Take THAT, Pluto haters!!!

[Bunny]

Seems that some American (yes, that's right - AMERICAN!!!!) scientists are issuing a smackdown to the international astronomers that tried to kick Pluto out of the planet world. We Pluto lovers will have our day. Oh yes we will.

<snip>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of U.S. scientists have challenged a recent decision by an international astronomy group to strip Pluto of its planetary status with a petition rejecting its definition of what constitutes a planet.

The astronomical insurrection shows that debate is likely to continue over the status of the icy rock at the edge of the solar system that was considered the ninth planet until a vote last week by the International Astronomical Union.

Petition organizer Alan Stern said the union's decision was driven by politics, not science.

"The IAU can say the sky is green all day long and that doesn't make it so," said Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
<snip>

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060901/sc_nm/space_pluto_dc

[GoddessOfGuinness]

1. I don't understand why people are so bent out of shape about this.

I mean, it's not like Pluto has disappeared.

[Placebo]

5. YES. IT. HAS.

:tinfoilhat:

:hide:

[politicat]

8. Becauseit screws up astrological predictions.

If the force of gravity of a double hunk of rock a brazillion km away and smaller than half of the asteroids in the belt can't be legitimately counted in the figuring of star charts now, there are millions of invalid astrological predictions out there!

Personally, I'm okay with it, or, if Pluto must be a planet, then I'd like to see Ceres, Io, Europa, Titan and several others also included. I like complexity. The more the better!

[hfojvt]

17. Io, Europa, and Titan?

They do not have a separate orbit around the sun - too captured by their extremely large primaries. What about Earth's moon - the new planet Luna? Pluto's still alot bigger than Ceres isn't it? Unless it has been downsized again.

[politicat]

21. Pluto itself is smaller than Ceres. Only with Charon is it larger than

Ceres. So when Pluto was discovered, it was the system that was considered a planet, while in fact it is probably a twin pair of very near Khuiper belt objects. While Nix and Hydra have orbits influenced by Pluto, they're definitely captured objects; none of the objects in the system are actually spherical (Pluto is kind of potato shaped while Charon is sort of saucerish.)

Ceres masses 9.5×10 to the 20th kg; Pluto is barely 1% larger. Calling Pluto a planet while ignoring a much closer and more regular object with an orbit that is on the plane of the rest of the solar system seems arbitrary at best to me.

Pluto is significantly smaller than a number of the moons in the solar system, and in my mind, since it has very few of the usual defining aspects of a planet (i.e. spherical shape, s) while the larger moons do have more of those characteristics, it makes more sense to me for Titan, Ganymede, Io, Europa, Triton and Callisto to be considered planetary gravitationally bound objects than dependent moons. Luna is different' see below. (And yes, I do look at this in terms not only of current science, but in terms of how we will treat these objects in the future as human colonization and exploration make an impact on them. There are very real, though future, political issues at work here, such as what happens when a planet and its moon are both colonized? Does the planetary government have any control over the moon community, because the moon is "part" of the planet? Legalistic and nonrelevant as this may be right now, it will have significant impact in the not terribly distant future, assuming that we don't all blow ourselves entirely up. We've had these types of arguments before on Terra, regarding islands near larger land masses and lands joined by narrow isthmuses which could be seen as the terrestrial equivalent to a gravitational bond... )

As for the clearing of the neighborhood ruling, I strongly disagree with that ruling of the IAU. By that reasoning, Mercury should not be a planet, because any clearing of the neighborhood which has been done in the Mercury area was not done by Mercury but by the sun; Mercury doesn't have the gravity to have done so for itself. As for Luna-Earth, I think that maybe we should be considered a double system, with planetary rights granted to Luna on the basis that, in the rest of the solar system, the moons do not reach within a one hundredth of the size of the parent planet. (Not that I'm alone in this; astronomical science is filled with disputes and damned if I'm going to follow the narrow herd at IAU; I disagree and as an amateur astronomer with an interest in satellite bodies, I'm going to disagree on the basis of the evidence before me.) Again, that issue of forethought regarding future exploration and governance keeps coming to mind; if we set precedents now that allow for suppression or control, we are opening up a set of problems that may take war to solve.

[Ptah]

22. Ease up, Pluto's gone

Long live Pluto:

[CanuckAmok]

23. Whoa, now, let's not go nuts here.

Ceres, Io, Europa and Titan orbits surround a planet, not the solar system.

[BulletproofLandshark]

29. Ceres is an asteroid, not a moon.

[Random_Australian]

30. Did I just hear you say that Ceres - the largest asteroid in the belt -

orbits a planet?

Nope, because I read what you typed, but you still get the picture.

[Random_Australian]

2. REIFICATION! REIFICATION! Even us science types are not immune.

What is the world coming to?

(I know, hidden variables. I'm not stupid)

[Benfea]

3. It's not a planet, it's a failed comet.

A small one, at that.

[Placebo]

6. Aren't we all? *long dreamy sigh*

Sorry, I got a bit emotional there for a second.

[billyskank]

9. Who are we to judge success and failure?

All comets are special in their own unique ways. :P

[baldguy]

11. It's round and orbits the sun. It's a planet.

The category it falls into shouldn't be dependant on what its made of.

[Benfea]

12. So comets are planets too?

There's an awful lot of those orbiting the Sun, you know.

[baldguy]

13. Yep. There's nothing "special" about a planet.

A "comet" is just something that starts evaporating if it gets too close to the sun. Pluto fits that description, but so does Jupiter. Is Jupiter just a failed comet, too?

[Benfea]

20. What the hell. Why not asteroids too? -NT

[baldguy]

34. What is an asteroid?

Just as there's nothing special about a planet, there's also nothing plebeian about asteroids. They're two points on a continuum of sizes for natural objects in space. The definition of an object should be as simple as necessary, and be dependant on the physical characteristics of the object in question. It should not be dependant on the biases introduced by the materials it's made of, the definitions of other objects, or its location in the planetary system.

Planets are round, asteroids are not round.

[Benfea]

36. Not round? You mean like Ceres is "not round"? :P

No text! No text!

[baldguy]

40. Planets are round; Ceres is a planet.

There are probably 30-40 in our solar system.

[Benfea]

44. Given the choice between 8 and 30, I'll stick with 8, thank you very much.

Too damned much memorization.

[Robeson]

4. Probably because our educational system doesn't have the money...

...to change the textbooks. So the Fuhrer has told them it's still a planet.

[Placebo]

7. Fuck these fuzzy foreigner "SCIENTISTS" so-called...

Pluto is a fucking planet, dammit.

As usual, the US is going to have to step in to save a country (in this case, a whole FREAKIN' planet) that Europe and the rest of the world just wants to ignore and put their fingers in their ears about while they all go get gay marriages and drink freakin' champagne and eat chocolate and get free health care.

Well not this time. Pluto is a friend of freedom and so it is a friend of the US! We won't turn our back on it in its hour of need.

[CanuckAmok]

25. Pluto's non-planetary designation is the Metric System of the 21st Century

You Americans can fight it all you want, but you know it makes more sense our way.

[Placebo]

26. I'll say this in a way you can understand:

Rubbish.

:patriot:

God Bless America. Where the metric system is nowhere to be seen and Pluto can roam free.

[kryckis]

10. I saw a news clip

that made a point about the Americans being so upset over this could be because an American discovered the damn thing and that makes it a sensitive subject.


I just have to say, don't take it personally guys. Besides, you already own this planet, you don't need a small nobody like Pluto.



Peace.

[Ptah]

14. Perhaps if we petition the admins, Pluto could be restored.

Pluto:



:shrug:

[Placebo]

16. ...

:rofl:

still f'n hilarious

[Bucky]

18. That picture deserves its own thread

I'm series.

[Ptah]

19. Here's the original

OMG! Tombstoned! I don't know what to say.

:hi:

[leftofthedial]

15. The Intelligent Designer

designed the earth to have eight planets and the sun and the moon revolving around it

The ID created all that pretty early in the week as I recall

who cares if a bunch of "scientists" figure out stuff

[qnr]

24. I think Australians should complain. "First they came for Pluto and I did

not speak out." .... Next thing you know, they'll want to take continent status away from you guys.

[Placebo]

27. Well it isn't a continent.

It's an island nation.

I mean, no one thinks of it when they think of continents.

[Random_Australian]

32. Puh! Says who?

[Random_Australian]

33. Huh. Sure. 'They' and who's army?

[sofa king]

35. Well, the People's Liberation Army comes to mind....

Just sayin'. First Pluto, then Taiwan, then Australia. You know, like dominos, only one domino is three thousand miles away from the others.

[qnr]

37. Precisely! This apathy is going to do them in. Oh yeah, and one domino

was 39.48 astronautical units away from the others, but still....

[sofa king]

28. The Cerians laugh at you!

Oh yes. How does it feel to have your insignificant and remote iceball reduced to peasant status? Oh, we know. We know very well. Ceres was once the fifth planet from the Sun, but no longer. We were stricken from the list in the 1800s.

But then along came Pluto, darling of the solar system. Ooooh! It's so far away! Oooooh! It's a double planet! Ooooh! The kids in science class have to memorize Pluto, but where is Ceres today? We might as well be another asteroid, for all the children care. Did the Plutonians extend their hand in greeting? Was there a single gesture of support to your elderly and warmer neighbor? NO. You treated us as if we were the far side of the Moon.

Yet, for all that, we Cerians realize that our only hope--and perhaps yours as well--is to band together in solidarity. Join us, and together we shall win our crusade and, someday, rule the Solar System as father and son! Oh, and Yoko Ono-like consort which cannot be chased away. See, we didn't forget you either, Charon.

[qnr]

38. umm, not a very conciliatory way of starting an alliance n/t

[sofa king]

41. Silence!

You dare to question us? Very well, then, we shall go it alone. The Cerians shall propose that there is only ONE planet in the solar system, Ceres, with several thousand "insignificant but related mudballs, snowballs, and gas formations of lesser perfection."

Then you will taste our wrath, I can assure you.

[qnr]

42. You can't be series! this is hugh!!1!111!!

never had occasion to use that before....

[Skittles]

31. I thought it was strange it was announced out of the blue

how about announcing intentions and partipating in a debate?

[qnr]

39. Really. Not /once/ did I hear that Pluto was given a chance to make its

opinions heard. I think some ass kicking needs to be done, by someone, somewhere... but who?

[The Sushi Bandit]

43. New photo of Pluto's surface features.. Amazing!!