Pluto Making a Comeback 439
anthemaniac writes "Space.com reports that the American Astronomical Unions Division of Planetary Scientists recognizes the IAU's authority to make a new planet defintion but expects it to be altered. Separately, 300 astronomers have signed a petition saying they won't use the definition. All this stems from the discontent over how only 424 astronomers voted on the proposal that demoted Pluto. Looks like this little dog is on the comeback trail."
waiting (Score:4, Insightful)
Pluto in School (Score:1, Insightful)
They wont be changing that basic lesson everytime there is a fight in astromy associations.
Re:Pluto in School (Score:3, Insightful)
Seen from outside, the solar system has two large gas planets (Jupiter, Saturn) and two small gas planets (Uranus and Neptune). If you look closely, you see two small rock planets (Earth, Venus), and various smaller debris, like Mars, Mercury and Pluto.
Regards,
--
*Art
Fuck the pissy "scientists" (Score:4, Insightful)
If they were real scientists, they'd accept the new designation. That's how science works. You modify your model of the universe as new information becomes available. Clyde Tombaugh found the first of an unknown class of objects because Pluto happened to be the closest and easiest to see. They just called it a planet because they lacked the information we have. But now we know about the Kuiper Belt, and have adjusted the definition of Pluto accordingly. Mode me a troll, but stop with the sentimental bullshit. Rather than :losing" a planet we've gained a whole new neighborhood of the Solar System to explore.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pluto in School (Score:3, Insightful)
There wasn't a definition before (Score:3, Insightful)
They didn't change the definition of a planet; there simply wasn't any precise definition of a planet before. As for all of you who want to keep with tradition, I'll refer you to my previous posting on this [slashdot.org].
If you've got a strong case why Pluto should be considered a planet, let's hear it. All this grumbling about "I don't see why they had to change things..." is rediculous. There wasn't an official definition before. That ambiguity had to change and when they drafted criteria, Pluto didn't make the cut.
GMD
Re:Pluto in School (Score:5, Insightful)
At least the shitty schools, anyway. Maybe your statement is an indictment on how shitty the school system is.. unfortunately, I don't think so. I understand your point that schools have alot of switching costs, and that the 9 planets concept has alot of inertia, but if scientists decide Pluto isn't a planet, then it's not a planet.. I expect my child's school to teach them that. I expect my child's school to teach my children about what real scientists do, and what real science is going on, and even about what real scientists are arguing about. Once scientists finally agree on what is a planet, and who the planets are, I expect my school to keep up. If science changes... schools are supposed to change with it. This idea that you shouldn't have to keep up with science because it's inconvinient... well, don't make me invoke the intelligent-design drama If you aren't going to teach kids the things that science agrees is correct, then what exactly _are_ you going to teach them? Whatever you feel like? Whatever you were taught?
What can the IDers take from this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I know that this whole planet thing is just taxonomy, but do they? Do the politicians really understand that, either?
Objective definition? (Score:3, Insightful)
They demote pluto because it hasn't cleared the neighborhood of its orbit because its orbit intersects the orbit of Neptune. But doesn't this necessarily mean that Neptune has not cleared its neighborhood and therefore is also not a planet?
What does clearing the neighborhood mean? To me it suggests the planet should have no moons either?
If you are going to make a big deal and change the definition of something like this you should put a heck of a lot of thought into creating a definition that is objective and not open to interpretation.
Re:waiting (Score:5, Insightful)
I am much happier thinking that astronomers are in a hole somewhere in the middle of the night staring into the sky adding to the human body of knowledge, then sitting in a giant auditorium fighting over meaningless bullshit and operating at the lowest forms of the intellectual discourse (semantics and sophistry... voting on definitions.. oh jesus). I liked it better when a bunch of people sitting in a giant room yelling and screaming about nothing and being otherwise useless was called Congress...
This is an argument over terminology. There is nothing of any value, at all, at stake here. This is so people can refer to planets and have it mean something, as a word. This is basically the equivalent of Webster writing down what a word means. This isn't even actual science.. it's just a bunch of people trying to formalize their industry's terminology to facillitate communication. The scientific value of a probe is going to be exactly the same if Pluto is a dwarf planet, a pluton, a planet, a really large Kuiper Belt Object, or anything else.
Just pick a god damm definition. I'm starting to think astronomers are doing this on purpose to get themselves alot of free press and airtime. Professors everywhere are making 6 minutes TV and radio spots to explain this stupid "controversy". It's semantics. Nothing more, nothing less.
Re:There wasn't a definition before (Score:1, Insightful)
You're one of the liberal simpletons who believe anything that Europe decrees must be better than anything developed or created in the United States of America or by following a democratic process. Go ahead and laugh out loud that the USA is stupid. The Department of Education forgot to list evolutionary biology as a course that can receive federal grants. A President uses "nucular" and maintains a strong faith which precludes reason and science. The USA is next to dead last on the list of countries which do not accept the theory of evolution. No one in the USA uses metric.
So now there's another point of ridicule, Pluto is the USA's planet!
How about thinking for yourself rather than being led along the primrose path by that ring through your nose? Have you put any critical thought into the most contentious part of the IAU's definition of a planet as to what constitutes a body having cleared its orbital path of debris? Do trojan asteroids count? What about NEOs like 99942 Apophis? Would a planet still be a planet if it was in the rubble-rich Tau Ceti system? In short, the entire redefinition of the properties of a planet was just a farce to push forward an agenda that a planet can only be so big.
By that logic, Luxembourg shouldn't be a country! Fuck Vatican City! Let's reclassify Latvia as a Tombaugh nation!
Open letter to all US scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
Humanity has arrived at an inflection point in our history, one whose influence will steer our course for decades, or, more likely, centuries. The post-millennial rise of both Islamic and Christian fundamentalism tears at the very skirts of the Enlightenment.
Your fellow citizens have twice elected an inarticulate and violent demagogue as President, a man who has expressed deep personal doubts [bbc.co.uk] about the validity of the scientific method and its relevance in America's primary-school classrooms. Three-fourths [biblicalrecorder.org] of the adult population profess a belief in angels; two-thirds [wnd.com] believe the Christian Bible is the literally-true word of their God. Over half [cbsnews.com] state that humans were created by God in their present form.
One American adult in one thousand [rrmtf.org] can state the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Meanwhile, to the elected representatives of this singularly-unenlightened population, you, America's scientists and engineers, have cheerfully handed control of several thousand thermonuclear weapons [cdi.org].
And now you're bickering endlessly about... whether or not Pluto is a planet.
Cut this shit out. Now. I don't want to live in another Dark Age, or worse, die upon the threshold of one.
Let Pluto be Pluto, whatever Pluto is, and let's put our heads together and figure out how to deal with the delusions we've created for ourselves here on Earth. We need intellectual leadership, not semantic panem et circenses.
Answers? Sorry; you're the scientists, I'm just some obviously-unlaid AC, ranting into the night on Slashdot's nickel. If I had any suggestions, believe me, I'd be making them, but I don't.
But come on. We've got to do something productive here.
Re:What can the IDers take from this? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, the option was to either demote Pluto and have 8 planets, or promote Xena and maybe others and have 10 - 12 planets. I think the correct decision was made.
Re:waiting (Score:5, Insightful)
What more information do we need about Pluto? There's lots to learn, but nothing that bears on the argument at hand.
You seem to think that "planet" is a word astronomer's agree on, and we just don't know enough about Pluto to say whether it is one. It's the other way around.
Despite the headlines, astronomers are not arguing over whether Pluto's a planet. They're arguing over the right way to define "planet". Pluto's relevent only because lots of people are used to thinking of Pluto as a planet, and don't want a definition that leaves Pluto out. But that's hard to do. There are millions of trans-Neptunian objects. If Pluto is a planet, than so are many of them.
I heard an interview with an astronmer who described our solar system as it would be seen by an alien arriving from outside. The first thing the alien would notice is the huge cloud of trans-Neptunian objects. Then much further in he'd see 8 planets. Or maybe he'd view them as 4 rocky worlds and 4 gaseous worlds. But in any case he'd differentiate all 8, which orbit pretty much in a single plane, from the TNOs, which form a sort of donut-shaped cloud. If he noticed Pluto at all, he'd definitely classify it with the TNOs.
Then suppose he met us, and we tried to tell him that Pluto isn't a TNO, it's a planet, just because it was discovered before the TNOs. He'd think we were being pretty arbitrary — and he'd be right.
Re:waiting (Score:1, Insightful)
Pluto's smaller than our moon. Is it a planet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Geez, you make it sound like they're just some random cranks who got together. This was a meeting of the IAU. Common human consensus had tomatoes as not being fruits and dolphins as fish before people sat down and came up with a consistent definition.
Pluto's essentially grandfathered in from a time when we hadn't yet found other objects in its size class. I hope you realize that Pluto is only about 2300 km across while our own moon is about 3500 km across. Are we in a double-planet system, or is there some logical reason you can think of for making a smaller object than our moon a planet while our moon is undeserving of the status?
I think it's high-time we demoted it as nothing more than an oversized trans-Uranic asteroid. I mean, it doesn't even operate on the same elliptic plane as the planets do and it has a "moon" that's half its size. The only reason anyone cares is a knee-jerk anger over having some childhood lesson overturned.
Definitions are important (Score:2, Insightful)
Much the same has happened with physics, chemistry, and astronomy. In chemistry, the term "dative bond [wikipedia.org]" has been all but replaced by alternative words. Some (older chemists) still use it, however it is a word that many disfavour. (And personally I prefer its use to some of the more clumsy longer names given.) In astronomy, "planet [wikipedia.org]" was originally the name given to "wandering stars," yet we still use the term planet to describe them. Admittedly a case could be made for changing our definition, but I think that subclasses are possily a better way to go. Most of us have accepted the term "Gas Giant [wikipedia.org]" for some time, and it in no way lessens the planetary status of such giants. Perhaps the idea of Dwarf Planets [wikipedia.org] will gain similar acceptance?
Frankly though, I am not entirely sure that size [wikipedia.org] is always the best way to categorize anything (despite our human inclination to do so)... perhaps composition or habitability might be better? (although this will be of limited use if we're never bother to visit them) I could easily be persuaded to describe pluto as an "icy planet"... or Earth as an "M-class planet [wikipedia.org]."
Re:Fuck the pissy "scientists" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:When they demoted Pulto (Score:5, Insightful)
When Aristotle pointed out that the Earth wasn't flat, it pissed off a lot of people. When Darwin published The origin of species, it pissed off a lot of people. When climate scientists pointed out the dangers of anthropogenic climate change, it pissed off a lot of people. When they found that Pluto, like Ceres, was within a belt of similarly sized objects, it pissed off a lot of people.
I suspect the reason these people were pissed off is because they can't fathom that new observations means that what they were taught before was wrong, and that the new information gives a better approximation of reality.
Re:Pluto in School (Score:3, Insightful)
I expect my child's school to teach my children about what real scientists do, and what real science is going on, and even about what real scientists are arguing about.
>>
Then why do you care about your school teaching *astronomy*? Here's everything anyone needs to know about astronomy: space is big and mostly empty. Every once in a while, you'll find a burning ball of gas. Every once in a very long while, some rocks of various shapes and sizes. We're not sure how space got here. Some people find space impressive. For the rest of your life, a couple billion of your tax dollars will be spent firing rockets into space to get a better look at the rocks. OK, that wraps up astronomy. Lets move on to chemistry, biology, physics, and other sciences which actually have an impact on the lives of human beings.
Americans can't stand losing out? (Score:2, Insightful)
So what do we have? A nation for which to win (keeping the planet they discovered) is more important than to have a good result overall (a solid definition of "planet" that's usable for the forseeable future). Unfortunately, they're the strongest bullies on the playground and they don't mind pushing the other kids around. Let's hope they don't buy the majority they need to get "their" planet back.
Can't admit defeat with style, have to bitch around, looking silly and pissing everybody else off. (sighs)
Re:Fine, then - have it both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
You're actually serious, aren't you? In what way exactly does it kick any ass? The metric systems covers lenght, volume, force... all consistent and based on one, single meter.
The "standard" (that is, the standard in the US and hardly anywhere else) is based on how many definitions for lenth etc.? How many pints of fuel are in a rocket? Would that be american pints or british dry pints or british liquid pints? How many inches go into a mile? Would that be a normal mile or a nautical one? How many ounces does a quibic yard or foot of water weigh at room temperature?
The so called (by you) "standard" system is a mess, historically grown and a nightmare to handle.
Re:waiting (Score:5, Insightful)
So? If there's more trans-Neptunian objects out there big enough to be called planets, our system has more planets. What's the big deal? There's nothing magic about the number 9 (or 8) as the number of planets. When Uranus was discovered, the number of known planets increased; it increased again with Neptune. If we find more planets out there, it will increase yet again. No big deal.
Scientists don't have a monopoly on "Planet" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What was wrong with the first suggestion? (Score:1, Insightful)
You would get them by the millions if you go by that definition.
What IAU wanted to do by adding the requirement of "clearing the neighborhood", was meant to bring in some lower limit to the size of the bodies considered planets.
Pluto-worshippers are now working to destroy that attempt at limit definition for emotional reasons, and having people accept some arbitrary limit by which Pluto would still be a planet, as would probably anything bigger than Pluto and thereby likely several hundreds of objects. We would end up with hundreds of planets in this starsystem alone, which is not very convenient when we clearly have a class of 8 much bigger objects. Maybe people would be more open to reclassifying the 8 classical planets as GIANT PLANETS, if they can't stand Pluto being called a dwarf?
Re:When they demoted Pulto (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The whole argument seems quite ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
that's pretty funny propaganda (Score:3, Insightful)
no, of course not, that's not logical. if i believe in idea x (evolution) and i believe in idea y (genocide), the fact that idea y is stupid/ wrong does not automatically mean idea x is stupid/ wrong. nor does it mean that if i believe in idea x, that i must also believe in idea y
get it?
but thank you for the humorous propaganda. it's always nice to see politically motivated lies and half truths making the rounds, convincing the gullible of ridiculous demagoguery and manipulating their emotions and acting on their prejudices
you know... like the nazis did
Re:waiting (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone at my house just took a vote - We unanimously voted that BeeBeard should send us all his money. And we don't want to hear about sour grapes, like "too few people voted to have any meaning" or "you didn't consider my input first".
The rest, I agree with. These guys have taken to arguing semantics, not a good sign for their future. However, I don't think most of us need to worry, because no one cares what they decide. Consider the definition of a "constellation" - Most of us consider things like the Big Dipper or Orion as constellations; astronomers call those "Asterisms" and refer to large nondescript (except by coordinates) parallelograms of sky as "true" constellations.
Scientific classifications change all the time... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid, there were Baltimore Orioles. Then they decided that they were really the same species as Bullock's Oriole and both of them got renamed the "Northern Oriole." Then molecular genetics studies suggested they were really all that similar and now there are Baltimore Orioles again.
My science teachers were old enough to remember when _their_ sciences teachers had said "There are ninety-two elements. There have always been ninety-two elements. There will always be ninety-two elements." And "elementary" particles? Don't get me started...
The horseshoe crab was Limulus polyphemus. Then it was Xiphosura polyphemus. Now it ''seems'' to be Limulus again... or is it?
Classification is prescientific activity. It's very important but it's always arbitrary and subject to change.
five planets (Score:3, Insightful)
Since then we've been discovering adding objects that aren't visible to the naked eye. This has taken the word out of the realm of normal folk and into the realm of science. But it's not science. It's a pretty much an arbitrary definition that really doesn't mean much to scientists one way or another - other than as a possible marketing opportunity for a pluto mission.
With the new definition of 8 (and with the old of 9) school children learn that there are 8 (or 9) planets. Why? Because the teacher said so. Yet when they dig deeper to learn about the other objects and why they aren't planets what do they find? That basically we just made up an answer that sounded like it might sound scientific.
In this day and age when science is trying to defend itself not only against the intelligent design crowd but also government funding agencies, it seems to me that this whole fiasco only makes things worse. Science claims to be the light, the truth, the way of trying not to fool ourselves. But I can't imagine this whole thing looks very "enlightened" to the general public. Probably looks more like the circus that it is.
So I say we should do science a favor and give the word back to the sky watchers and the sidewalk astronomers. Someplace where the word can actually be useful.
Devon
Re:waiting (Score:5, Insightful)
Originally the Sun and moon were classified as planets. Should we keep that definition for historic reasons?
What about all the round trans-Neptunian objects? 2003 UB313, Charon, Sedna, Quaoar, or the 1000 others? Should all those be planets as well? And if you're gonna include at least everything in the Kuiper belt, you might as well include all the round asteroids. And all the round Trojan bodies.
Shoot, while you're at it, why don't we just include every single comet in the Oort cloud? Then the solar system would have billions of planets. Take that 55 Cancri!
I don't understand why people have a hard time "letting go" of Pluto as a planet... It's floating in a cloud of objects, just like Ceres. And just like Ceres, once we discovered that it's just one of many (some even larger) in a belt of objects, it got reclassified. What's so freggin' hard to understand?
Re:waiting (Score:3, Insightful)
that ball of rock will be there wether we care or not
Re:waiting (Score:2, Insightful)
In the snow. Uphill. Both ways. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a picayune problem compared to the ones in zoological taxonomy.
Well, you know, if you applied the same standards for defining a species across the board... on the one hand half the species listed would become variants, and we'd have to consider making genus "Pan" part of genus "Homo". On the other hand, if we want to maintain the majority of the species listed as separate species then we'd have to deal with whether different races of man should be considered subspecies. And what a can of worms THAT would open up. All the racists in the world would come squirming out from under their rocks with their pet theories... but the fact is there's more difference between celts and saxons than between Urocyon Cinereoargenteus and Urocyon Littoralis.
In addition... it's not like astronomers actually need a definition of "planet". It's not a distinction that actually matters scientifically... the textbooks you're so dismissive of are probably the biggest reason there's a debate at all.
But is it really about science? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't really care whether Pluto is a "planet" or "pluton" or "dwarf planet" (since I've long been out of school) but the question I keep asking myself is "Why is the new definition 'better'?" Is it more accurate? Clearer? My take is that if you say "the planets are these nine (or ten, or twenty) bodies," that's perfectly as acceptable as saying "a body that's in orbit around the Sun, that's mostly round, that has cleared other bodies from its vicinity." The first definition is less flexible (and has lead to some arguments over whether newly-discovered bodies are "planets") but the new definition was also carefully crafted to include and exclude the things that are (or are not) to be part of the group.
One thing that amuses me about this is the politics of naming and/or grouping things. The current issue with astronomers is so much like what we get from doctors, with their naming fetish: a sort of neo-pagan belief that naming a thing gives you power over it. I always find it amusing when the doctor tells you you're suffering from plantar fasciitis, which is to say "sole band" - as if calling an injury by its location (in Latin) is some magical incantation. Or perhaps the Latin naming can give us insight into the current controversy. After all, these "star lawyers" are working on their naming conventions.
Re:But is it really about science? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why is the new definition 'better'?" Is it more accurate? Clearer?"
Than what? There has not been a definition at all previously. There's been a listing of things that has varried in length from 5 down to 4, then slowly up to nine, and then bopped between 10 and 9 a few times, but it's never been based on any clear criteria. "What are the planets in the solar system?" is the total extent of what most grade-school kids learn about astronomy. It would be nice if it meant something. In particular, it would be nice if it meant something based on astronomy. Teaching kids things solely because they're the same things their parents were taught is for sunday school, not science class.
Not change the definition to suit better knowledge because you learned there were these 9 planets? What hubris! The current list of 9 isn't even two generations old; what makes us so special that our grade school learning must be gospel?
In any field, having good, clearly defined technical terminology is not a fetish, it's important.
Calling it "Plantar fasciitis" DOES give you power over it. If you call it that, other doctors will understand exactly what tendon is distressed, and can meaningfully discuss and compare treatments for it; medical science can advance. They cannot do so if they just say "hurty foot" for any and all foot injuries. They use latin because it's an easy way to come up with names for things that aren't already in (conflicting) use.
Re:waiting (Score:3, Insightful)