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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @07:38PM (2 children)
[...] 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.
That is an excellent idea for the definition of a planet! This does leave some annoying ambiguity though. Exactly how round or how spheroidal must an astronomical body be to qualify as spheroidal? Would a d4 shape suffice? Probably not. Way too pointy. What about a d12? I assume most people would agree with me that a d100 or even a d20 can be considered sufficiently spheroidal? Where do we draw the line?
I believe the scientific community should swiftly assemble a committee to decide this pressing issue.
PS.
While they are at it, they can then also define the precise number of sides/corners a regular polygon is required to have in order to be considered a circle.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @07:52PM
they can then also define the precise number of sides/corners a regular polygon is required to have in order to be considered a circle.
640 is enough for any polygon.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday April 04 2017, @02:54PM
In my mind a d100 would be sufficient round as one person in my RPG group had one and we would always end up arguing over what fucking number he rolled. With a d20 we never had that problem so it would seem that a d20 wouldn't be round enough.
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