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Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

theguardian.com

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Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

#41

Post by andrewflnr »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #22

The main objection to calling Pluto a planet appears to be that if Pluto is a planet then up to about 200 other objects should also be called planets, that the list would be of unknown size and regularly changing. That's an objection? No, that's a benefit! I think it'd be awesome to be regularly discovering new planets.

"Discovering new planets" only has the cachet it does because there are so few of them, and they are individually so significant. It would quickly lose that significance if there were hundreds of them. To be precise, it would acquire exactly the significance it actually deserves, but having diluted the meaning of "planet" as applied to the big eight in the process. We would soon want another name for the originals to compensate.

We can still be reasonably excited about discovering new things in the solar system without pretending they're in the same category as Earth and Neptune.

Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

#42

Post by drxzcl »

beloch wrote: post #28
drxzcl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans-neptunian objects, including Pluto, are in orbital resonance. They owe their stable orbits to the existence of Neptune. It’s like saying Jupiter is not a planet because the Trojans exist.

...or like saying Earth is not a planet because NEA's share our orbit. If you have to argue that it doesn't apply to Jupiter or Earth because they are obviously planets, it implies that "clearing the neighbourhood" is a vague and not particularly useful criteria.

Except I said nothing of the sort. I said the opposite.

Jupiter, Neptune and earth in your example dominate the gravity of their orbit by locking the smaller bodies into orbital reasonances.

It’s not a vague criterium. It might be an irrelevant one if you are interested in geophysics, but it’s concrete and testable.

Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

#43

Post by [deleted] »

jerf wrote: post #19

You know, this is really just a fantastic opportunity to realize the phenomenal psychological power of "headcanon". Who cares if Pluto is or is not tagged with the word "planet" by some organization you know effectively nothing about, have no control over, has no control over you, and couldn't so much as move a pebble on the planetary body in question any time in the next 20 years, if not more? Have whatever emotiona…

[deleted]

Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

#45

Post by hn_submit »

space_fountain wrote: post #15
hn_submit wrote: post #9

I'm in the same camp. I believe the classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet was arbitrary and inconsistent. I mean, it's been known as a planet for almost 80 years and suddenly we demote it? I believe someone was trying to make a name for themselves here and ignoring the history of Pluto and its discovery.

The issue is that when we discovered Pluto we thought it was much bigger than it turned out to be. If it was as big as they thought then sure it would be a planet. As it is it isn’t even the most massive dwarf planet

They saw a problem with the discovery of other Kuiper Belt Objects and came up with a pseudo-scientific definition to "solve" the discrepancy.

Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

#46

Post by cobbzilla »

hn_submit wrote: post #9

I'm in the same camp. I believe the classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet was arbitrary and inconsistent. I mean, it's been known as a planet for almost 80 years and suddenly we demote it? I believe someone was trying to make a name for themselves here and ignoring the history of Pluto and its discovery.

It was fine and dandy until Eris came along.

Eris is bigger than Pluto, so if Pluto’s a planet then so is Eris. So you have 10 planets.

And then how many other Erises are still hiding? How many planets do we have then? It must be some very large unknown number!

Holding the true number of planets to be a large unknown number was anathema to many.

The demotion of Pluto was primarily motivated by a desire for the word “planet” to refer to a fixed, never-changing number of large bodies orbiting the sun.

Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

#49

Post by chuckadams »

tanseydavid wrote: post #25
hn_submit wrote: post #9

I'm in the same camp. I believe the classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet was arbitrary and inconsistent. I mean, it's been known as a planet for almost 80 years and suddenly we demote it? I believe someone was trying to make a name for themselves here and ignoring the history of Pluto and its discovery.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine...uhhhm... !?

Mary's Violet Eyes Make John Stay Up Nights.

still works, how bout that?

Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting

#50

Post by metalman »

Pluto as one of the outer Canadian planets in the Canadian solar system, which as you now know is part of the Canadian Galaxy is realy such a trifling concern back on one of the Canadian Continents that contains Canada proper the center of Universal Canada, but since there is dissent on it's status something can be done through a referendum. go ahead,laugh, but wait till google AND wikipedia both come on board
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