Pluto: And then there were eight

[Tacz]

http://news.com.com/Pluto+And+then+ther ... 09092.html

So it seems that Pluto no longer is a planet in the sense that we all know it. This will cause change in millions of third-grade solar system charts. It's a good time to invest in the solar-system-chart industry.

[Ashval]

I had Pluto in my Fantasy Planetary League...

[Tarryk]

It's about time, really. They've been arguing it for years. Pluto's basically just a really big asteroid, and it's one of dozens.

I had Pluto in my Fantasy Planetary League...

Rarely has a statement raised so many questions in my head simultaneously.

[Psyloche]

Personally, i think its weird to call a ice chunk in extreme epliptic orbit a planet, but pluto got a atmosphere, so i COULD be ok with either idea.

But, now they get into SERIOUS problems explaining eventual other solar systems: if a system got a loose gas giant, who orbits a 2. gas giant who is larger, you get a planet maybe 3-4 times as large as jupiter with a moon looking as uranus

when the depate were underway, i wondered what ID call a planet. my idea to a definition: a mass without natural fusion reaction in core, with or without orbiting a star. the size need to be large enough to have gravity enough for a atmosphere, regardless if it got one.

of couse, my definition would even cover artificial spaceships large enough.

[Ashval]

Rarely has a statement raised so many questions in my head simultaneously.

[Otori]

As of now the deciding factor in this somewhat tedious arguement, is that to be defined as a planet it has significantly cleared its orbit around the sun of other objects. As mentioned with Pluto's eccentric orbit it hasn't cleared it's path.....namely of Neptune, which it crosses path with every couple hundred of years.

It's funny to me how much media attention this is getting, because there are literally thousands of celestial objects that are reclassified every year. I've been to 3 of these conferences myself and it's absolutely mind numbing. The original proposal was to go the oppsite direction on this and DO classify the smaller objects as planets. Ceres, an asteriod between Mars and Jupiter would have received Planet status, along with Pluto and it's moon Charon would have received "Dual Planet" status. Of course the problem is that more and more objects in the Kupier Belt are being visually identified, some prolly even bigger than Pluto.

Anyway with Pluto being shot down, I see Goofy is nowhere to be heard from

[Psyloche]

I think the tought of the planet Xena and her moon Gabrielle whould make some reconcider pluto as a planet, though, lol.

[Nova]

Ok, with all that is wrong with the world (not going into details, you know what I mean) Why on earth do we care if they downgrade a planets name that we know very little about? Seems to me we have enough to do on our own planet to take care of us without making this some huge issue.

[Otori]

Ok, with all that is wrong with the world (not going into details, you know what I mean) Why on earth do we care if they downgrade a planets name that we know very little about? Seems to me we have enough to do on our own planet to take care of us without making this some huge issue.

Classic arguement. Astronomers didn't choose to change what's wrong in our world, they chose to benefit the greater knowledge of the human race....our desire to understand the universe and our place in it. Sometimes to pass that knowledge on to future generations requires the fine tuning of details so as to make the learning process more accessible and truthful. A Nova is the sudden brightening of a previously inconspicuous star. The name, short for nova stella (new star), formerly included objects now classified as supernovae and as other kinds of cataclysmic variables. Classical novae now include only those events where the energy source is hydrogen fusion (burning) on the surface of a white dwarf in a close binary system and the white dwarf is not destroyed in the process. For example

[Gridfan]

I agree with Tarryk and Otori here, it's about time.
The term planet has not truly been defined in the past
(other that large body in space orbiting the sun similar to the earth)

I just hope they properly document the change in history/schoolboks
as the "old nine" has a large historical impact.
As does this change as it shows the human race is evolving and continually learning. (unlike politicians, religious people, and money hungry nimwits. *sigh*)

[Firia]

Classic arguement. Astronomers didn't choose to change what's wrong in our world, they chose to benefit the greater knowledge of the human race....our desire to understand the universe and our place in it.

Hee! This is why I like Otori. Lookin' at the big picture here.

[Mumon]

First let me just say, I'm glad it's not a planet any more. With it not being a planet anymore, it's easier for me to hide a secret base there with less people as interested in a Dwarf Planet.

But... it's interesting to note...

You have the Sun and use to be nine planets... sort of like this...

(*) . . . . . . . . .

That is by no means to scale of course.

People had then been working on working out the shape of the universe and tried to find out why the planets could all line up like that. They concluded that it was like a sheet of paper and that gravity was sort of like an indent in the paper. (All right more like a sheet of Ruber, put a marble on the ruber and you'll have dent form).

But anyways... back to the point...

They then pointed out Pluto's strange orbit and said... hum that does sort of make our sheet of Ruber Idea a bit poor.

So they came up with new equations and what not that explained the strange orbit, and stayed consistant with their sheet of ruber idea.

But they actualy used a planet to notice this odd bit of behavior with space and time. They didn't look up into space and say "Oooh wait, astroid XR94245 doesn't obey the laws of physics as we know them." No they looked up in the sky and said "Oooh wait, Pluto doesn't obey the laws of physics as we know them."

[Otori]

No they didn't Mumon. The idea of Massive objects warping space-time were well incorporated into Einsteins relativity. Pluto was discovered by using Newtonian mechanics affected by Neptune's orbit. Percival Lowell and William Pickering had determined that something else was effecting Neptune's orbit. Lowell died in 1916 but had provided significant proof of Pluto's existence.

The vague and commonly used description of a "marble on a piece of rubber stretched over a surface" is very mis-stated, as this only works better on really giant scales. That description is better used as a 2 dimensional version for the entire universe. On a smaller scale, as our solar system, it's simply gravity doing the work. "Gravity sucks" is prolly the best way to say it.

[Mumon]

Hey now, I'm working on rewriting history. Don't get in my way.

Yar!

If they can change if Pluto is a planet, I can change the history of Science.