Plutoids: a new class of objects beyond Neptune, Astronomy, politics or damage control |
Plutoids: a new class of objects beyond Neptune, Astronomy, politics or damage control |
Jun 12 2008, 09:44 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 340 Joined: 11-April 08 From: Sydney, Australia Member No.: 4093 |
Article on the BBC website: 'Non-planet' Pluto gets new class
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7449735.stm QUOTE Now an IAU committee, meeting in Oslo, has suggested that small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune should carry the "plutoid" tag. It also goes on to say that not everybody is too excited about it: QUOTE "It's just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up," he told the Associated Press. "Plutoids or haemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant." -------------------- |
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Jun 13 2008, 04:54 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Oh, God....here we go again. ...time to get out the Advil.
Let me just restate what seems to me at least to be the correct perspective. Natural objects exist along a continuum. Conversely, people tend to categorize things, and get upset when a given object doesn't seem to fit neatly into one category or another. The ONLY top-level objects in the Universe that are apparently discrete, distinct, and identical to each other are hadrons & leptons; everything else is kinda fuzzy, somewhere in-between. (I do not expand that definition to include atoms because of isotopes; the exception that proves the rule is the chemical behavior of deuterium & tritium, which differs from that of basic hydrogen in many fundamental ways.) Therefore, the term 'planet', undoubtedly like most of our terminology for probably all nouns, is subjective. Fomenting long, bitter debates over what does and what does not "deserve" this term doesn't serve any practical purpose at all, and frankly might become a seriocomic, rather embarrassing spectacle in the eyes of the general public...who well might be wondering why all these PhDs making the mythical big bucks are wasting time on the issue. Pluto is a/an [insert opinion here]. Fine. Just insert an opinion, and then leave it alone. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jun 13 2008, 07:12 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 307 Joined: 16-March 05 Member No.: 198 |
Oh, God....here we go again. ...time to get out the Advil. What's an "Advil"? Perhaps you mean soapbox. :-) Let me just restate what seems to me at least to be the correct perspective. Natural objects exist along a continuum. Conversely, people tend to categorize things, and get upset when a given object doesn't seem to fit neatly into one category or another. If it's all these categories which are the problem, then allow me to solve the whole messy business with a simple, straightforward solution: let's bring back the continuum by abolishing ALL the categories, along with all those fiddly, controversial terms attached to them which seem to have set the boffins at one another's throats. :-) No more "stars". No more "planets". No more "moons" or "galaxies" or "plutoids". Instead one universal category will apply equally to everything in the sky. Naturally, having a single universal category would mean only a single all-embracing term would be needed to apply to it. Having a single universal term that applied equally to everything in the sky, irrespective of size, origin, or surface colouration, would mean that the days of unhappiness and division, of quibbling and discrimination, of having the plutoid-lovers battling with the planet-lovers over whether some miserable speck that took a telescope to see was a planet, dwarf planet, or plutoid, would all be at a thing of the past. Instead peace, order, and universal harmony will reign forever more throughout the world of astronomical boffin-dom. So what word should we use, do I hear you ask? What will be the wondrous universal term that will set everything to rights and solve all of the IAU's self-inflicted astronomical categorisation problems? I propose the word "thingy". It's universally beloved, roles easily off the tongue, is simple to spell, and will end all that silly confusion about whether someone is talking about THE Moon or A moon. (Instead people will be able to talk about "the Moon" and "those little thingies that go round those bigger thingies", which will, of course, be ever so much less confusing.) Think of it! In future you will able to talk about the thingy Pluto and the Sun thingy, astronauts will be able to study the thingy Earth, while if a boffin writes in some obscure journal about the "great whirly thingy in Andromeda" everyone will know at once he's not talking about Pluto. And best of all it's extensible! If some day the particle physicists go for each others' throat because their union wants to limit the number of subatomic particles bearing that highly prestigious title of "hadron"--no problem! They can abolish all those confusing terms like quark, lepton, and the like and call them all "thingies" too. Problem solved! With all these many excellent points in favour, the IAU needs to set the ball rolling by adopting this wonderful idea at its earliest possible convenience. ====== Stephen |
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