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posted by martyb on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the Number-Nine,-Number-Nine,-Number-Nine... dept.

Planet Nine: 'Insensitive' Term Riles Scientists

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) famously reclassified Pluto as a "dwarf planet" in 2006. That decision remains highly controversial today, as made clear by the new note, which appeared in the July 29 issue of the Planetary Exploration Newsletter.

The note:

ON THE INSENSITIVE USE OF THE TERM "PLANET 9" FOR OBJECTS BEYOND PLUTO

We the undersigned wish to remind our colleagues that the IAU planet definition adopted in 2006 has been controversial and is far from universally accepted. Given this, and given the incredible accomplishment of the discovery of Pluto, the harbinger of the solar system's third zone — the Kuiper Belt — by planetary astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh in 1930, we the undersigned believe the use of the term 'Planet 9' for objects beyond Pluto is insensitive to Professor Tombaugh's legacy.

We further believe the use of this term should be discontinued in favor of culturally and taxonomically neutral terms for such planets, such as Planet X, Planet Next, or Giant Planet Five.

35 researchers signed the note, including Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission.

Of more interest may be this proposal concerning future exploration of Uranus and Neptune:

Outer Solar System Exploration: A Compelling and Unified Dual Mission Decadal Strategy for Exploring Uranus, Neptune, Triton, Dwarf Planets, and Small KBOs and Centaurs

Related: Uranus and Neptune Are Potential Targets for 2030s Missions
Another Trans-Neptunian Object With a High Orbital Inclination Points to Planet Nine
CU Boulder Researchers Say Collective Gravity, Not Planet Nine, Explains Orbits of Detached Objects
Planet Nine Search Turns Up 10 More Moons of Jupiter


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @01:15PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @01:15PM (#716673)

    All of these labels are arbitrary anyway so arguing over them is stupid. They are all just different sizes of celestial bodies, all made of the same initial material. The universe doesn't care what label you give it.

    You know what, if we find something large out there I will be excited weather or not we call it a planet or what index value we assign to it. The joy is in learning new things and that won't be diminished by what arbitrary label we put on it.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 03 2018, @04:05PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday August 03 2018, @04:05PM (#716771) Journal

    There's two problems with the new label:

    • Linguistically, a dwarf planet is a planet. But in the IAU definition, it isn't. In other words, the naming convention goes against the very rules of the language. This is in my view the main problem.
    • Pluto already had the label “planet”, and that fact was widely known also in non-expert circles. If the IAU had newly invented the label “planet”, nobody would have cared about Pluto not getting it. Nor would have anyone cared if it were a classification only known by experts. For example, if for some reason the IAU decided to rename some M-class stars to, say, X-class stars, I don't think many people would care.

    Both problems could have been avoided in several ways:

    • Leave the label “planet” as a historical name for the nine bodies, and adopt a completely new naming scheme for the bodies in the solar system.
    • Use the label “planet” for all objects orbiting the sun which have enough mass to force a spherical form, and use qualifiers to further distinguish between them (e.g. “main planet” vs. “dwarf planet” — note how in this scheme Pluto would still be a dwarf planet, without removing its planet status; “dwarf planet” would just be narrowing down “planet”, as the name suggests).
    • Like before, but only qualify the main planets.
    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.