Posted on 09/23/2006 6:38:54 PM PDT by KevinDavis
For Jarmel Hurtt, 14, it was the biggest reversal of fact since finding out there was no Santa Claus.
An equally disillusioned Benjamin Santiago, also 14, said: "It's like 2 plus 2 is 4, and then one day somebody decides to make it 3."
So when it came time recently to choose sides for a debate at their Center City Philadelphia high school - the newly opened Science Leadership Academy - Hurtt and Santiago stood with a majority of their classmates in arguing for Pluto to remain the ninth planet, as they have always known it, and against the scientific community's recent ruling to the contrary.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
There is no Santa Claus?
Screw you guys, I'm going home and Pluto's coming with me.
I can't say I have an opinion one way or the other. I don't get out of the immediate solar system much.
This has to be the most borning debate in my lifetime...
It's pretty bad. Someone on a recent "space" thread remarked that he was afraid that Voyager 3(?) was going to puncture the heliosphere. I'm almost completely sure he was joking, but my first reaction was "like worrying about it will make a difference." [chuckle]
Me, I don't know what the big deal is anyway.. I have more important things to worry about Pluto (Like I was going to visit there in the first place)...
I know a guy who swears up and down that the space shuttle pokes holes in the atmosphere on every launch. I tried to explain it to him by dropping a rock in the lake and asking him to find the hole be he couldn't grasp the similarities between air and water.
He gets mad because I walk behind him and act like I'm choking from walking in the hole he makes when he walks.
At least all the public school textbook companies will be drooling.
Actually I think the scientists are more interested in prestige than anything.
Follow the money! How many of these scientist will make money from new textbooks.
The issue is what is the definition of a planet? To date, the Planets have been defined by rooster, other objects orbiting the Sun have been called comets, asteroids or Kuiper Belt objects, or now planetoids, for massive objects orbiting beyond the Kuiper belt, like Zena and Sedna.
Pluto is atypical of other planets. Planets fall into two classes, gas giants of the outer solar system and rocky planets of the inner solar system. Pluto resembles thousands of Kuiper Belt objects more than either class.
Pluto has lost mass, in that the discovery of Charon has established that his mass is much smaller than previously believed.
Ceres, the most massive and first discovered of the main belt asteriods was once called a planet, but as dozens and later thousands of similar objects were discovered she was removed from the Canon.
I suppose the Kuiper belt objects have had the same effect on Pluto as asteriods had on Pluto. There are known
I used to think the orbit alone should have disqualified Pluto, but Hubble's been looking at a "newly"
forming star system with two disks, and the one planet found so far is in the secondary (smaller) disk,
albeit offset by something like only 4 or 6 degrees.
"the scientific community" didn't rule that Pluto is not a planet. A small group, a fraction of the IAU membership, voted it into a "dwarf planet" limbo, and while some may listen to this, it's strictly a political act, and insult to the United States -- and that's all it was intended to be.
The term "planet" has never had a hard definition. It didn't need one until we started finding more and more objects that challenged the loose definition that was in general use at the time.
Because of these relatively recent discoveries, they simply had to define "planet" in one of two ways. One way, we go back to 8 planets, or the other way, we wind up with thousands of "planets" as more and more Kuiper belt objects were found.
"Grandfathering" is nothing more than calling it a planet for emotional/sentimental reasons with no scientific, or just plain logical consistency what so ever.
This is very similar to the "Brown Dwarf v. Gas Giant" issue they're trying to figure out now. They need a better definition to address new discoveries challenging current knowledge.
They made the right call. Calling it a hit on America is stretching things just a bit.
Because of these relatively recent discoveries, they simply had to define "planet" in one of two ways. One way, we go back to 8 planets, or the other way, we wind up with thousands of "planets" as more and more Kuiper belt objects were found.Wrong.
About what exactly?
Nothing in that article, or the quote, contradicts anything I wrote.
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