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:
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
Related Stories
The Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Study group has proposed sending a mission to either Uranus or Neptune. Only one mission is likely to be approved due to a shortage of plutonium-238 for the radioisotope thermoelectric generators required for an outer solar system mission:
Uranus and Neptune have never got much attention from us – we've only passed each once and never hung around. But that could change. A NASA group has now outlined possible missions to make it to one of these outer worlds to gather data on their composition. This should teach us about them and similar planets in other solar systems.
"The preferred mission is an orbiter with an atmospheric probe to either Uranus or Neptune – this provides the highest science value, and allows in depth study of all aspects of either planet's system: rings, satellites, atmosphere, magnetosphere," says Amy Simon, co-chair of the Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Study group.
There are four proposed missions – three orbiters and a fly-by of Uranus, which would include a narrow angle camera to draw out details, especially of the ice giant's moons. It would also drop an atmospheric probe to take a dive into Uranus's atmosphere to measure the levels of gas and heavy elements there.
The three must-haves for each orbiter mission are a narrow-angle camera, a doppler imager and a magnetometer, while an orbiter containing 15 instruments would add plasma detectors, infrared and UV imaging, dust detection and microwave radar capability. The orbiter could be either a Neptune mission with an atmospheric probe, a Uranus probe of the same design, or a craft sent to a[sic] Uranus that ditches the atmospheric probe for the suite of 15 instruments.
Moon values: Neptune's Triton vs. Uranus's Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda (all rounded by gravity).
Obligatory grade school humor:
NASA wants to probe Uranus in search of gas
NASA wants to probe deeper into Uranus than ever before
Also at The Verge.
2015 BP519, nicknamed "Caju", is another extreme trans-Neptunian object that points to the existence of Planet Nine. Discovered with data from the Dark Energy Survey, Caju has a relatively large diameter, estimated at around 400-700 km, meaning the object could be a gravitationally rounded dwarf planet. It also has a highly inclined orbit of 54°, which a team of scientists says can be explained by the presence of the hypothetical Planet Nine:
After discovering it, the team tried to investigate 2015 BP519's origins using computer simulations of the Solar System. However, these tests were not able to adequately explain how the object had ended with such an orbit.
But when the team added a ninth planet with properties exactly matching those predicted by the Caltech scientists in 2016, the orbit of 2015 BP519 suddenly made sense. "The second you put Planet Nine in the simulations, not only can you form objects like this object, but you absolutely do," Juliette Becker, a Michigan graduate student and lead author of the study told Quanta.
Some researchers, however, caution that Planet Nine may not be the only explanation for 2015 BP519's strange orbit. Michele Bannister, a planetary astronomer from Queen's University Belfast, in Ireland, who was not involved in the study, told Newsweek that while the latest findings were "a great discovery," other scenarios could account for its tilt. "This object is unusual because it's on a high inclination," she said. "This can be used to maybe tell us some things about its formation process. There are a number of models that suggest you can probably put objects like this into the shape of orbit and the tilt of orbit that we see today."
Also at Quanta Magazine.
Discovery and Dynamical Analysis of an Extreme Trans-Neptunian Object with a High Orbital Inclination (arXiv:1805.05355)
Related: Medieval Records Could Point the Way to Planet Nine
Collective gravity, not Planet Nine, may explain the orbits of 'detached objects'
Bumper car-like interactions at the edges of our solar system—and not a mysterious ninth planet—may explain the the dynamics of strange bodies called "detached objects," according to a new study. CU Boulder Assistant Professor Ann-Marie Madigan and a team of researchers have offered up a new theory for the existence of planetary oddities like Sedna—an icy minor planet that circles the sun at a distance of nearly 8 billion miles. Scientists have struggled to explain why Sedna and a handful of other bodies at that distance look separated from the rest of the solar system. [...] The researchers presented their findings today at a press briefing at the 232nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which runs from June 3-7 in Denver, Colorado.
[...] [Jacob] Fleisig had calculated that the orbits of icy objects beyond Neptune circle the sun like the hands of a clock. Some of those orbits, such as those belonging to asteroids, move like the minute hand, or relatively fast and in tandem. Others, the orbits of bigger objects like Sedna, move more slowly. They're the hour hand. Eventually, those hands meet. "You see a pileup of the orbits of smaller objects to one side of the sun," said Fleisig, who is the lead author of the new research. "These orbits crash into the bigger body, and what happens is those interactions will change its orbit from an oval shape to a more circular shape." In other words, Sedna's orbit goes from normal to detached, entirely because of those small-scale interactions.
Also at Popular Mechanics, where Planet Nine proposer Konstantin Batygin disputes the findings:
Batygin, of Caltech, tells Popular Mechanics that any sufficiently strong gravitational encounter could detach an object from Neptune's embrace, but for the distant small bodies of the Kuiper belt to have done so through "self-gravity"—as the CU model proposes—there would need to be about five to ten times the mass of Earth in the outer parts of the Kuiper belt. There isn't.
"Unfortunately, the self-gravity story suffers from the following complications," Batygin says. "Both observational and theoretical estimates place the total mass of the Kuiper belt at a value significantly smaller than that of the Earth [only 1 to 10 percent Earth's mass]. As a consequence, Kuiper belt objects generally behave like test-particles enslaved by Neptune's gravitational pull, rather than a self-interacting group of planetoids."
Related: Planet Nine's Existence Disfavoured by New Data
Medieval Records Could Point the Way to Planet Nine
Another Trans-Neptunian Object With a High Orbital Inclination Points to Planet Nine
Outer Solar System Origins Survey Discovers Over 800 Trans-Neptunian Objects
LSST Could be the Key to Finding New Planets in Our Solar System
Astronomers have found a new crop of moons around Jupiter, and one of them is a weirdo
Ten more moons have been confirmed to orbit around Jupiter, bringing the planet's total known satellite count to 79. That's the highest number of moons of any planet in the Solar System. And these newly discovered space rocks are giving astronomers insight as to why the Jupiter system looks like it does today.
Astronomers at Carnegie Institution for Science first found these moons in March 2017, along with two others that were already confirmed in June of last year. The team initially found all 12 moons using the Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile, though finding these objects wasn't their main goal. Instead, they were searching for incredibly distant small objects — or even planets — that might be lurking in our Solar System beyond Pluto. But as they searched for these fringe space rocks, they decided to take a peek at what might be lurking around Jupiter at the same time. Now, the moons they found have been observed multiple times, and their exact orbits have been submitted for approval from the International Astronomical Union, which officially recognizes celestial bodies.
These moons are all pretty tiny, ranging between less than a mile and nearly two miles wide. And they break down into three different types. Two orbit closer to Jupiter, moving in the same direction that the planet spins. Farther out from those, about 15.5 million miles from the planet, there are nine that rotate in the opposite direction, moving against Jupiter's rotation. But in this same distant region, one strange moon that astronomers are calling Valetudo is moving with Jupiter's spin, like the two inner moons.
Previously: Two Tiny New Moons Found Around Jupiter
Related: Retrograde Jupiter Co-Orbital Asteroid May Have an Interstellar Origin
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
Where *Isn't* Planet 9? Search for Planet Nine still continues
Not long ago astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin (the two original people proposing the existence of the planet) used the alignments of the TNO orbits to back-calculate the potential location of the unseen planet in space. It's a kind of treasure map to find the planet.
In a new paper they've put that map to use, looking through survey data in a hunt for Planet 9.
[...] Brown and Batygin wrote software that simulates where Planet 9 would be and how bright it would appears for various values of its size, reflectivity, and orbital shape. They created a database of positions and brightnesses for it, and then combed through the [Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)] database to look for it, going through the past three or so years of observations since the facility started its survey campaign.
[...] They ran 100,000 simulations of various parameters for the planet, and looked to see if the ZTF would've seen it if it were indeed smaller and closer to us. They determined that it would've been seen in the survey about 56,000 times out of the 100,000, so just looking at that their non-detection indicates the chance it's smaller and closer is now less than 50%, making it more likely it's farther out, bigger, and fainter.
The larger Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to find many previously hidden objects in the solar system, and is scheduled to begin full operations in October 2023. It will accumulate all-sky survey data around 10 times faster than the Zwicky Transient Facility.
Also at ExtremeTech.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:21PM (4 children)
>call a planet "dwarf"
>complain about "planet 9" being an insensitive name
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:26PM (1 child)
insert the usual 'probe to uranus' joke here...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Funny) by jelizondo on Thursday August 02 2018, @09:08PM
Consider the 'probe' inserted :-0
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:41PM
Instead of 'Planet 9', call it Planet Peter Dinklage: therefore if it is a Dwarf planet, it will still be AWESOME and get all the boobs and sex and everytime it is placed in a scene with the other planets, it'll be the only planet you really notice.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:00PM
Planet ⑨ is the strongest planet!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:26PM (10 children)
...what a handy list of scientists whose opinion should now be ignored since we have a documented history of them disregarding scientific facts in favor of personal emotions.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:32PM (3 children)
Planet Nine isn't a name that makes more sense than their other options. It's hypothetical, and there may be other non-dwarf planets in between Neptune and "Planet Nine". Such as a hypothetical Mars-to-Earth sized "Planet Ten". "Planet X" refers to a number of past hypothesized planets, and you could treat the "X" as an integer variable.
As for Giant Planet Five, it's not likely there are any other gas giants closer than Planet Nine, and constraints have been placed on objects of that size by the WISE mission. Gas Giant Five or Ice Giant Three sounds better.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:00PM (2 children)
That's even worse. They won't call it "Planet 9", despite the fact that it would, if discovered, be the ninth known planet in our solar system...but they have no problem with it being "Planet 10" with no known 9th?
If they find another planet, they can change the numbers. It's not like we haven't done that before. "Planet 9" isn't a permanent name for the thing, it's an array index that is allocated but awaiting contents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @12:25AM
It’s like the 12th Doctor. We found out there was one in between 8 and 9, but didn’t bother upping the index and changed the index system into a dict and called the extra Doctor the ‘war’ Doctor. So now we get to say that the ‘14th’ Doctor can be referenced as the ‘13th’.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 03 2018, @12:20PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by exaeta on Friday August 03 2018, @02:26PM (2 children)
Or instead of claiming Pluto isn't a planet we could acknowledge that Pluto is a planet. You know, planet is a word that has been around for quite some time, before the International Astronomical Union existed.
Claiming the authority to redefine a word like "planet" is hubris, when that definition isn't accepted by most people.
Therefore, I have a better definition of planet:
A large round object visible in the night sky using relatively unsophisticated telescopes that is not a star or moon or pidgeon.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday August 03 2018, @03:15PM
Pluto still isn't number 9 then. You definitely have to include Ceres now if you're using that definition. Probably more too, but I don't feel like digging around for ones I'm not as familiar with yet :)
"Planet" has certainly existed as a word for a long time, but it never had a really precise definition, which is why the IAU created one. But also keep in mind that we're discussing a *scientific definition* here, which doesn't have to be the same as the common usage. Consider how most people use the word "theory" in casual conversation compared to what it means for something to be a scientific theory like gravity or evolution. What most people call a "theory", scientists would refer to as a "hypothesis". Call Pluto whatever you want when you're talking to a friend, but if you're writing a scientific paper it helps to have more consistent definitions so that the words you are writing are actually meaningful to others.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 03 2018, @03:30PM
Define “relatively unsophisticated telescope”.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday August 03 2018, @05:26PM (2 children)
Whether or not Pluto is a planet is not a question of scientific fact - its a matter of arbitrary definition. Its the difference between claiming, against all evidence, that the sun goes around the earth, or just arguing about what to call the real model (I mean, it's not exactly heliocentric...)
Scientific facts are decided by experiment or logical proof, not a vote at the IAU.
"Pluto can't be a planet because then we'd have to count lots of other sun-orbiting oblate spheroids as planets" is just as much an appeal to tradition/authority/consequences as "Pluto has been one of the traditional 9 planets since its discovery".
Science would be a lot simpler if scientists just made up new names for new, rigorously-defined concepts rather than trying to retcon existing words with established common-use meanings (see: "Weight", "Mass", "Work"...) - Just imagine the global warming debate if you cut out all the pundits who thought they knew what "Heat" and "Temperature" meant, or finally sorted out whether Tomatoes were fruit or vegetables... (Whups, I've probably completely Godwinned this thread now...)
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday August 03 2018, @07:01PM (1 child)
I think you've got that backward. Whether or not Pluto is a planet IS a question of scientific fact; it's how you define the word Planet that is not. But once a suitable definition is agreed upon -- like the one the IAU came up with -- then it can be proven if it does or does not meet that definition.
Sure, and the IAU isn't defining facts, they're defining how those facts are described.
I think you're talking about my last post, but I never actually used that argument. My point is not about whether or not Pluto is number 9, it's about whether or not any newly discovered planet should be called "planet 9" compared to "planet 10". By the IAU's definition, it's number 9. By any other definition, it certainly is not 10. Calling it number 9 has some logic to it, calling it number 10 does not. That was my only reason for pointing out the other bodies that would meet other definitions of "planet".
Meh...idiots are still going to be idiots. Every industry or area of study does redefine words to some extent, as long as those definitions aren't *completely* unrelated to the casual usage I don't really see the problem there.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday August 03 2018, @10:06PM
Sorry, nope, garbage in, garbage out: if the definition is flawed then conclusions reached from it are also flawed. Even if "pluto does/doesn't meet this set of conditions" is an issue of fact, the "scientific" part is a problem: there's no experiment to test "Pluto is/is not a planet" other than the circular argument/appeal to authority "it doesn't meet the current IAU definition" or the appeal to consequences in terms of how many planets you subjectively feel the solar system should have. The assertion "planets have these characteristics" is non-falsifiable. In that sense, the whole debate is "a plague upon both your houses" - but it was the IAU who started the issue by narrowing the definition.
Whatever terminology you choose there is a big difference between "scientific facts" (e.g. the planets orbit the sun, at least to a first approximation - this was proven by observations and predictions that debunked the competing theory long before we got out to take a look) and "dictionary facts" (e.g. these are planets, those are asteroids, those are dwarf planets, that's not a meteor, its a meteorite...) that can be changed at the stroke of a pen.
...AFAIK none of the scientists that you were ad-homming in the g.p. post are counterfactually claiming that Pluto does meet the new definition of planet - they are disputing the validity of, and the need for, the new definition.
Reality is that even without Pluto, the remaining planets are so incredibly diverse that you could compose a set of criteria to arbitrarily pick out most possible subsets (new Internet game: pick 3 sun-orbiting bodies at random and devise a set of criteria to make them the only 3 true planets!)
Its also a dumb time to start messing with terminology when the hard data on exoplanets is just starting to roll in, along with a bunch of new probe data from our own "dwarf planets" and Kuiper belt objects... which will surely mess up any nice classification systems that pre-dates it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tara Li on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:27PM (15 children)
Seriously - out past Pluto's orbit, even a Jovian planet won't "clear it's orbit", so we get the ridiculous notion that at 5 AU, it's a planet, at 55 AU it's a 'dwarf planet'? I mean, sure, it's a Kuiper Belt Object - that's flippin' generic. And I'd say you'd be hard pressed to argue that the four gas giants have really "cleared their orbits" - Jupiter itself has a BLEEPLOAD of stuff loosely scattered around it's L4 and L5 points.
Tell the IAU to stuff Ceres up their @$$.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:48PM
Preach it. Science has no room for halfassery.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:53PM (1 child)
I worked for years as a research support math/programming person for a university planetary geology and they still referred to Pluto as a planet, at least among themselves. I never followed this mostly made up controversy, but have read that it isn't as well received by geologists as astronomers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday August 03 2018, @05:04AM
Yeah those silly astronomers remaking arbitrarily definitions and stuff. Clearly a sign they make too much money.
If you excuse me now, I am going to check out the free space on my 1000M=1G hard disk.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 02 2018, @07:02PM (8 children)
You do realize that there are actual mathematical metrics for measuring this stuff, right? Not just a bunch of Pluto-haters looking at charts of the solar system and saying, "Hmm, yep, that one's clear!"
You can see the popular ones summarized here [wikipedia.org]. And you can see in the table near the bottom that all metrics (including ones developed by people who were against the redefinition of Pluto) show a major gap of several orders of magnitude between Ceres/Pluto and the other planets. (And note all of these take into account distance from the sun into their definition, so the standards ARE different for planets farther from the sun.)
To be clear, I don't really care what we call Pluto. All definitions are to some extent arbitrary. But pretending that this "clearing the neighborhood" issue isn't actually a feature of astronomical interest and pretending that there's not a very significant gap in any reasonable metric to quantify that -- well, that's at best disingenuous and at worst a display of plain ignorance.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 02 2018, @07:25PM (1 child)
Also, to show that I'm really agnostic on this, here's an interview with a real planetary scientist [space.com] (one of the guys who actually proposed the first metric for clearing the neighborhood) about why he thinks the IAU definition is bad.
Point being: the IAU definition of a "planet" may or may not be a good one by various criteria, but "clearing the neighborhood" is a real thing and a potentially interesting attribute of a body.
(Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Friday August 03 2018, @02:33PM
That isn't obvious, to be honest.
Whether you are agnostic, or a God named after a planet, the fact is that the argument under discussion is that if the rules indicate that a big semi-spherical gas giant "yes" is a planet at 5 astronomical units, but the identical big semi-spherical gas giant "no" is not a planet at 55 astronomical units while orbiting the same star, and the rules do indicate this, then that's an interesting feature of those rules.
But wait, what if you really carefully and scientifically look for things existing planetary bodies have in common, like (mostly) clearing their orbits? Does that change the fact that Juipter counts "yes" as a planet at 5AU but "no" would not count at 55AU?
No, it doesn't change that fact, so going on about how careful, cool, or earth-shatteringly awesome orbit-clearing is, doesn't show you to be "Agnostic"--it just shows that you're missing a valid point that would be interesting for discussion.
With all due respect, while that's a point, it's not the point under discussion in this thread. No one is saying that orbit-clearing is not a real thing, nor that it's uninteresting; just observing that it would only apply to planets within a certain radius from the Sun.
That is relevant here (unlike orbit-clearing monomania, which isn't) because we are talking about the possible existence of a big semi-spherical thing in orbit around the sun that is really really far out compared to the other ones (which we call planets, dwarf planets, etc.). We're calling the posited far-out body "[Ice [Giant]] Planet (3|5|9|X|etc.)". In talking about such a body, the point comes up that even if it's identical to one of the other bodies that firmly count as "planets", it may very well itself not count because at a more distant location it might not have things in common, like--you guessed it, or failed to--orbit-clearing of its much larger-diameter orbit.
I get that you appear unhappy about that, and that orbit-clearing seems important to you. Those things don't make this apparent contradiction within the rules uninteresting nor irrelevant--in this context, it's especially interesting and relevant.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:46PM (5 children)
None of this would have happened if anything that feels like a planet was just called planet, and the special 4+4 were just called Major Planets. Emphasize positively, rather than negatively, especially because grants.
Any marketing guy could have told them that.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 02 2018, @09:40PM
Agreed. The original "clearing the neighborhood" paper called them uberplanets, I believe. Everything sounds more awesome in German.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday August 02 2018, @11:10PM (3 children)
Actually the problem started when other planets we discovered, at that time I wrote an article about the "12 planets" because the count had increased to such and jokingly felt pity for the poor kids who would have to learn three more names.
A good note is on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Disagree) by bob_super on Thursday August 02 2018, @11:40PM (2 children)
My point was that it doesn't matter if the solar system has 253 planets (256 would matter, because of the 8-bit overflow).
Teach the kids the 8 to 10 Major Planets, and a selection of of the most interesting other bodies (Pluto, the big moons, notable comets).
"There are too many to remember everything" is a pretty shitty reason to demote a whole class of objects, especially when considering that wiki thingy. Promote the special ones instead.
(Score: 1) by jelizondo on Friday August 03 2018, @01:14AM (1 child)
You are quite correct, I was not disagreeing, simply pointing to the fact that once more "planets" had been found some people felt the need to redefine what "planet" is, particularly because Pluto has a very large moon (Charon) that makes it almost a binary planet. Anyway, I never saw the need to redefine the status, in mind, it serves no purpose.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday August 03 2018, @01:24AM
> Pluto has a very large moon (Charon) that makes it almost a binary planet.
I'd go as far as calling it a binary outright, because the center of mass of that system is outside of Pluto's body.
Since there's at least two more moons orbiting that binary system, i'm not quite sure what the secondary threshold would be to call it a quaternary system ... maybe the center of mass of the ensemble always staying in the cone formed by the big two (and by extension to ternary or more, the region of space between the main bodies) would be a good idea.
The Solar system has :
- 4 Major rocky planets (inner ones - few moons)
- 4 Major Gas/frozen giant planets (outer ones - lots of moons)
- At least one binary system
- A lot of other planets, many still to be discovered.
- other stuff that's not in hydrostatic equilibrium, or is on highly eccentric orbits
How is that nomenclature a topic of arguments ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @07:04PM
In their defense, anything that is that far away looks pretty small through their telescope. Remember that with planets, as well as real estate, it's location location location!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @11:21PM
It's largely pointless as the definition of a planet requires it to orbit our sun, which means that there are and likely only will ever be 8 planets under the current definition of a planet.
I really don't get why they were so offended by Pluto that they had to demote the 99.99999999% of the other planets just to justify demoting it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday August 03 2018, @12:25PM
Yes, it's captured them gravitationally. That means they're now cleared.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Funny) by ikanreed on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:34PM (6 children)
You were Happy about Pluto being a planet? It's a Sleepy empty nothing. Well guess what, your asteroid that managed to role itself into a ball is a Dopey bag of shit. Ain't no one want your negative-200-Celsius ice ball that will give you a cold and make you Sneezy. Doc Tyson was right to dunk on you. I ain't Bashful about how shit this "planet" was. Fuck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @07:07PM (3 children)
That's a long, and rather unimpressive, way to go for a Snow White joke.
BTW, you forgot Grumpy.
(Score: 5, Funny) by ikanreed on Thursday August 02 2018, @07:35PM (2 children)
I was grumpy.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:27PM (1 child)
You still are :P
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Thursday August 02 2018, @09:06PM
Constantly angry at everything around you is just 2018.txt
(Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Thursday August 02 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)
You were Happy about Pluto being a planet? It's a Sleepy empty nothing.
So's North Dakota, but it's still a state
(Score: 5, Funny) by ikanreed on Thursday August 02 2018, @09:32PM
I'm a member of the international cartographers union, we're reclassifying it to a dwarf state.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:39PM (3 children)
Oh dear! How far we fallen!
I wish to protest the Higgs field name as being insensitive towards Aristotle’s aether and also, Empedocles is furious of the fun made of his theory of the elements.
Back to planets, calling Mars the fourth rock from the Sun is like totally insensitive to the Egyptians and Chinese, who were the first to identify it and study its orbit.
Need I go on? If we are going to “respect” dead people, let us respect all of them, not some particular guy for some stupid reason.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:48PM
I wish to protest the name Jelizondo: it is insensitive to the whole Tribe of Gum.
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:26PM
Wait, does that mean that studying Mars is cultural appropriation?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 02 2018, @09:13PM
That's right. I'm dead sometimes, for tax reasons. I demand respect.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 02 2018, @07:19PM
With our media that loves to dish out the drama to their readers and viewers, controversy over the definition of "planet" is good for Pluto missions, astronomy, and science.
Sure, there are trolls who will try to claim that any uncertainty means astronomers and scientists are a bunch of fakers who don't know anything at all, as long as that line of argument works on their marks. Ultimately, that may not even be a downside.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:42PM (2 children)
We can rename Pluto to "planet eight and a half". After that there shouldn't be a problem with planets 9, 10 or whatever.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 02 2018, @11:46PM (1 child)
Set up a poll, and the internet will approve calling Pluto planet 9, and the next one King's Cross planet 9 3/4.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @03:50AM
Planet McNineFace
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday August 02 2018, @11:38PM (6 children)
I'm willing to bet that a large percentage of the 'undersigned' are American. Pluto was the only 'planet' to have been discovered by an American, so its relegation to "Dwarf Planet" status means that THE US HAS NEVER DISCOVERED A PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. Oh noes!
This is the only reason that Pluto's relegation has ever been controversial.
I predict that future high school textbooks approved by the Texas board of education will continue to claim Pluto as a planet in a big eff you to the global scientific community.
And while I'm at it, it's spelled Aluminium!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @03:56AM
> a big eff you to the global scientific community.
Also see: imperial units of measurement, creationism...
(Score: 3, Disagree) by unauthorized on Friday August 03 2018, @10:21AM (1 child)
It is controversial because it's an unnecessary change a historic convention for no benefit at all.
Astronomers were more than capable of coming up with their specialist terms, and planet could have remained defined simply as "these specific 9 bodies". The reason for removing Pluto as a planet is just as silly as it would be to remove the gas giants as planets just because their gas-to-rock ratio is larger than some arbitrarily designated value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @05:28PM
That's not how science works...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @11:28AM (1 child)
It's aluminum. You're wrong, and in the minority. 'ium' doesn't even make sense.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 03 2018, @03:42PM
Depends on where he lives.
It makes as much or as little sense as 'um'. Well, at least 'alumium' didn't catch on; two alternatives to make pointless arguments about are more than enough. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday August 03 2018, @02:45PM
I understand that this is not settled and some places insert the extraneous "i", and others don't.
If Aluminum were an outlier, I might be sympathetic.
But until the extraneous-i people start sincerely calling for an "i" to also be inserted into Lanthanum, Molybdenum, Tantalum, Platinum, and Latinum, I will thank them to keep their extra letter to themselves. That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @06:59AM
How about stopping doing "managerial" bullshit and actually do science instead? Next time they'll be talking of elf and troll planets, I'm sure of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @01:15PM (1 child)
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
There's two problems with the new label:
Both problems could have been avoided in several ways:
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday August 03 2018, @05:29PM
Sorry but if Planet 9/10/X/N+1 is not called "Rupert" then it is an insult to the memory of Douglas Adams.