Quote :

"For Now, Pluto Holds Its Place in Solar System Article Tools Sponsored By By DENNIS OVERBYE Published: August 16, 2006 Pluto dodged a bullet today. In the hope of ending years of wrangling, a committee of astronomers and historians has proposed a new definition of the word “planet” that would expand at a stroke the family of planets from 9 to 12 and leave textbooks and charts in thousands of classrooms out of date. But astronomers immediately began to wrangle about it. “It’s a mess,” said Michael E. Brown of the California Institute of Technology. Among the chosen few within the solar system would be not only Pluto, whose status has been challenged in recent years, but also Ceres, the largest asteroid; 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena, an object discovered by Dr. Brown in 2005 orbiting far beyond Pluto in the outer solar system; and even Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. In addition, at least a dozen more solar system objects are waiting in the wings for more data to see if they fit the new definition of planethood, which is that an object be massive enough that gravity has formed it into a sphere and that it circles a star and not some other planet. The definition, they said, would apply both inside and outside the solar system. The new definition was to be announced today in Prague, where some 2,500 astronomers are meeting in the triannual assembly of the International Astronomical Union. It is the work of the group’s Planet Definition Committee, whose chairman is Owen Gingerich, a Harvard astronomer. The astronomers will vote on the definition on Aug. 25. In a statement, Dr. Gingerich said this might not be the last word on what a planet is. “Science is an active enterprise,” he said, “constantly bringing new surprises.” So it was no surprise that as word of the decision leaked out yesterday, reaction from astronomers suggested that the argument was far from over. “This will be the talk of the town in Prague,” said Alan P. Boss, a planetary theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who said the new definition, with four paragraphs and four footnotes, read as if it had been written by lawyers, not scientists. “I don’t think this is the one were looking for.” Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, which was raked over the coals five years ago for demoting Pluto in an exhibit in its new Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was clearly disappointed in the committee’s work. “I’m happy there’s finally a definition that’s unambiguous,” Dr. Tyson said. “There hasn’t been one in 2,500 years.” But roundness, he said, is not a very interesting attribute to use in classifying astronomical bodies. “A Plutophile is well served by this definition,” he said. “It is one of the few that allow you to utter Pluto and Jupiter in the same breath.” But Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., called the definition “a nice solution that works both inside and outside the solar system.” Everybody agrees that a little clarity is needed when it comes to categorizing the members of the solar system. The proposed definition would come as a relief to schoolchildren and others who have rallied to the cause of Pluto. The planet (if that is what it is) has been an oddball ever since Clyde Tombaugh spied it wandering in the outer reaches of the solar system beyond Neptune in 1930. Not only is it much smaller than the other eight planets, only a fiftieth the mass of Earth, but its orbit is unusually elliptical and inclined to the plane that marks the orbits of the other planets. In recent decades, however, other objects with orbits like Pluto’s have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt, a junkyard of icy debris beyond Neptune. Many astronomers began to argue that it made more sense to think of Pluto as a Kuiper Belt object, a minor planet instead of a planet. When it was reported that the Hayden Planetarium had done just that in its new Rose Center, which opened in 2000, a firestorm erupted. Schoolchildren rushed to the defense of lonely little Pluto. Two years ago, the International Astronomical Union appointed a group to come up with a definition that would resolve this tension. The group, led by Ivan Williams of Queen Mary University in London, deadlocked. This year a new group with broader roots took up the problem. After a sleepless night in Paris this spring, what Dr. Gingerich calls a miracle took place: “We had reached unanimous agreement.” In a nod to the idea of classifying Pluto with the Kuiper Belt, the group proposed calling planets with elongated orbits beyond Neptune “Plutons,” while emphasizing that they would still be planets. But Dr. Brown pointed out that at least 43 other publicly known objects in the Kuiper Belt were big enough to fit the planet definition, and that his group was sitting on a list of dozens more. Dr. Boss said, “We’re going to have more planets inside the solar system than we have outside.” He added, “Being a planet used to be an old boys’ club, with eight or nine members.” Dr. Boss and Dr. Brown were especially critical of a feature of the new definition that would bestow planetary status on Charon, a moon of Pluto. With a diameter of about 700 miles, Charon is big enough for gravity to crush all other forces and make it round, but so are some of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons, as well as our own. The difference, according to the definition, is that the center of gravity for Pluto and Charon is between them, not inside either one. So technically, Charon is not orbiting Pluto but is orbiting the center of gravity of the two bodies. The center of gravity for the Earth and its moon, on the other hand, is inside the Earth. Dr. Boss calls this “a legalistic definition.” Dr. Brown said, “That one doesn’t pass the smell test.” “I really hoped something good would come of this,” he said. “They proved me wrong.” “It is sad,” he added. “Clarity would have been nice.” Dr. Stern, however, who is the principal scientist on the New Horizons space mission to Pluto, said the new definition was logical and not arbitrary. It makes sense, he said, that there could be dozens of planets in the solar system. The new discoveries in the Kuiper Belt have put Pluto in context, he said. “Pluto is no longer the misfit,” Dr. Stern said. “It is closer to average than the Earth.” He added: “Nature is much richer than our imagination. Life is tough, life is complicated. Get over it.” Not everybody cares about the great planet debate. Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, a widely known hunter of planets around other stars, said in an e-mail message, “I am not attending the I.A.U. meeting, nor do I care about the outcome of any vote about whether Pluto and Xena are ‘planets.’ ” “The universe,” Dr. Marcy added, “contains so much beauty and so many mysteries that we astronomers already have our hands full figuring out how it all came about.”"

basically, anything formed by gravity enough to be round, that orbits the sun (center of orbit not inside another planetary body) can now be called a planet

immediatly it would up the number of planets to 12

mercury
venus
earth
mars
ceres
jupiter
saturn
uranus
neptune
pluto
charon
and 2003 UB313 (Xena)

i dont particularly like the name xena for a planet....

8/16/2006 10:04:49 AM

dammit..... i was really hoping they would drop Pluto and leave the number at 8. Maybe create a 3rd classification for small planets or large orbiting objects or something, that wouldn't be included with the "normal planets"

8/16/2006 10:08:18 AM

My
Very
Eager
Mother
C
Just
Served
Us
Nine
Pies
C
Z

alright...NOW WHAT DO I DO?!

8/16/2006 10:12:51 AM

That Dr. Tyson guy is cool, if ths guy im thinking about. They had a special on the science channel recently that had him and that exibit in it. He has been in multiple specials but this one specifically delt with the pluto debate.

he said he wasnt changing the exibit even if pluto was deemed a planet.

8/16/2006 10:17:37 AM

screech's

mvemjsnup would be obsolete

[Edited on August 16, 2006 at 11:07 AM. Reason : ']

8/16/2006 11:07:15 AM

Neat shit.

Link?

8/16/2006 11:32:34 AM

Heresy! Burn them all at the stake! Everyone knows there are four other planets and the sun which all revolve around Earth. Beyond these bodies are the heavens, toward which we must never turn these devil-devices know as "tele-scopes" in the first place, lest we gaze upon the visage of the Almighty and be blinded by His glory.

8/16/2006 12:05:00 PM

Quote :

"and even Pluto’s largest moon, Charon."

How is that going to be classified a planet?

If it is Pluto's moon, it orbits that planet. This is weird.

Never mind.

[Edited on August 16, 2006 at 12:14 PM. Reason : ]

8/16/2006 12:11:16 PM

^ read the whole thing man.

Charon and Pluto orbit a center of gravity outside of either body.

[Edited on August 16, 2006 at 12:12 PM. Reason : thats the reason they give, anyway]

8/16/2006 12:12:09 PM

Who you represent?
I represent the smallest planet
Attorney in this tourney versus those who tried to ban it
If you don't agree go see interplanet Janet
Cause sun is star like Pluto is planet

8/16/2006 12:39:22 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/us/16pluto.html?ref=science



http://news.com.com/Pluto+dodges+a+bullet/2100-11397_3-6106280.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4798205.stm

8/16/2006 1:52:02 PM

I also saw that there is some object that is 3 times the distance from the sun that pluto is. Not sure that they are going to include it though.

I also doubt Xena will be the name of 2003 UB313

8/16/2006 1:54:48 PM

god i hope not....

8/16/2006 2:57:08 PM

Xena will be great!

BTW, what happened to that "Sedna" which was touted as the 10th planet sometime last year or so? Why isn't that a planet too?

8/16/2006 3:00:50 PM

that's even farther out but has a highly elliptical orbit... makes me wonder if orbit type will be added to the definition.... or a minimum diameter....

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna

8/16/2006 3:05:05 PM

you mean that one? I think that may be the one I mentioned, though I never knew it was called that.

In the program i watched they used it as an example of how changing the definition of a planet will include ridiculously distant objects like S.

[Edited on August 16, 2006 at 3:09 PM. Reason : ^ touche]

8/16/2006 3:08:48 PM

GOD DAMN IT GOES OUT 800 TIMES THE DISTANCE FROM THE EARTH TO THE SUN!!!

8/16/2006 3:22:06 PM

hah yeah, which means when it is at its farthest distance it sees the sun as it was ~8.5-9 months before it got there.

8/16/2006 3:34:03 PM

NO

NO
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO

what a bunch of assholes

PLUTO IS NOT A PLANET

argh

8/16/2006 3:34:54 PM

ok

OR BETTER YET

we'll stop talking about it all together

orbiting gravitational bodies care not what they are called

gravitational body 1 ...

gravitational body 2 .,,,

ect...

8/16/2006 3:47:42 PM

My
Very
Eager
McDonalds
Clerk
Just
Served
Us
Nine
Pieces of
Chopped
Zebra?

8/16/2006 3:59:19 PM

I was reading this Op-Ed on the NYTimes today citing reason why Pluto and the newly discovered 2003 UB313 should be both considered planets. Then I got to the bottom and saw who wrote the article (there is no mention of him before this): Michael E. Brown. The same guy who just recently discovered 2003 UB313. No shit he wants it to be named a planet!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/opinion/16brown.html?hp

8/16/2006 4:08:41 PM

^^

8/16/2006 5:51:34 PM

How long before Republicans take credit for this nation Solar System building

8/16/2006 9:46:22 PM

i think there needs to be a orbit type definition as well... highly elliptical orbits of small very distant (even at it's closest) obects would not then count... this would function to exclude comets from being called planets as well...

8/17/2006 10:00:32 AM

so you dont think pluto is a planet then?

8/17/2006 10:05:17 AM

I wouldn't call Pluto's orbit 'highly' eliptical, although there should be some more mathematical clairification instead of the word 'highly'.

For instance, x^2/a^2 + y^2/b^2 = 1 ... a could only differ from b by a factor 0.5 <= a/b <= 1.5.

8/17/2006 10:22:29 AM

yeah i wouldnt call plutos orbit highly elliptical....

no orbit is perfectly circular....

but something like sedna is comet like in it's orbit is a bit much...

8/17/2006 10:27:22 AM

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/08/15/congratulations-its-a-planet

A good read.

8/17/2006 2:33:32 PM

9 planets

12 planets

8 planets


[I don't get the definition in the article below]

Quote :

"Dinky Pluto Loses Its Status as Planet By WILLIAM J. KOLE Associated Press Writer PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- Pluto, beloved by some as a cosmic underdog but scorned by astronomers who considered it too dinky and distant, was unceremoniously stripped of its status as a planet Thursday. The International Astronomical Union, dramatically reversing course just a week after floating the idea of reaffirming Pluto's planethood and adding three new planets to Earth's neighborhood, downgraded the ninth rock from the sun in historic new galactic guidelines. The shift will have the world's teachers scrambling to alter lesson plans just as schools open for the fall term. "It will all take some explanation, but it is really just a reclassification and I can't see that it will cause any problems," said Neil Crumpton, who teaches science at a high school north of London. "Science is an evolving subject and always will be." Powerful new telescopes, experts said, are changing the way they size up the mysteries of the solar system and beyond. But the scientists at the conference showed a soft side, waving plush toys of the Walt Disney character Pluto the dog - and insisting that Pluto's spirit will live on in the exciting discoveries yet to come. "The word 'planet' and the idea of planets can be emotional because they're something we learn as children," said Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped hammer out the new definition. "This is really all about science, which is all about getting new facts," he said. "Science has marched on. ... Many more Plutos wait to be discovered." Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn't meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit." That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine. Astronomers have labored without a universal definition of a planet since well before the time of Copernicus, who proved that the Earth revolves around the sun, and the experts gathered in Prague burst into applause when the guidelines were passed. Predictably, Pluto's demotion provoked plenty of wistful nostalgia. "It's disappointing in a way, and confusing," said Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. "I don't know just how you handle it. It kind of sounds like I just lost my job," she said from Las Cruces, N.M. "But I understand science is not something that just sits there. It goes on. Clyde finally said before he died, 'It's there. Whatever it is. It is there.'" The decision by the IAU, the official arbiter of heavenly objects, restricts membership in the elite cosmic club to the eight classical planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Pluto and objects like it will be known as "dwarf planets," which raised some thorny questions about semantics: If a raincoat is still a coat, and a cell phone is still a phone, why isn't a dwarf planet still a planet? NASA said Pluto's downgrade would not affect its $700 million New Horizons spacecraft mission, which this year began a 9 1/2-year journey to the oddball object to unearth more of its secrets. But mission head Alan Stern said he was "embarrassed" by Pluto's undoing and predicted that Thursday's vote would not end the debate. Although 2,500 astronomers from 75 nations attended the conference, only about 300 showed up to vote. "It's a sloppy definition. It's bad science," he said. "It ain't over." Under the new rules, two of the three objects that came tantalizingly close to 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, has nicknamed "Xena." The third object, Pluto's largest moon, Charon, isn't in line for any special designation. Brown, whose Xena find rekindled calls for Pluto's demise because it showed it isn't nearly as unique as it once seemed, waxed philosophical. "Eight is enough," he said, jokingly adding: "I may go down in history as the guy who killed Pluto." Demoting the icy orb named for the Roman god of the underworld isn't personal - it's just business - said Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and host of the PBS show "Star Gazer." "It's like an amicable divorce," he said. "The legal status has changed but the person really hasn't. It's just single again.""

8/25/2006 2:17:53 AM

plutownd

8/25/2006 9:15:25 AM

This is really going to date Sailor Moon.

8/25/2006 9:35:29 AM

lol among other things

8/25/2006 9:40:48 AM

My
Very
Eager
Mother
Just
Served
Us
Nutrisystem?

8/25/2006 2:32:36 PM

dude, like 2 skinnee j's said YEARS ago:

PLUTO........ is a planet.

8/26/2006 1:00:04 AM

I totally made that reference 10 days ago, thx.

8/26/2006 3:04:51 AM

Quote :

" [I don't get the definition in the article below] "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood

Quote :

"he phrase refers to an orbiting body (a planet or protoplanet) "sweeping out" its orbital region over time, by gravitationally interacting with smaller bodies nearby. Over many orbital cycles, a large body will tend to cause small bodies either to accrete with it, or to be disturbed to another orbit. As a consequence it does not then share its orbital region with other bodies of significant size, except for its own satellites, or those governed by its own gravitational influence."

8/26/2006 9:49:47 AM