Pluto Decision Meets with Frustration

fuzzybunny writes "The BBC reports that the IAU's controversial Prague vote on demoting Pluto from planet status was irregular. 'There were 2,700 astronomers in Prague during that 10-day period. But only 10% of them voted this afternoon.'" On a less serious note, lx writes "Nonplussed by Pluto's recent downgrade from Planet Status, Fox News's own John Gibson does an incredible Stephen Colbert impersonation to correct the 'revisionist history' of the IAU's decision. Exemplifying 'truthiness,' from the article: 'Long ago I learned it was a planet and I see no reason to unlearn it. Why should I?' "

Re:Considering...

[tygt]

They're apparently in a fairly stable orbital situation such that ne'er will their paths cross.

As such:

Pluto is locked in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune; i.e. Pluto's orbital period is exactly 1.5 times longer than Neptune's. Its orbital inclination is also much higher than the other planets'. Thus though it appears that Pluto's orbit crosses Neptune's, it really doesn't and they will never collide.

See this [nineplanets.org] for more.

Re:How about this?

[KiloByte]

Then why not Ceres and co?

They were called planets for quite a bit of time. There's a number of precedents for such demotion.

This is a change in definition, not in knowledge

[alienmole]

We stopped believing that the Earth is flat because better observations and measurements of the Earth contradicted the definition of "flat". However, what they're doing with Pluto is changing the definition of "planet". This is an entirely arbitrary process, and the definition they've come up with is entirely arbitrary. It has much less to do with science than with human psychology.

The people who want to stick with Pluto as a planet are at least as rational and justified in their belief as the people who want to change it.

Check it yourself!

[mangu]

Look in the 'dead tree file' "Astrophysics with a PC", by Paul Hellings. [willbell.com]

Item 4.7.3. "The case of Pluto and Neptune" explains why they will never collide, and gives the source code for implementing the simulation. Sorry, it's in BASIC, but you can easily reimplement it in Perl or Python, or whatever your favourite langage is, it's just one page of code.

Re:NASA's new mission: to set foot on a planet

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Jupiter is not a planet, because it has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit - it has asteroids at the Trojan points.
Earth is not a planet, because it has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit -- there exist Near-Earth asteroids and Earth-crossing asteroids. (One might argue that this is getting worse, what with all the space debris we keep flinging into near-Earth solar orbit).

To quote a response from Wikipedia: Even if you don't neglect the Trojan asteroids and other such objects, all the gas giants have cleared their orbits. The Trojans are at very specific points along Jupiters orbit that are defined by Jupiter's gravity. If Jupiter hadn't cleared its orbit they would not be restricted to those points. A massive body collects all bodies near it either into itself, its orbit, its L4 and L5 points with the sun, into resonant orbits, or it ejects them. Its just like cleaning your room. It doesn't mean nothing is in your room, but simply that it's all neatly put away.

Also, I highly recommend that you read this paper [arxiv.org].

Neptune and Pluto

[robbak]

As an interesting extension, it could be argued that Neptune has also 'cleared' its orbit. Pluto is locked into a 3:2 orbit with Neptune, and this is fixed by Neptune's gravity. Neptune has forced Pluto into a stable orbit WRT itself, and so has cleared its orbit.
Correct decision, IAU, well done

Re:9planets.org?

[Punchinello]

The guy that owns 9planets.org used his crystal ball and secured 8planets.org on 26-Jun-2006 12:32:54 UTC. He even hedged his bet by securing 12planets.org on 16-Aug-2006 07:28:43 UTC.

Re:Pluto

[ThreeE]

The vote on resolution 5A, which defines a planet and demotes Pluto, was about 400 to 20. The vote on resolution 6B, which would have defined Pluto-like objects to be formally called 'plutonian objects', went down by a close vote of 183 to 186.

Re:No reason to unlearn it?

[cptgrudge]

isn't that what religion is all about - that the "almighty" is absolute and no debate is allowed ?

On the contrary, I'm pretty sure that religion allows debate. Granted, there are tenets in a given religion which are to be adhered to, but people are allowed to ask questions. The exact "rules" as it is seem to be very open to debate and actually rather vague in some cases.

Look at how many different sects there are in all religions. People in the organizational structure are always arguing and debating over what He, She, It, They, etc. really meant when such and such command/parable/tidbit was imparted hundreds/thousands of years ago in a different language (translated multiple times in between). I figure that a "religion" that doesn't allow debate or questioning at all falls more under the definition of a "cult".

Re:A question of fairness and integrity

[meburke]

You have both made excellent points, and the only thing I disagree with is the process of "voting" being conducted the way it expressed itself in this particular case. I have a strong bias toward scientific consensus rather than scientific majority. The definitions and standards should be guided by the people most informed in the particular discipline, and accepted by a consensus of the people informed enough to understand the distinctions and arguments. (The politicization of the Theory of Evolution is a good example of what happens when this is not done, as is the experiences of Gallileo and Kepler.) I agree that (in this case) the voting process was, indeed, hijacked by a minor faction.

Re:A question of fairness and integrity

[drxray]

Having 15 different names for Mars doesn't work very well because you need to refer to the damn thing.

LOL. Most of the astronomical objects I study have about 15 names. See this one, for instance:
MRK 0586 aka KUG 0205+024 aka 2E 0526... [caltech.edu]

But voting on a definition of an unscientific word?
Scientists have their own definitions of words like force, mass, gravity, charge... now add "planet" to the very long list.

Re:No reason to unlearn it?

[FhnuZoag]

Oh, you missed that? Poor you... it was pretty hilarious.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1141096,00.h tml [guardian.co.uk]

The British Broadcasting Corporation was forced to pay up for its blatant anti-Americanism before and during the Iraq war. A frothing at the mouth anti-Americanism that was obsessive, irrational and dishonest.

The BBC - the "Beeb" - was one of the worst offenders in the British press because it felt entitled to not only pillory Americans and George W Bush, but it felt entitled to lie. And when caught lying, it felt entitled to defend its lying reporters and executives.

The incident involved the reporter Andrew Gilligan who made a fool of himself in Baghdad when the American invasion actually arrived in the Iraqi capital. Gilligan, pro-Iraqi and anti-American, insisted on the air that the Iraqi army was heroically repulsing an incompetent American military. Video from our own Greg Kelly of the American army moving through Baghdad at will put the light to that.

After the war, back in London, Gilligan got a guy named David Kelly to tell him a few things about pre-war assessments on Iraq's weapons programmes. And Gilligan exaggerated about what Kelly had told him.

Kelly committed suicide over the story and the BBC, far from blaming itself, insisted its reporter had a right to lie and exaggerate, because, well, the BBC knew the war was wrong and anything it could say to underscore that point had to be right.

The British government investigation slammed the BBC on Wednesday and a Beeb exec resigned to show they got it.

But they don't.

So the next time you hear the BBC bragging about how much superior the Brits are at delivering the news than Americans who wear flags in their lapels, remember it was the Beeb caught lying.

That's My Word.

Re:No reason to unlearn it?

[jc42]

People are just unfamiliar with the concept of namespace. I have no trouble in accepting that Pluto is a planet in the mainstream namespace and it is or isn't (I'm waiting until the dust settles and we get a decision) in the scientific namespace.

Another exemple of people not groking namespaces is the "it's just a theory" rethoric. Theory does not mean the same thing for scientists.

My favorite example of this is "quantum". A while back, I read a story about a company that had just had a "quantum leap" in income. My immediate thought was "It's news that their income went up by $0.01?" But, of course, the "leap" gave away that this was media speak, not physics speak. A physicist would have said "quantum jump", and it would have meant a change by one cent. But there are two different namespaces here. In the mass media, "quantum" means "a huge amount", while in physics it means "the smallest amount physically possible". Unless you understand that in these two namespaces the meanings of "quantum" are close to opposites, you can't understand what they're saying. In this case it's easier than usual, since people use either "jump" or "leap" to tell you which namespace they're using. Usually you don't get such a nice clue.

And, as others have pointed out repeatedly, "planet" really isn't a technical term in astronomy or astrophysics, so it has never needed a technical definition. It originated more in astrology than in astronomy, and originally included the sun and moon (but not the Earth). Astronomers mostly use it when talking to the media. So the "technical" question really is more along the lines of "When we're talking to non-scientists, which solar-system bodies do we refer to as planets?"

The term "dwarf planet"is sorta funny, because it acknowledges that Pluto can still be called a planet, but with a qualifier saying that it's significantly smaller than a real planet. This goes along with the phrase "minor planet" for objects like Ceres, Juno and Vesta, which astronomers usually call "asteroids".

Then there was the recommendation a while back from another IAU committee, to the effect that "planet" never be used without a qualifier. It's just too vague a term. Even with the media you really shouldn't be grouping Jupiter and Mercury into the same class. Scientists really shouldn't be that imprecise, not even when talking to journalists.

Catchy Jingles

[hempola]

Now we will all have to relearn the catch jingles we were taught in elementary school to help us memorize the planets.