UNCANNY LIKENESS......but Harpo is still the funny one and her Heinous is still Uranus.
Posted on 08/24/2006 7:18:05 AM PDT by Lunatic Fringe
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.
After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn't — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.
Although astronomers applauded after the vote, Jocelyn Bell Burnell — a specialist in neutron stars from Northern Ireland who oversaw the proceedings — urged those who might be "quite disappointed" to look on the bright side.
"It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called 'planet' under which the dwarf planets exist," she said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella.
The decision by the prestigious international group spells out the basic tests that celestial objects will have to meet before they can be considered for admission to the elite cosmic club.
For now, membership will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."
Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.
Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.
It was unclear how Pluto's demotion might affect the mission of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which earlier this year began a 9 1/2-year journey to the oddball object to unearth more of its secrets.
The decision at a conference of 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries was a dramatic shift from just a week ago, when the group's leaders floated a proposal that would have reaffirmed Pluto's planetary status and made planets of its largest moon and two other objects.
That plan proved highly unpopular, splitting astronomers into factions and triggering days of sometimes combative debate that led to Pluto's undoing.
Now, two of the objects that at one point were cruising toward possible full-fledged planethood will join Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto whose discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena has nicknamed Xena.
Charon, the largest of Pluto's three moons, is no longer under consideration for any special designation.
Sorry to bug you again, but I am completely unfamiliar with the Uranian/Jovian satellites (outside of Jupiter and Saturn). They should hold at least a few conspiracy-theory Zapruder Film-type clues. I noticed the article you cited only stated a "rocky" interior, surrounded by water ice and ammonia. No surprises there, but what is "rocky"? What holds a Jovian giant together?
Gravity holds 'em all together (whether rocky or gas giant or Pluton). Jupiter's satellites are much more numerous (60+) than we all learned in school, and many (most?) of them are in retrograde orbits, which is generally considered diagnostic of capture origin.
Jupiter's core?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1294934/posts?page=12#12
Oh, and from that same topic, there's also this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1294934/posts?page=10#10
Wonderful, wonderful news - and thank you for the citations. #102 bodes for our descendents pretty well (even under 20th century physics, not to mention what supergeeks are working on now).
I've going to bug a couple others about Uranus, if you don't mind. Absolutely fascinating. How come the MSM never covered the fly-bys? Would it be possible to send a relatively-cheap mission past Uranus and Neptune? I know "New Horizons" is en route to Pluto, but what data will that gather? Surely, within 20-odd years, we can get a planetary slingshot alignment that will get something across those two damn things, particularly if we can shoot the damn thing from Mars or something.
Thanks for adding me to the Ping List.
God Bless,
-Jeff
They've decided to get rid of that stupid joke once and for all. They changed the name to Urectum.
Dang zoning boards are all alike. They're only doing it for the tax revenue.
I'm happy with it. I always thought that Pluto was a poser.
UNCANNY LIKENESS......but Harpo is still the funny one and her Heinous is still Uranus.
What?!? It is the very fact that Science is malleable that makes it Science, not religion.
Voyager 2 decades ago did a fly-by of Uranus and Neptune and allowed the mass of each to be corrected to just about 100% certainty. Previously they were known to about 99% of actuality.
What I'm referring to is the prevalence of junk science, which IMHO has made large numbers of lay people into science skeptics. The Malthus/Ehrlich population bomb hoax, the vastly exaggerated claims we were all about to die from a nuclear winter and if that didn't happen radiation from nuclear power plants would get us, the DDT/pesticide lie, IUD's, silicone breast implants, AIDS was going to affect all American heterosexuals, Algore's global warming nonsense . . . . And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
At one time scientific results were very intuitive. That changed around the time quantum theory was developed. (Around the same time, curiously, it became impossible for lay people to tell good art from bad art.) It seems to me the scientific community needs to do a much better job of calling out the hucksters who distort science for profit or political gain and restore some credibility that many don't realize has been lost.
My main point with Pluto is that nearly everyone alive has grown up with the idea that Pluto is a planet. NASA is sending a ship there to "complete" its initial exploration of the planets. Most people aren't exposed to a lot of science in school, but one thing everyone learns in elementary school is the catechism of the Planets. Couldn't we leave Pluto on the list until lay people are exposed to the idea and get comfortable with the fact we only relatively recently learned that Pluto is one of many, many Kuiper objects that really aren't like the original eight planets?
I saw in the paper this morning there is already reaction against the decision as just another example of nutty junk science. I really didn't expect it to happen this quickly, though.
I agree completely. I don't think this settled a thing. It almost seems like they absolutely had to stay away from defining a planet as something that would (heaven forbid) add to the number of planets.
It is universally agreed that had they known how small Pluto was when it was first discovered, it never would have been designated a planet in the first place. After all, Ceres was at one time considered a planet.
Did anybody notice that an "international group" of astronomers demoted the only "planet" discovered by an American?
I think that's really stretching things a bit. Pluto is an oddball as far as being defined as a planet would be. It has an erratic orbit and it is out of the planetary plane. The axis of its gravitational orbit with Charon (it's major moon) does not lie within Pluto's own mass.
If it makes you feel any better, you can always ridicule Euro-trash with this phrase "haha you guys didn't discover Your Anus until 1781, hahaha"
If I had a scope... I envy you folks... : ) <<< me
 |
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · | ||
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.