Originally posted by mozart56: Pluto has been voted out, it's too small, it will be called a dwarf planet now. Will the "card readers" change their stories now?
Don't know. What did astrologers and the rest do before 1930 when Pluto was discovered ? ************************************************* 08-24-06, 12:30PM DorianGreyed
"What did astrologers and the rest do before 1930 when Pluto was discovered ?"
Before 1930, astrologers were faking it, but after Pluto was discovered, they could give real, honest, and accurate readings.
08-24-06, 01:04 PM hippolips Hi Gang:
With all the important crap going on in the world ,now we're worrying about a small planet named after a Disney cartoon dog.
Have we got our values twisted or what??? hippolips
08-24-06, 01:15 PM methos
quote: named after a Disney cartoon dog.
A Roman god, actually, like most of the planets.
08-24-06, 01:56 PM DorianGreyed Disney's Pluto was probably named after the planet. His first appearance as "Pluto" was in 1931.
Pluto has been Mickey Mouse's dog for so long, it's hard to believe when they first met, they were enemies. It's true! In …
… The Chain Gang (1930), Mickey was a prisoner (wrongly convicted, no doubt). When he escaped, Pluto, making his first appearance in cartoons, was one of the dogs that tried to track him down.
In that cartoon, the dog character has no name. In his second appearance, The Picnic (1930), he is called Rover, and cast as Minnie's dog. Only in the third, The Moose Hunt (1931) does he assume his now-familiar position as Mickey's faithful pooch, Pluto (probably named after the planet, which was discovered in 1930, about the time The Moose Hunt was in production). - Don Markstein's Toonopedia
08-24-06, 07:52 PM mozart56 75 Years ago(almost 76) a young British girl (then 11 and still alive) was responsable for founding the name of planet Pluto. Reference. Now all the books and encyclopedias and web sites in the world will have to edit their data. This is to my point of view an interesting piece of scientific history that doesn't occur every day. Smile
08-24-06, 07:54 PM DorianGreyed I think it is about time that someone recognized Karrow's contribution to astronomy. Thanks, Mozart! Big Grin
08-24-06, 08:12 PM mozart56 DG, I hope that before Karrow decides to chastise you, she will take into account that the last name's little girl was "Phair". Big Grin
08-25-06, 01:20 AM gizmogram I gotta feel sorry for all those students who now have to tear apart and rebuilt their solar system mobiles for Science Class Frown
The history books have been getting rewritten quite alot in the last couple of decades...wow!
08-25-06, 08:34 AM Georgia85 I can't take it anymore! Is information we learn in school becoming totally worthless? What's next, will someone discover that 2+2 now equals 5...or that the world is not round... Wink
08-25-06, 08:39 AM juanruiz This appears to be a unilateral action on the part of the IAU, a self-appointed group which has taken upon itself the authority to decide what is a planet. If the rest of the world does not want to be bound by this decision, I don't see why it should.
08-25-06, 08:51 AM VelvetVoice Georgia-The information you learned in school has always been useless, I thought I sent you the memo.
Yeah, and the world is flat. Thomas Friedman says so and I believe it.
I thought there were discoveries of several other planets outside of Pluto. What would Dante say? Let's end JR to the other side to find out.
08-25-06, 09:19 AM juanruiz
quote: Let's end JR to the other side to find out.
That would be my end.
08-25-06, 09:36 AM methos There are several objects outside of Pluto, at least one of them is larger than Pluto. The problem is drawing a line between what is and isn't a planet. Pluto isn't much like any of the planets, but it is fairly similar to some other objects. If Pluto is a planet, then there are likely to be many many more. If it isn't then we probably won't discover anything else that is, and the number will stay at 8.
The only reason for including Pluto and excluding all the others (the handful that have been discovered and the many more that are likely to be) is that Pluto happened to be found first.
Astronomers want one definition of a planet to use when talking/writing to each other. Without one, the literature will get confusing now that we're discovering objects that some consider planets and some do not. So, they got together and voted on a definition to use.
In common usage, no one has to go by their definition. In scientific usage, a definition was needed and the IAU was the appropriate body to make that decision.
08-25-06, 09:45 AM juanruiz
quote: In scientific usage, a definition was needed and the IAU was the appropriate body to make that decision.
Yes, but the apparent subjectivity of the process is that earlier in the conference the IAU was ready to accept Pluto as a planet. What it opted for was a half-way measure, demoting Pluto, yet mollifying people by calling it a "dwarf planet."
08-25-06, 12:16 PM methos Juan - It has to be an arbitrary definition.
There isn't a crystal-clear dividing line. At some point, you can look at an object and say "no way is that a planet" and at some point you can look at an object and say "that's definitely a planet." In my opinion (as a non-astronomer but someone who has studied the subject and played with the big toys), the line between Pluto and the other planets is about as close as it gets to a clear division.
As far as the IAU being ready to accept Pluto earlier, it was actually an advisory board within it. Their recommendation would have expanded the known planets to 12 and left room for many, possibly hundreds, of undiscovered ones. The media got ahold of the story and reported it as a done deal, when it hadn't yet been voted on.
I think the winning proposal (8 planets instead of possibly hundreds) was the better one, but any definition would have been arbitrary.
08-25-06, 12:22 PM juanruiz Could be. And I grant that there are maybe thousands of bodies revolving around the sun larger than Pluto. My point is that for decades it was considered a planet, why not keep it at that and deal with everything else in a different manner?
08-25-06, 01:37 PM aminator2002 poor little pluto.
It doesn't matter in the least bit to me. I probably could have gone the rest of my life without even thinking of Pluto had this not come up. Really not a big deal at all.
08-25-06, 01:49 PM methos The advisory board agreed with you. I don't have an serious problem with doing that, but I prefer the way they ultimately went.
Any division would be largely arbitrary, this one just seems, to me, less arbitrary than others.
I remember reading about a class of objects. I've forgotten what they named the first one, but let's call it X. As they discovered more, they called them X-like objects. At some point, they had discovered many X-like objects and had been able to study them better. Defining exactly what an X-like object was became easier. It turned out, X really wasn't and X-like object.
Then there's Pluto. When it was discovered, we really didn't know much about it. From what little we knew, it seemed similar to the planets. Now, we know more about it and we've started discovering and predicting other objects. In this case, it turns out it would have been better to have called it a Pluto-like object (or, in the new nomenclature, dwarf planet).
08-25-06, 03:52 PM DorianGreyed "I thought there were discoveries of several other planets outside of Pluto."
Didn't Fr. Sarducci say that there was another planet, Veni et Venuti (or something to that effect), that was on the opposite side of the sun than Earth, but was identical to Earth? (Except for their odd habit of eating corn on the cob vertically?)
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Yes, but what about poor Charon? All we get is Pluto this and Pluto that and nobody thinks of poor Charon We should declare the pair a planet. ******************************************************** 08-25-06, 05:41 PM newnickname 'Although Pluto was discovered during Holst's lifetime, in 1930, Holst expressed no interest in writing a movement for it. In 2000, The Hallé Orchestra commissioned composer Colin Matthews, a Holst specialist, to write a new eighth movement, which Matthews entitled Pluto, the Renewer. Dedicated to Imogen, Gustav Holst's daughter, it was first performed in Manchester on May 11, 2000, with Kent Nagano conducting the Hallé Orchestra. Matthews changed the ending of Neptune into a transition to "Pluto".
In August 2006 Pluto was stripped of its status as a Planet by The International Astronomical Union (IAU), a worldwide society of astronomers from 75 countries. The IAU demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet, and Holst's original decision was vindicated.' en.wikipedia.org
08-26-06, 02:22 AM DvdGStwrt Well they could call it a b.b. in a bathtub for all I care, Pluto is, and forever more (at least as long as I live) will be the 9th PLANET.
Big Grin
08-26-06, 02:34 PM Professor
quote:
Originally posted by juanruiz:
quote:
Originally posted by methos: In scientific usage, a definition was needed and the IAU was the appropriate body to make that decision.
Yes, but the apparent subjectivity of the process is that earlier in the conference the IAU was ready to accept Pluto as a planet. What it opted for was a half-way measure, demoting Pluto, yet mollifying people by calling it a "dwarf planet."
In short, a “planet” is now defined as a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
Definition of Dwarf Planet:
quote:
A dwarf planet, according to the new definition, is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
They go on to say:
quote:
For Pluto supporters, not all is lost. The “dwarf planet” Pluto is being recognized, according to the IAU, as "an important proto-type of a new class of trans-Neptunian objects." The IAU will set up a process to name these objects.
There's even more appeasement for the outraged:
quote:
"The classification doesn't matter," said Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society. "Pluto -- and all solar system objects -- are mysterious and exciting new worlds that need to be explored and better understood. Anytime we visit a new world -- planet, moon, asteroid, comet, whatever -- we make exciting and surprising new discoveries about the evolution of our solar system and about our own planet."
But the clincher is this statement [emphasis mine]:
quote:
As it turns out, the proposed resolution that made so much notice when it was presented to the public last week -- and which would have expanded the solar system to 12 planets -- passed, but it was a different draft of the document in that it added the third criteria of a planet having to clear its neighborhood around its orbit. Pluto's orbit crosses that of Neptune, which is much larger, so the former 9th planet didn't meet all the criteria.
So failing the criterion of "clearing its orbit" is what leads to Pluto's demotion to "dwarfness". It's not just an arbitrary cutoff based on, say, size or mass, but a definite property that the object either has or hasn't.
That many people are so upset by this is a good thing! It indicates awareness of, and caring about, the solar system as our greater home. It's not like Pluto has disappeared! I think Percival Lowell would be pleased to know that his discovery of "Planet X" (later named Pluto) led to what is now regarded as a new class of celestial objects.
08-26-06, 02:49 PM DorianGreyed How can it be said that Neptune has cleared its own orbit if Pluto's orbit crosses it?
08-26-06, 03:32 PM Professor Good question. Anyone out there from the IAU?
Their orbits indeed cross. For a few recent years, Pluto was closer than Neptune.
Because Neptune is "much larger" I guess it has priority, so to speak. After all, with a larger diameter and higher mass, Neptune is presumably much more prone to impacts than Pluto, yet it's still there. If Pluto actually collided with Neptune (highly unlikely though possible) then presumably Neptune would emerge more or less intact as Neptune, while Pluto would be destroyed(?) The same may be true of a third body in the neighborhood impacting either one. This may have bearing on whether or not it's orbit is considered "cleared." I have a feeling there's a more technical definition somewhere in the fine print, and a whole detailed theory of orbit-clearing.
There's said to be good evidence that the Earth's moon was ejected from the proto-Earth in a cataclysmic impact with an asteroid. Could a collision between Neptune and Pluto be similar? Meanwhile Uranus rotates on an axis at nearly right angles to the other planets, presumably the remnant of a past violent impact (huge change in angular momentum). Unfortunately I don't know much about impact dynamics of planetary bodies. (That's why I didn't answer the 3 moons over earth question , either.)
08-26-06, 07:47 PM DorianGreyed It appears to be like real life. The big guys gets all the breaks, and the little guy gets screwed. Big Grin
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We should declare the pair a planet.
