redo the drawing of the solar system on all those gold discs now. ;)
- darkstar949, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, I could have phrased it better; but I doubt that they would have to learn the individual names of the new class of objects - just that they would have to be able to identify and define what the new class of objects is (i.e. A planet is blah, A moon is blah, a minor planet is blah).
- Spizzat2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually, sometimes Neptune is the furthest planet, including Pluto.
"For most of its 165-year orbit it is the eighth planet from the Sun, and occasionally the ninth because of Pluto's orbital eccentricity."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune - JackCroww, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought last week's definition of sufficient gravity to compress to a spherical shape was sufficient. We have paired stars that orbit a barycenter and we call them binary stars. Why can't we have binary planets? And, while it is highly unlikely that we'll ever find naturally occuring planets in Klemplerer rosettes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemperer_rosette), I can see perhaps finding planets that do share orbital distances, perhaps locked in each other's LaGrange points.
- kbarrett, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like your optimism.
- angusm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Geologists have objected to the use of the word "pluton", which already has a meaning in geology.
The question is, if not 'plutons', what should they be called? I never liked the idea of 'plutons', which sounds too much like bad '50s SF, but 'dwarf-planet' doesn't do it for me either.
We could go with a diminutive such as 'planetino', but then you have the problem of the plural ('planetinos', or 'planetini'?) 'Plutoids' ... 'subplanets' ... 'superplanetoids' ... 'microplanets' ... 'worldicles' ... 'plabs' ("Pluto-like astronomical bodies") ... 'slids' ("Spherical Lumps of Ice and Dirt") ... 'wannabeplanets' ... 'nuggets' ... 'nogratsos' ("no gravity to speak of") ... 'awas' ("asteroids with ambition") ... 'bubors' ("Big Ugly Balls Of Rock") ...
Anyone have any better ideas? - neuralnoise, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1>dwarf-planets
I think they prefer to be called "little planets", thank you! - k7leetha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1a planet must also be massive enough to clear other objects out of its orbital zone. Dr. Gingerich admitted, “They are in control of things.”
With that kind of logic, it would just be a matter of where the planets are placed. Mercury sure as hell couldn't knock Jupiter out of the way if it was close to that orbit. So if Pluto was in lets say Venus's orbit instead of Venus, it would be a planet. - toad3k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you want to know why now and not never, its because xena was just discovered and either we have 10 planets or we have 8 because xena is bigger than pluto.
There is no more putting it off now, the choice has to be made. It is about time they set it right, so ***** your laziness and go back to dipping my fries. - enola, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1PLUTO
Gender: Masculine
Usage: Greek Mythology (Latinized), Roman Mythology
Pronounced: PLOO-to [key]
Latinized form of Greek Πλουτων (Plouton), derived from πλουτος (ploutos) meaning "wealth". This was an alternate name of Hades, the god of the underworld. This is also the name of the ninth planet in the solar system. -
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