SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
It turns out that Earth is not a planet. Asteroid 2016 H03, first spotted on April 27, 2016, by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, is a companion of Earth, too distant to be considered a true satellite.
"Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Asteroid 2016 H03 is proof that Earth has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. Therefore, under the definition of a planet vigorously defended by the IAU [International Astronomical Union] since the adoption of Resolution 5A on August 24, 2006, Earth is a 'dwarf planet' because it has not cleared its orbit, which is the only criteria of their definition that Pluto fails. (I think we'll eventually discover that very few of the 'planets' have cleared their orbits).
Most of us who were baffled by the IAUs declaration and outraged at the obvious discrimination of Pluto knew there was something wrong, even if we couldn't put our finger on it — we just 'knew' Pluto was a planet, right?
[...] Here's what all of us non-scientists intuitively understood all along: "A planet is defined as an astronomical body that "has not undergone nuclear fusion, and having sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape" — in other words, it's round and not on fire.
How could the distinguished scientists be so wrong?
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 03 2017, @07:36PM (4 children)
It's Haumea [wikipedia.org], you insensitive planet killer!
("Kwawar")
Now you're pulling my leg!
The barycenter thing is a good reason to call Pluto-Charon a binary planet. And any definition of a planet should exclude moons (WTF were they thinking [soylentnews.org]). I don't necessarily agree that kids should have to memorize all the names of the planets. We can have more planets than kids can remember, after all, there are trillions of planets and dwarf planets left to discover in the Milky Way alone.
One thing I've seen is that if you plot the mass vs. distance to the Sun on a graph, you can craft a definition that allows Mercury and Planet Nine but not Eris and friends. And the KBOs/TNOs are remarkably icy and tiny compared to the inner planets... so far. There's still a possibility of larger Mars-sized objects accompanying Planet Nine or being found further out (hundreds of AU). Planet Nine is still hypothetical unless we observe it, but I think it will be proven or disproven by 2020.
I'm going to look into how brightness falls off as AU increases (I forgot the equations). Because I think we're going to find a lot more dwarf planets as we start getting past the eccentric ones that just happen to be close to their perihelions. Thousands, even.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @08:27PM (3 children)
Pluto is geologically active with a dynamic surface; not just your regular icy piece of rock.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 03 2017, @08:39PM (1 child)
Geological activity? Does that mean Io [wikipedia.org] should be called a planet?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Monday April 03 2017, @09:30PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 04 2017, @01:54AM
Pluto is geologically active with a dynamic surface; not just your regular icy piece of rock.
Not necessarily true, the way you've written this. Yes, it's geologically active according to our most recent data, however you're claiming with your second clause that other such worlds are not. You have no way of knowing that. We only just learned about Pluto's surface thanks to New Horizons. We haven't flown any probes by any of the other outer icy-rocky planets like Eris, Sedna, Haumea, etc., so for all we know, they're ALL geologically active. Pluto might not be special at all in that regard. There's no similar planets here in the inner system to compare to.