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Scientists against the demotion of objects like Pluto, Eris, Sedna, etc. to "dwarf planet" status have crafted a new definition:
It's no secret that Alan Stern and other scientists who led the New Horizons mission were extremely displeased by Pluto's demotion from planet status in 2006 during a general assembly of the International Astronomical Union. They felt the IAU decision undermined the scientific and public value of their dramatic flyby mission to the former ninth planet of the Solar System.
But now the positively peeved Pluto people have a plan. Stern and several colleagues have proposed a new definition for planethood. In technical terms, the proposal redefines planethood by saying, "A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape adequately described by a triaxial ellipsoid regardless of its orbital parameters." More simply, the definition can be stated as, "round objects in space that are smaller than stars."
From the proposal:
The eight planets recognized by the IAU are often modified by the adjectives "terrestrial," "giant," and "ice giant," yet no one would state that a giant planet is not a planet. Yet, the IAU does not consider dwarf planets to be planets. We eschew this inconsistency. Thus, dwarf planets and moon planets such as Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and Earth's Moon are "fullfledged" planets. This seems especially true in light of these planets' complex geology and geophysics. While the degree of internal differentiation of a given world is geologically interesting, we do not use it as a criterion for planethood in the spirit of having an expansive rather than a narrow definition.
Here's another article about the significance of the New Horizons mission. New Horizons will fly by 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 22 2017, @07:34PM
See my comment just above that says "Don't Tell Me!".
I don't lump all scientists into one bucket.
But here is something interesting to become aware of: Some people do. Some of those people see the entire imaginary group as equally distrusted. Sort of like politicians.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 22 2017, @08:35PM
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:37PM
I certainly do not want to police scientists with some kind of rules.
I just think it might be in their own self interest to recognize that having debated demoting Pluto, and then a decade later having a debate about promoting Pluto-classic can undermine their own credibility. If there is a big debate about Pluto-classic, then there certainly must be some genuine debate about climate change, evolution and whether the sun rises in the East or in the West.
That's really all I'm saying.
I'm surprised at the reaction. It shouldn't be that I even have to suggest this. But the world is now polarized with idiots on one side. And in not insignificant numbers.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:07PM
I just think it might be in their own self interest to recognize that having debated demoting Pluto, and then a decade later having a debate about promoting Pluto-classic can undermine their own credibility. If there is a big debate about Pluto-classic, then there certainly must be some genuine debate about climate change, evolution and whether the sun rises in the East or in the West.
Do you understand why I keep using the phrase "ridiculous standard"? Humanity can't get a bunch of academics to fully agree on everything unless you have some authoritarian state to provide the muscle and those end up badly (Lysenkoism [wikipedia.org] for a classic example). It's herding cats. Similarly, anyone who will use the excuse of a debate on Pluto's status as the seed of doubt for any unrelated field of science, is greatly irrational and odds are good they'd find some other excuse, at least as flimsy to doubt.
There is nothing here which can be fixed.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:12PM
Yes, you're probably right, unfortunately.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:02PM
And you're ignoring other failure modes here. Would it somehow help credibility of science to pretend that everyone is in agreement with the designation of Pluto and then having the divisive arguments come out into the public eye in some other way? For example, a big part of the "Climategate" release of emails (from climate researchers at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in 2009) was the propensity [wattsupwiththat.com] of a certain dominating group of researchers to say one thing in public and another in private. For example [di2.nu]:
>> On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Tom Wigley wrote: >>> Mike,
>>>
>>> The Figure you sent is very deceptive. As an example, historical
>>> runs with PCM look as though they match observations -- but the
>>> match is a fluke. PCM has no indirect aerosol forcing and a low
>>> climate sensitivity -- compensating errors. In my (perhaps too
>>> harsh)
>>> view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model
>>> results by individual authors and by IPCC. This is why I still use
>>> results from MAGICC to compare with observed temperatures. At least
>>> here I can assess how sensitive matches are to sensitivity and
>>> forcing assumptions/uncertainties.
>>>
>>> Tom.
>>>
Yet we never heard this concern in public before these emails were stolen and released. Did that improve the respectability of climate research to hide substantial disagreements from the public and then have it come out in such a subversive way? Shouldn't a rational person put some doubt on public statements of certain high-profile climate researchers when those very researchers are now know to say different things in private?