"Pluto is dead" - Mike Brown, It's official |
"Pluto is dead" - Mike Brown, It's official |
Aug 24 2006, 01:58 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 531 Joined: 24-August 05 Member No.: 471 |
-------------------- - blue_scape / Nico -
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Aug 28 2006, 11:01 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 242 Joined: 21-December 04 Member No.: 127 |
My wife tolerates my space exploration obsession, teasing me about going to JPL websites and the like. She's your basic, educated person for who space is at most a passing thought.
This Pluto thing got her pissed off enough to rant about it. Which is surprising. Her beefs: 1) What the heck is the "IAU" and who gave them the authority to determine something like this? 2) Historical precedence ought to count for something. Getting her riled up is an indication of how foolish this decision was. Now, I'm not an astronomer. But I am a political type, and from my professional perspective this issue was handled incredibly poorly. First, the IAU did not have to create a set of exclusive definitions. Doing so ensured that the Pluto decision would be a hardball choice over which there could be no compromise. That's a bad situation to be in. The original committee suggestion was quite clever in this regards; by keeping Pluto a planet, while including it in a separate category, the path was laid out for the gradual elimination of it. Without a fight. As the planets of the KBO proliferated, the shorthand would have become: "We have eight classical planets and ### "plutons" beyond Neptune of which we know the most about Pluto." In a generation or two, Pluto and the rest of the planets are separated. Second, the whole rejection of the committee report was a really bad scene. It looks like a cabal of anti-Pluto types threw out a lot of serious work and imposed their policy preferences over the vocal objections of a significant minority. The small group that actually voted on this only adds to the sense that Pluto was convicted in a kangaroo court. Third, and this bears on my wife's first point: the IAU has nothing but its internal credibility behind its decisions. By engaging in a hack job on this issue, that credibility has been undermined significantly. That lack of credibility is likely to bear noxious fruit in a host of policy choices: "Well, you all can't even decide what a planet is, when any sixth grader can tell you that! So why should this Congress give you more money?" In summary, it was exceptionally foolish to allow astronomers, untrained in linguistics, semantics, or politics to have free reign in determining the answer to the Pluto question. The IAU obviously realized this with its initial committee selection. It is most unfortunate that the professional anti-Pluto crowd did not take their advice into account in favor of their ill-considered jihad. |
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