"Pluto is dead" - Mike Brown, It's official Options

[Holder of the Tw...]

Like JRehling, I predict that shortly after July 2015, at the latest, we will be posting a "Pluto is resurected" thread here.

[ElkGroveDan]

I predict that popular culture will continue to speak of "the nine planets" and the "planet Pluto". As someone said on a previous topic, the whole concept of the nature of a planet has been largely cultural and linguistic one anyway.

My experience is that "official" attempts to dictate changes in time-honored concepts and traditions often fall flat (outside of totalitarian dictatorships, that is). I recall that in the 1970s "everyone" was of the view that the US should switch to the metric system. President Carter even went so far as to issue executive orders dictating the use of metric measurements in all things related to the US government. The transition began, but it never stuck. I used to have a 1980 Oldsmobile that required two sets of socket wrenches, metric for the body and English for the engine.

The point is that the movement never stuck in US culture and eventually everything reverted back to our English standard (with no commentary from this former engineer as to which system is "better.") I believe the same will happen with this decision on "the Planets." Lacking any kind of "enforcement" school teachers will keep their expensive models and collections of elementary textbooks. This news will fade in about three days, and a month from now the average disinterested members of the public will forget that it ever happened.

[djellison]

I predict that popular culture will continue to speak of "the nine planets" and the "planet Pluto".

I know I will.

That - or accept a set of definitions that technically remove planetary status from just about every planet in the solar system.

Doug

[David]

This news will fade in about three days, and a month from now the average disinterested members of the public will forget that it ever happened.

Yes, but there are always going to be officious up-to-date people who will undertake to "correct" them if they happen to speak of "nine planets". The worst are going to be the smart-alec kids who will raise their hands in 4th grade and say, "Excuse me, Miss Barringer, but astronomers now say there are only eight planets." You know, kids like you and me when we were that age.

[JRehling]

Yes, but there are always going to be officious up-to-date people who will undertake to "correct" them if they happen to speak of "nine planets". The worst are going to be the smart-alec kids who will raise their hands in 4th grade and say, "Excuse me, Miss Barringer, but astronomers now say there are only eight planets." You know, kids like you and me when we were that age.

This is why I thought the "biggest" thing the community could have done here is to have the "official" word be: "Don't be officious about this. It's inherently vague. Some things are."

By making headlines one day and contradictory headlines a few days later, the community perpetuates the unfortunate perception that officiousness is a big part of science.

[ElkGroveDan]

Yes, but there are always going to be officious up-to-date people who will undertake to "correct" them if they happen to speak of "nine planets".

Let's not forget the quiz-show contestants who will now lose the whole pot of cash by answering, "There are NINE planets, Regis."

[yg1968]

Alan Stern isn't too happy about all this. See this article:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0608...definition.html

[Stephen]

Oh I don't know about that. As the saying goes “There’s no such thing as bad press”

Oh I don't know about that. The whole episode would seem to give a whole new meaning to the term "mad scientists".

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Stephen

[Stephen]

Yes, but there are always going to be officious up-to-date people who will undertake to "correct" them if they happen to speak of "nine planets". The worst are going to be the smart-alec kids who will raise their hands in 4th grade and say, "Excuse me, Miss Barringer, but astronomers now say there are only eight planets." You know, kids like you and me when we were that age.

Unfortunately a more likely scenario is that some kid will get up in class one day and say: "Excuse me, Miss Barringer, but my pop reckons there are nine planets. So why did you mark me wrong in the exam?"

If the textbooks change sooner or later all the kids will start talking about eight planets. They will certainly be required to answer "eight" or be marked wrong.

Something like that happened in Australia to what used to be called "Ayers Rock" until the powers-that-be decided it would be more politically correct to rename it "Uluru".

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Stephen

[Greg Hullender]

I still very clearly remember a teacher who insisted Saturn had 9 moons because that's what our 1950's-era textbook said, and who was unmoved by any other evidence. "Don't believe everything you read" was his catch-all response.

Reading the occasional AAAS article on the subject, I don't think American science teachers have gotten much better in the past 35 years. So I'd expect the kids to be more up to date.

That said, this has had so much publicity that even the lamest teacher can't have missed it. Even my guy read the daily paper. I shudder to think how he'd have explained this, though.

[JRehling]

I still very clearly remember a teacher who insisted Saturn had 9 moons because that's what our 1950's-era textbook said, and who was unmoved by any other evidence. "Don't believe everything you read" was his catch-all response.

Reading the occasional AAAS article on the subject, I don't think American science teachers have gotten much better in the past 35 years. So I'd expect the kids to be more up to date.

That said, this has had so much publicity that even the lamest teacher can't have missed it. Even my guy read the daily paper. I shudder to think how he'd have explained this, though.

I got to thinking about how much total time a child will hear about the solar system in a K-12 education, and how much of it will now be devoted to talking about this stupid planet definition issue, and what information that waste of time will displace. Chances are, the child will not hear about dust devils on Mars... but will hear that Pluto is really small. They won't hear that Jupiter has huge lightning storms, but they'll hear that astronomers voted on what is a planet.

I'm less concerned that a teacher will explain this matter "correctly" than that it will waste class time at ALL. I'd say if you had ten-minute blocks of lessons, and you wanted to correctly place the importance of this issue, it would be somewhere past #500, but instead it's going to end up in the top ten. And instead of a kid getting the idea that beautiful, exciting, dynamic, landscapes are out there, they'll get the idea that there are rules and definitions that must be adhered to. It's a tremendous shame.

[odave]

IIRC, my 3rd grade daughter's class spent about a week of their science time on the solar system last year. Since it's been all over the media, questions are bound to come up, so unfortunately it should be covered. Depending on how the teacher wanted to handle it, they could probably get through the discussion in 10-15 minutes. That may blow half of a day's science lesson, but you've still got the rest of the week for more important things.

[Stu]

Depending on how the teacher wanted to handle it, they could probably get through the discussion in 10-15 minutes.

Hmmm... 10-15 minutes to explain how Pluto was predicted, then found; how astronomers looked for then found KBOs; how there was a worldwide astronomical debate, lasting decades, about the identity of Pluto, at the same time as small group of planetary scientists fought desperately for NASA to send a mission to Pluto, and succeeded in launching it just before a visionary and controversial proposal was put forward to expand the solar system, which was then shot down and replaced with what many see as a painfully politically-correct compromise that in turn led to a suspiciously undemocratic vote which finally ended with Pluto being evicted from the list of planets, to the disgust and outrage of many...

If I heard from my kid that a teacher had raced through all that in 10-15 minutes I'd want them slapped with a wet fish and made to do the lesson again.

[JRehling]

If a school does spend a total of 5 hours on the solar system, even 15 minutes for Pluto's planet status is way too much. That's 5% of the total time. Here are nineteen things that deserve mention:

Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Asteroids, Meteors, Jupiter, Io, Europa, Saturn, rings, Titan, Uranus, Neptune, Triton, Pluto-Charon, comets.

Granted, some of these things will get a brief mention only, but Mars and Titan among others could be topics dealt with at length.

Space exploration itself could eat an hour. The planet-status topic is going to bump something far more worthy off the list.

[Big_Gazza]

Yeesh! Too much concern over a non-issue. Anyone would think that the government has re-introduced prohibition from all the doom and gloom.

Folks, lets get it into perspective. The world hasn't changed. Tomorrow the price of petrol will be the same, the taxman will be just as greedy, the government will just as incompetant, and women will still defy understanding

Pluto is where it belongs. The flag bearer for the little guys. The icy rocks that never amounted to much. Its not a real planet, but it took us 7 decades to realise that.

Consider the alternative. The year is 2360, and little Johhny is having trouble remembering the names of the planets. He is OK until he gets to the double planet of Brangelina & Tomkat at 57 AU (number 31 in the list) but it gets hazy after that. He gets frustrated, gives up on school, and drifts into an aimless life of vice, crime and illegal drug use, forever haunted by the infamous decision by the IAU in 2006 where sanity just did not prevail.