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Pluto May Get Let Back into the Planet Club
Are Mercury's Days as a Planet Numbered?
San Francisco, 6:00 PM
Mon Nov 9
21 posts in the last 24 hours
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Pluto May Get Let Back into the Planet Club |
Are Mercury's Days as a Planet Numbered? |
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07/28/09
The IAU should take responsibility for the highly flawed definition adopted by only four percent of its members, most of whom are not planetary scientists, in 2006. However, the IAU should not be viewed as the sole authority on the definition of planet. Many planetary scientists do not belong to the IAU. Should they not have a say in this matter? Something does not become fact simply because a tiny group that calls itself an authority says so. It is significant that hundreds of planetary scientists led by New Horizons Principal Investgator Alan Stern immediately signed a formal petition opposing the IAU definition.
There are other venues through which a planet definition can be determined, such as last year's Great Planet Debate at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.
07/28/09
Actually, it does. It happens all the time. It's pretty much what every form of government is based upon.
07/28/09
Besides - it was originally known as 'Planet X'. This alone gives it far more street cred than all the other so-called 'planets' combined.
07/27/09
http://www.amazon.com/Pluto-Files-Neil-deGrasse-Tyson....../dp/0393065200
07/28/09
07/27/09
07/27/09
Pluto is still there. The current definition (massive enough to become spherical and have cleared its surrounding space of planetary competitors) is sound.
And it excludes Pluto. Pluto is still there, relax, we just have a better understanding of its place in the solar system.
07/27/09
07/27/09
The definition does relate to size, but in a very complicated way, *after* we only consider bodies directly orbiting the sun. Different parts of the solar system can support different sized planets depending upon the area. The object has to be roughly spherical *and* have cleared its neighborhood of planetary competitors. Pluto fails on the latter. So do Ceres and Eris and the H and M dwarf planets whose names I can never remember how to spell.
07/27/09
07/27/09
07/27/09
They'll probably find Starbuck on Pluto, not Starbuck's.
07/27/09
07/27/09
Second, it reminds me of the interview Neil DeGrasse Tyson did on the Daily Show where he talked about getting hate mail from third grades, scrawled in crayon.
07/27/09
I have his book on that and he put a lot of the hate mail in the book. It's priceless.
Neil deGrasse Tyson always ranks on my list of favorite people.