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, 12:55 PM
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Interplanetary Dumpster Diver Group: Admin Posts: 4404 Joined: 17-February 04 From: Powell, TN Member No.: 33 |
Would asteroids in the Hermian region (near the orbit of Mercury) be considered Hemorrhoids?
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Jun 13 2008, 05:48 PM
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
Would asteroids in the Hermian region (near the orbit of Mercury) be considered Hemorrhoids? Alan Stern beat you to that gag already -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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