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posted by janrinok on Sunday July 19 2015, @05:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-changed-the-rules,-we-can-change-them-back-again dept.

After nearly a decade in the wilderness of celestial classification, Pluto is on the rise again. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to adopt a new definition of what makes a body a planet, and to specifically demote Pluto to the status of dwarf planet. Now, with new data and images streaming in from New Horizons showing that Pluto is not only a little larger than previously thought, but also home to some remarkable geological features (including what may be some of the solar system's youngest mountain peaks, reaching to 11,000 ft/3,353 m high), many are saying it's time to restore the ninth planet to its previous station.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the most prominent advocates for Pluto are scientists working on the New Horizons mission, which reached the closest point of its long-awaited Pluto fly-by on July 14.

"We are free to call it a planet right now," Philip Metzger, a planetary scientist on the New Horizons mission, told DW.com. "Science is not decided by votes ... the planetary science community has never stopped calling bodies like Pluto 'planets'."

Really, isn't it time to re-classify Pluto as a dog?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by RedBear on Sunday July 19 2015, @04:30PM

    by RedBear (1734) on Sunday July 19 2015, @04:30PM (#211114)

    If you do not think that the orbit of an object, and the effect that it has on the envoronment around its orbital envelope, are important properties for classification of an object, then what *is* important in its classification? It seems like you can't see beyond "size", which is a very naive view.

    (Wow, now I'm a Troll? Really, Soylent? Guess I should have used the snark tag.)

    I can't see beyond size? Naive? Huh? Did you even read what I wrote?

    I thought I just stated pretty clearly and succinctly the argument that size, age, _current_ gravitic reference point and _current_ effect on one's environment are all important but _separate_ attributes, some of which change over time, and that the current definition of "planet" is getting them all confused with one another. If my scenario was not about Earth but about one of the large moons of Jupiter, maybe it would have been easier to grasp that it really makes no scientific or logical sense to start calling Europa a planet _only_ because something moves it from orbiting Jupiter to orbiting the Sun directly. If Europa doesn't change physically, why does it suddenly _become_ something that we have to call by a different name? It doesn't. It just moved through time and space, which can be referenced using _different_ attributes (e.g. "primary planet" vs. "satellite planet", "old planet" vs "young planet").

    The same is true of the scenario where the Earth gets pushed out to an orbit in the middle of the asteroid belt. Because it would take millions of years for the Earth to "clear its orbit" it would suddenly run afoul of the current definition of "planet". Yet the Earth would be physically the same. And when it finally cleared its orbit sufficiently, suddenly it would be a planet again. Without having physically changed in any significant way. This is not logical. This is akin to saying that a bicycle stops being a bicycle if you move it across the street or paint it a different color, or that it is only a bicycle when someone is riding it and not when it is buried under some gravel. Whether it is a child-sized bicycle or an adult-sized bicycle is a _separate_ attribute which also would not be changed if you simply move the bicycle's location or change its color or put it in the back of a pickup truck and take it to another city. Whether it's an antique bicycle or a brand new bicycle, it's still a bicycle.

    It's been pointed out (by astronomers no less) that all of the detected spherical objects in other solar systems get to be called planets currently. We don't really care whether they're orbiting other planets or orbiting the star directly. We've detected planets much larger than the Earth orbiting huge gas giants in other solar systems. But here in our own solar system we've rigged the definition of planet for historical and emotional reasons to make sure that only the eight "primary" planets qualify for this moniker. Again, not logical. We have about three dozen planetary bodies in our solar system that should rightly be referred to as planets, regardless of whether or not they are orbiting other planets or have atmospheres. Yes, that includes our own moon, which is larger than Pluto. It should be able to be the Moon and a planet at the same time.

    I'll also point out, as I have in the past, that we have a highly educated astronomer going around telling schoolchildren that Pluto is no longer a planet and they are not allowed to call it a planet... Even though it is now officially a "dwarf planet", which just means "small planet". If that isn't a facepalm of the highest order, I don't know what is. Every schoolchild used to understand that if an object in space was big enough to become spherical due to its own gravity, it was a planet. It was a nice, simple definition that never interfered with assigning other attributes to the same object, and never needed to be changed.

    If we stick with the current goofy definition of planet then we have a situation where if a planet like Venus got pushed into orbit around the Earth both planets would suddenly become "moons" of each other and no longer qualify as "planets" even though they would not be physically any different. Due to their nearly identical size they would become a binary system orbiting a shared gravitic reference point in between the two bodies as they both orbit the Sun together. A simple change in gravitic reference point should not be changing what we call an object in space. It just makes no sense.

    How is this idea, that we should return to a much simpler and more logical definition for "planet", so difficult to understand, or controversial enough to get me a Troll mod? I don't get it.

    --
    ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
    ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
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