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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: 2) by edIII on Monday April 03 2017, @09:05PM (4 children)
I think that is the majority of the butthurt that some people have. It was what they *learned*, and now they've *learned* they were wrong. Plus, I actually believe that a good amount of people associated it with the Disney character Pluto while learning about the planets in school. Do any young people get upset about Pluto not being a planet?
There was a moment in which I felt bad for Pluto being demoted, but then I remembered that I was not an astronomer or astrophysicist and I was not involved in the science and the determination of the nomenclature and jargon that would be used. I was just taught a small part of it in school to be well rounded.
If there is anything I have some emotional involvement with...... the '#'
That's a fucking pound sign or number sign (depending on order), not Twitter's revisionist bullshit of calling it the hashtag symbol. It's the fucking pound sign!! :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @09:30PM (2 children)
The pound sign looks like an L with a loop at the corner and a bar across the middle. It's for money in the UK.
The '#' symbol is called the octothorpe. (because of the 8 points)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 04 2017, @01:01AM (1 child)
Pound weight, not pound money.
And isn't a thorpe an old word for a village-like thing that's too small to have a church?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday April 04 2017, @01:23AM
Nope :)
It's for Jim Thorpe, the Olympic Athlete from Sweden. In this case, truth [mit.edu] is stranger than fiction.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 04 2017, @01:42AM
According to Brits, that symbol is called the "hash", and has been for far, far longer than Twitter's been around. There's nothing "revisionist" about it, it's a national difference, just like that panel over your car's engine is called a "bonnet" over there, and the rear end of a sedan is called a "boot", and they don't even call them "sedans", but rather "saloons" (which we Americans think are alcohol-serving establishments in the Old West).
But yeah, we're not astronomers or astrophysicists, so it's really not up to us what nomenclature and terminology those professions use. But Americans these days absolutely hate education and expertise (they consider it "elitism") so they think they know better than the actual experts in everything. Pluto isn't going anywhere, nor is it changing its name, regardless of how we choose to categorize it.