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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
(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.