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, 08:16 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
I don't know, Stu -- there was a delightful Python-esque quality to Stephen's logic. Or should I say, Bruce's logic?
You don't mind if I call you Bruce, do you, Bruce? Eliminates confusion, mate! (That and referring the everything as "thingy" -- definitely a lurking Monty Python dementia being acted out, here... ) -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Jun 13 2008, 08:28 AM
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The Poet Dude Group: Moderator Posts: 5551 Joined: 15-March 04 From: Kendal, Cumbria, UK Member No.: 60 |
there was a delightful Python-esque quality to Stephen's logic. Oh yeah, there was, it was a v funny post too Not debating that. It's just that the view of this argument is rather different from the 'frontline', you know? To most people here it's a curiosity, a talking point inbetween new images from probes. For me it's a bit more personal because it is something I know in advance will need explaining and justifying at some point in the evening every single time I fire up my laptop and projector to do a talk. And when you're faced with a roomful of people who are genuinely baffled by the decision, and who now think astronomers are all squabbling, loony scientists, like the the one in Back to The Future or Larson cartoons, well, you see it differently. -------------------- |
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Jun 13 2008, 11:02 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 307 Joined: 16-March 05 Member No.: 198 |
To most people here it's a curiosity, a talking point inbetween new images from probes. For me it's a bit more personal because it is something I know in advance will need explaining and justifying at some point in the evening every single time I fire up my laptop and projector to do a talk. And when you're faced with a roomful of people who are genuinely baffled by the decision, and who now think astronomers are all squabbling, loony scientists, like the the one in Back to The Future or Larson cartoons, well, you see it differently. For what my opinion is worth those out on the "frontline" would (for the present) do better to ignore the IAU's pronouncements on the planet/dwarf planet/plutoid matter until such time as there is a wider consensus on the issue. That means--again just MHO--that the manuscripts you and others pen and the lectures you give--especially in the case of those of the popular science sort--should continue to label Pluto as a planet. If that entails applying the forbidden word to Eris et al as well, then so be it! Only when a wider consensus has emerged should you consider changing your terminology. Quite apart from other considerations, to do otherwise is to leave yourself open to the very problem you have highlighted: having to change your manuscripts and lectures with every change in the IAU wind. If the IAU keeps feeling the heat that wind may change again at some point in the not-too-distant future; and maybe more than once. If you don't want to keep flop-flopping back and forth as well I suggest you stick with the labels everyone is familiar with and which nobody (outside the astronomical community) seems to have had any problem with. Hopefully once a wider consensus does emerge the problem will go away, but I can't see that happening via small committees of the IAU. Such a consensus would more likely require a plenary session with several thousand members of the IAU in attendance and voting. Even then, however, I would balk at the idea of any body, especially a self-selected one, and no matter how august, issuing announcements about the definitions of general (as opposed to specialist) English language words like "planet", "star", and "moon". Shades of the French Academy! Those words are not just used by small numbers of specialists in specialist journals but by hundreds of millions of more ordinary people every day--people who themselves had no say whatsoever in the IAU pronouncements. (The IAU may well think its pronouncements are for specialists only, but that is not the way it is going to be viewed, let alone portrayed. It will be looked upon as an official announcement by a body presuming to claim a right to set an official definition. That is, one that will appear in dictionaries and other books, be taught to school children, and eventually become the new de facto day-to-day version for English-speakers in general.) I note that the geographers and geologists have their own definition of "mountain" (which when I went to school was a peak over 3000 feet, although I notice that the film "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain" lowered the bar to 1000 feet) but they generally keep that to themselves and don't seek to impose their definition on the wider population by making public announcements about it. ====== Stephen |
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