Name a criterion to separate 'planet' and 'moon' that isn't.

I said a rude word when he said that. Quite loudly. Complete and utter...bu.....umm....nonsense. Every astronomy society I've been to up and down the country has had this discussion. London to Liverpool, I've had it with friends, family. Not as passionately as N de GT (who is?) - but still, it happens.

N deG T is wrong in thinking that Europe doesn't care. I don't think I've been to an astronomy society that hasn't had that debate.

Doug

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon, Eris, and Makemake.

It's working, but I'm getting no sound at all.


(I quite the stream and then started it again, and it started working)

I hope so - I though it started at half-past

I submitted two

1)

Dr Tyson has said in the past that if you moved Pluto into an Earth-like orbit, it would grow a tail like a comet which, for a planet, would be embarrassing.

However, if we moved Earth to a Pluto-like orbit, under current rules it would cease to be a planet given that Pluto's orbit is considered not to be cleared, and that, surely, is somewhat embarrassing as well.

Given that, does the panel think the definition of a planet should be derived purely from the properties of the body in question, or should the nature and location of it's 'home' contribute to a good planetary definition?



and

2)
Who's job is it to define 'planet' - and what should the purpose of any definition be?

Yeah - I'd say that giving it a new home in a $30 stand alone external SATA USB enclosure will probably do the job - and even if it doesn't - they're useful things to have anyway

This is a wierd one. We had a swathe of IBM Deskstar HDD's that all got a 'click of death'. Put it in a plastic bag, an hour in the freezer, then pull it out again. We got enough life out of them to work for a while to get everything off.

If you're desperate - you can swop the outside circuitry with an identical model piece of kit. If you're REALLY desperate, you can swop the platters into an identical drive that works. If you're a millionaire, you can give it to a data recovery team The first two have both worked to some degree for me in the past.

Chances are - if it's a SATA drive, you can just open up the enclosure and drop the disk into your machine and have it work.

For approx $20m/year, you get about 710 sols (355, twice ) - about $28,200 per rover per sol.

The orig 90 x 2 sols for approx $850m was about $4.7m per rover per sol

I now have my registration details, so I'm in - and have a question submitted

Yet again, a thread on this topic is getting heated again, despite warnings about it.

After todays debate, the entire issue, and any associate debate, is going, formally, on the banned subject list.

There's one forum rule that's very very simple and has never, is not and will never be up for debate.

No politics.

Twice, it's been broken in this thread. Maybe people get a kick out of making the job of forum admin more challenging than it already is. I will not shy away from suspending long-standing members if they can't do it.

And a post like 'Ohh..politician this, politician that, he said he'd do this, and he's saying he'll do that....but I guess that's why we don't talk about politics here' - is unarguably the worst sort - because it both acknowledges AND breaks the rules in the same breath.

A Witch will burn if you throw water on her ( hence Burn Alive ) - not sure on Rosy Red

Not got mine yet.

Imperfections in the silicone substrate? Looks like an empty pre-sample-delivery substrate to me, and quite plainly, obviously so. It's there on Sol 4, it's there on Sol 77. Why on earth would you pull a or at that?

Doug

It reminds of the love-child of our moon and Europa. Cracked...but smooth in places.

Quite.

At that point, we enter the realm of utterly pointless semantics. We all know what planetary scientists are. They study the 'things' out there. Earth, Mars, Titan, Pluto etc etc.... the bodies pertinent to the issue in hand. Thus they should be classifying them.

People who study quasars, nebulae, cataclismic variables and so on are not and were not the right body for that.

I thought that as well - but it was mentioned in a previous press conf as going ahead anyway.

Doug

It's on the lander deck - they will have to get it with the rasp. As for when....at some point between now and the end of the mission.


Doug

Don't know.
Yes, using the ceramic blank on the deck
Don't know
And no - you don't want Ice in MECA - as it will dilute the chemistry onboard.

Doug

Biologists classify animals (a cow is still a cow no matter what genus it's in).
Paeleontologicists classify fossils (T-Rex is T-Rex regardless of who you consider its cousins to be).
Librarians classify books (Roving Mars is still Roving Mars if you put it in the science section or the biography section).

Planetary Scientists should classify planets.

I don't think that's outgassing - I think it's simply snowy deposits from where the outgassing is happening. As people have said time and again, the outgassing is so optically thin, you're never going to see it in anything other than very extreme lighting conditions.