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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Pluto / KBO _ Plutoids: a new class of objects beyond Neptune

Posted by: dmuller Jun 12 2008, 09:44 AM

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."


Posted by: akuo Jun 12 2008, 09:51 AM

While classified as a plutoid, Pluto is still a dwarf planet, as the IAU http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/release/iau0804/ says:
"The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term plutoid as a name for dwarf planets like Pluto at a meeting of its Executive Committee in Oslo."

Posted by: David Jun 12 2008, 12:36 PM

Plutoid, wow. That must have taken a lot of thought.

Maybe now they can get back to dealing with their backlog of nameless Jovian moons.

Posted by: hendric Jun 12 2008, 01:49 PM

Jovoids?

*ba-dump dump ching*


Posted by: ngunn Jun 12 2008, 02:11 PM

Ganymoids?

Posted by: hendric Jun 12 2008, 02:18 PM

Galleoids?

Does that make ring particles saturnoids, or ringoids? smile.gif

Posted by: climber Jun 12 2008, 03:14 PM

If they rotate in 24h40 minutes, they'll be Solenoïdes then.

Posted by: Decepticon Jun 12 2008, 07:13 PM

LOL laugh.gif

Posted by: laurele Jun 12 2008, 09:55 PM

They actually are considering calling Ceres a "ceroid" (and the only one of that category), which sounds way too much like "steroids."

Posted by: volcanopele Jun 12 2008, 10:44 PM

I propose Ioids, terrestrial bodies with silicate volcanism from the last 2 billion years. Current members include Io, Earth, Mars, and Venus.

Posted by: hendric Jun 13 2008, 02:22 AM

Duh, we're missing the most obvious one:

Earthoids!

And of course

Flaming Jupiteroids (for hot jupiters)

Posted by: Greg Hullender Jun 13 2008, 03:29 AM

QUOTE (hendric @ Jun 12 2008, 07:18 AM) *
Galleoids?

Does that make ring particles saturnoids, or ringoids? smile.gif


Well, if they're around Uranus, they're just called Klingons.

--Greg (testing to see if I can get the whole thread deleted) :-)

Posted by: mchan Jun 13 2008, 04:22 AM

The ones there are classed as hemorrhoids. ph34r.gif

Posted by: Stephen Jun 13 2008, 04:26 AM

A space.com article on the issues gives a few quotable comments from Alan Stern and others.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080612-pluto-planet.html

Stern: "The derision for this group [the IAU] is now spreading virally".

Mark V. Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute: "The IAU is embracing a 19th-century world view, back before we had spacecraft, landers, orbiting telescopes and other modern means of understanding the physical characteristics of objects."

Expect more ructions later in the year. According to the article: "Scientists will take the whole debate up at a meeting Aug. 14-16 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. There, meeting co-organizer Hal Weaver said nobody will vote, but researchers will 'address this question in terms of a scientific conference'."

======
Stephen

Posted by: nprev Jun 13 2008, 04:54 AM

Oh, God....here we go again. sad.gif ...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.

Posted by: Stu Jun 13 2008, 06:36 AM

QUOTE (nprev @ Jun 13 2008, 05:54 AM) *
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.


All true, but I think it's unwise to just dismiss this issue as a squabble or an irrelevence. As I said at the time, although it did make sense scientifically - from a "terminology tidying up" point of view - the fundamental problem with this particular case was that it was a change of identity for an object that was lodged in the public's consciousness as firmly and securely as a mountaineering spike hammered into the side of El Capitan. I have had soooo many discussions with people about this, and the overwhelming majority were of the opinion that Pluto had been a planet for over 70 years, why did "you people" (i.e. me, i.e. astronomer types) just decide to change it? And in all honesty I can't defend the change, I just can't. Personally I think it would have been excusable and understandable to the IAU to throw its hands up and, for once, look up from its computer screens and fat books of tables and figures and definitions, acknowledge sentimentality and tradition and just crown Pluto as an "Honourary planet", but declare that That Was That, and from now on new rules would apply. The whole "dwarf planet" thing was simply embarrassing, a real fudge, and now this "plutoid" term is going to further cloud already muddy waters.

This isn't just my ranting opinion here, it's based on experience out there, in the real world, where the people I talk to in community centres, school halls, museums, libraries and the like during my Outreach talks are now genuinely confused by this. And trust me, many of them now believe that, well, if small groups of astronomers can go around changing things like this, then astronomy IS a stuffy old science after all, for wild-haired scientists with patches on their elbows, which, when science is already being challenged to tackle global warming, scientists are trying to push back the growling tsunami of "Intelligent Design" and Creationism, speak up for manned and unmanned space exploration and convince people that no, cave men and dinosaurs did not fight it out, is disastrous, IMO.

Then there's the problem in schools. Word hasn't filtered through the system into the classrooms yet, not here anyway, and when I had to tell a roomful of 8 and 9 year olds on Monday morning that Pluto - represented by a cute little brown-paper covered ball, hanging down from a piece of string that spanned their classroom - wasn't a planet after all, they were confused, disappointed and angry all at once. Boy, did it take some explaining that a tiny number of people, in a hall, had decided that Pluto wasn't a planet after all, maybe 15 mins eaten out of my hour-long talk. But as it's official now I towed the official party line and passed on the new knowledge as a good Outreacher is obliged to do, and now all those kids and their teacher know that Pluto isn't a planet but a "dwarf planet" - I am NOT going back to tell them it's a "plutoid" too! - so yaay me... sad.gif

Change is necessary, essential, I'm not questioning that. And yes, with its weird orbit, small size and odd behaviour Pluto was, and still is, and I feel always will be, a big, ugly, fat black fly sitting smack in the middle of the pot of lovely white ointment that is the "official" view of our solar system, but seriously, what an absolute **** up this has all been.

Posted by: Stephen Jun 13 2008, 07:12 AM

QUOTE (nprev @ Jun 13 2008, 02:54 PM) *
Oh, God....here we go again. sad.gif ...time to get out the Advil.

What's an "Advil"? Perhaps you mean soapbox. :-)

QUOTE (nprev @ Jun 13 2008, 02:54 PM) *
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. rolleyes.gif

======
Stephen

Posted by: Stu Jun 13 2008, 07:54 AM

No "soapbox" Stephen, just concern, frustration and disappointment that supposedly "responsible" people have made an absolute sheep's bum out of an important issue just because they could. Trust me, if you had to stand in front of groups of people in a public lecture and explain what had happened, or try and explain to your book publisher why the artwork and captions on the book spreads you approved just a few days ago were suddenly out of date... again... you'd see this is quite important.

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 13 2008, 08:16 AM

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... laugh.gif )

-the other Doug

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 13 2008, 08:18 AM

Oh, and Advil is an American brand name for ibuprofen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, aka an NSAID, aka an over-the-counter pain reliever.

smile.gif

-the other Doug

Posted by: Stu Jun 13 2008, 08:28 AM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 13 2008, 09:16 AM) *
there was a delightful Python-esque quality to Stephen's logic.


Oh yeah, there was, it was a v funny post too smile.gif 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. wink.gif

Posted by: Stephen Jun 13 2008, 11:02 AM

QUOTE (Stu @ Jun 13 2008, 06:28 PM) *
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. wink.gif

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

Posted by: nprev Jun 13 2008, 11:20 AM

Stu, I see your point. Did not mean to be dismissive; can certainly see how this remains a hot topic in the public's eye, and you're right on the front lines in your outreach efforts.

I don't know. Perhaps you could describe Pluto as the first known "platypus" of the Solar System. It ain't really this, it ain't really that, but it's got the characteristics of a couple of defined categories...and really, that just makes it scientifically much more interesting! smile.gif

(Damn; forgot to participate in the "-oid" exchange. Is it too late to submit 'pain-in-the-asteroid' as the overarching category?)

Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 13 2008, 12:34 PM

QUOTE (nprev @ Jun 13 2008, 12:20 PM) *
describe Pluto as the first known "platypus" of the Solar System...

...participate in the "-oid" exchange.


Platypoids? Brilliant. Forget the IAU, I've got my name for roughly-spherical-but-not-cleared-there-orbit-KBO's.

Posted by: tedstryk Jun 13 2008, 12:55 PM

Would asteroids in the Hermian region (near the orbit of Mercury) be considered Hemorrhoids?


Posted by: TheChemist Jun 13 2008, 01:04 PM

QUOTE (nprev @ Jun 13 2008, 02:20 PM) *
I don't know. Perhaps you could describe Pluto as the first known "platypus" of the Solar System. It ain't really this, it ain't really that, but it's got the characteristics of a couple of defined categories...and really, that just makes it scientifically much more interesting! smile.gif


You realize of course that "platypus" originally means "flat-footed" in ancient greek laugh.gif

A compromise would be the best. Keep calling Pluto a planet (a honorary one, if you want), and name all the other thingies ( laugh.gif ) in the Kuiper belt plutoids.

Posted by: tasp Jun 13 2008, 03:29 PM

Instead of "Plutoid", how about using the term "marklar" ??


Posted by: alan Jun 13 2008, 04:26 PM

Forum Guidelines

QUOTE
1.9 Other banned subjects : Is Pluto a Planet? ...

Lets keep this discussion light,
the Pluto is a planet , is not a planet, debate has been done to death
if a serious debate of the subject reappears the thread will be deleted.

Posted by: centsworth_II Jun 13 2008, 04:31 PM

QUOTE (alan @ Jun 13 2008, 12:26 PM) *
...if a serious debate appears the topic will be deleted.

Is this a joke? Maybe this whole thread should be moved to "Chit Chat".

Posted by: hendric Jun 13 2008, 05:39 PM

Stu,
Here's an idea on how to explain it. For many things there is progression, for example a tree. First it's a seed, then a sprout, then a sapling, and then a mature tree. These are nice, discrete words, but the world they are trying to describe is continuous. Is there a moment in time you can say that an oak has gone from a sapling to a mature tree? It's true of many things (I was going to use an example of miniskirts, but that might not fly for your audiences. smile.gif ) that the names we give them represent a range that doesn't exist in reality. What astronomers essentially decided was that previously, we didn't know enough about planets to classify Pluto properly. Now that we do, they felt the need to move pluto over the line from "mature" to "sapling".

Honestly, the only real solution would be to use fuzzy logic. They have a couple of definitions, they need to just extrapolate them:

A planet must be self-gravitating such that it is spherical, with a range dependent on how circular it is
A planet must clear the area around it

So Pluto and Ceres would be about 50% planet, Vesta and 2003 EL61 about 30%, etc.

Additional criteria and their limits can also be easily added, such as diameter or mass. This way instead of a hard cut-off, there is a nice gradual tail, just like there should be.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jun 13 2008, 05:48 PM

QUOTE (tedstryk @ Jun 13 2008, 04:55 AM) *
Would asteroids in the Hermian region (near the orbit of Mercury) be considered Hemorrhoids?

Alan Stern beat you to http://mobile.time.com/detail.jsp?key=182612&rc=qu

Posted by: laurele Jun 13 2008, 06:03 PM

"Is this a joke?"

It depends on what the definition of "is" is.

Posted by: pumpkinpie Jun 13 2008, 06:23 PM

QUOTE (Stu @ Jun 13 2008, 01:36 AM) *
And trust me, many of them now believe that, well, if small groups of astronomers can go around changing things like this, then astronomy IS a stuffy old science after all, for wild-haired scientists with patches on their elbows,

Then there's the problem in schools. Word hasn't filtered through the system into the classrooms yet, not here anyway

Hi Stu, and all,
I took over 10,000 Minnesota schoolkids on tours of the universe in my portable planetarium this year. I'd like to respond to the bolded items in your post.

Most of the time I let them decide what to explore in the solar system, and I'd say about 80% of the time someone wanted to go to Pluto. This was grades 2-9, all inclusive. And, when I asked the question, "what is Pluto?", most classes had at least one person who knew its current status. Most of the time it was a chorus of "dwarf planet!" So the new info is getting into the classrooms here. Kudos to Minnesota teachers! I got the impression that they didn't exactly know what that means, so I always made sure to give them a good explanation. Yes, it takes a while....but as you said above it's our job in outreach!

And I don't know exactly what the students come away "believing" when I tell them about the change in designation. (referring to the stuffy old astronomers.) I try to make the point that this is what is so exciting about astronomy. We are constantly discovering new things, and sometimes that has to change the way we see/categorize things. I sometimes use this analogy:

"Ceres was discovered about 200 years ago. At first it was thought to be a planet. Then astronomers learned that its size is very small compared to the Earth, and they started discovering more and more objects in its region. Eventually they realized it belonged to a different, new category, which they named asteriods." I tell them to keep that story in mind....

Once I get past Neptune, I say this:

"Pluto was discovered about 80 years ago. At first it was thought to be a planet. Then astronomers learned that its size is very small compared to the Earth, and by about 15 years ago they started discovering more and more objects in its region. It's like another asteroid belt out there! Eventually they realized it belonged to a different, new category, which they named Kuiper belt objects." Does that story sound familiar?

I like to think I'm doing a good job with the Pluto story. And I look forward to having to change it with new discoveries!

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jun 13 2008, 07:06 PM

As Alan noted http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5234&view=findpost&p=118076, we need to get away from this "is it or is it not" discussion. While Doug is off enjoying his holiday, the rest of us are going to be a bit faster on the ZAP button. So let's keep this on the terminology or the thread will be closed.

Posted by: SpaceListener Jun 13 2008, 07:30 PM

I like tto Stephen proposal with the word thingy.But a slight change of idea, I would name all celestial objects as a relation dependency.

An example: The bigest of all celestial objects which is the center of all which we percibe would start with first digit, then the others seconds orbits around the biggest, start with its fews alphanumeric, and so on. An example

The center of all celestial objects: big_ban (AA)

Then the others galaxies orbits around the big_ban, an example: Milky (N23) (I am not astronomer but I would like to name it as its space coordinate) , then follows the others stars, Sun (S134), then follows others planets, Earth (4) then follows the others satellites, Moon (1) around the planets. The nomenclature would be: AA_N23_S134_4_1 or something alike. Other example, Titan: AA_N23_S134_7_1

With that nomenclature would permit to localize easier where is each celestial object is localized. We don't have to worry with the fight to classify these vast number of celestial objects still not discovered. Also, the future intergalactic travel would be easier where is the source and final destine for its trip.

Posted by: Stu Jun 13 2008, 10:10 PM

QUOTE (alan @ Jun 13 2008, 05:26 PM) *
Lets keep this discussion light,
the Pluto is a planet , is not a planet, debate has been done to death
if a serious debate of the subject reappears the thread will be deleted.


With the greatest of respect, I think this has been a very light discussion actually, and generally respectful of Forum guidelines. The discussion has been about the word and classification of "plutoid", not really the more Pluto-specific one. I think it's a very healthy topic to discuss here, not just because the IAU has ressurected the topic itself by introducing the term "plutoid", but because this topic is, whether we like it or not, going to come up again and again in the future, in fact every time a new... um... 'thingy' beyond Neptune is discovered. wink.gif

But if we've got to the stage where there's a threat of the thread actually being deleted I suggest we all let this lie now now, lest these very valuable contributions to the debate end up in the bin, which would be a great shame.

I'd like to thank all the fellow Outreachers here for their suggestions and comments, all extremely useful. Can't wait to see what New Horizons shows us, and lets us share with our audiences in 2015...! smile.gif

Posted by: Greg Hullender Jun 13 2008, 10:59 PM

Say, did I tell you guys I'm taking Linguistics classes at the University of Washington -- probably going to try for a Ph.D.

Anyway, I'd like to suggest that the Planet/River/Mountain terminology discussion would be improved a lot if everyone took a few minutes to read chapter six from O'Grady's "Comtemporary Linguistics: An Introduction," paying special attention to figure 6.2.

--Greg (What? And deprive you of the pleasure of reading it yourselves?) :-)

Posted by: imipak Jun 13 2008, 11:25 PM

Everything's an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming.
And they expose public methods, some of which they inherit from the base... oh, wait - wrong kind of language!


Posted by: David Jun 14 2008, 05:10 AM

I have long since ceased to care whether Pluto is called a "planet" or not, and while I think "plutoid" is a silly name (and badly formed -- "plutonid" would have been better) it's no more silly or badly formed than a great many scientific names in wide use.

However, I think that the IAU could stand to reconsider what its role in matters like this is: is it to try to represent an existing scientific consensus, or is to to try to create that consensus by fiat? If the latter, can it really be effective, or does it risk undermining its own authority?

Posted by: nprev Jun 14 2008, 06:08 AM

Hell with it; Tasp is right. We marklars have spent way too many marklars trying to decide if these marklars are marklars, or if in fact they are marklars.

(Greg, I DARE you to do a paper on the use of the word "marklar" in one of your linguistics classes! tongue.gif Congrats & best of luck, BTW!)

Hmm...What's sort of interesting in a Friday night half-drunk way is that substituting "marklar" for any noun might just reduce to a recently popular American slang phrase/mathematical identity: "It is what it is".

Posted by: Stu Jun 14 2008, 06:17 AM

Just to put things in perspective...

Found a reference to this in a comment on another website... genius...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J5rBxeTIk

No idea who "Yakko" is, but the song is a treat!

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 14 2008, 06:25 AM

Stuart! You *cannot* seriously tell me you've never heard of the Animaniacs?

They were part of a set of cartoon shows created by Steven Spielberg back in the 90's that were often written to appeal to a wide range of audiences. Animaniacs featured a wide variety of short features, including the infamous Pinky and the Brain.

Spielberg brought a lot of keen insight into the genre to these shows. I was in my 40s when they were on the air, and I never, ever missed them.

In addition to Animaniacs and the later spun-off Pinky and the Brain, Spielberg also produced a show called Freakazoid that featured a truly deep set of referents within its referential matrix. For example, one episode was "sponsored" by the grocery store chain Anubis Foods, whose slogan was "Shop at the sign of the jackal-headed man!"

smile.gif

-the other Doug

Posted by: nprev Jun 14 2008, 06:28 AM

smile.gif ...Stu, that's from a now-defunct US cartoon series called "Animaniacs"; good stuff. Executive producer was Steven Spielberg (gee, why feature space stuff considering he's on the TPS board, eh? tongue.gif ), and it was an attempt to recapture some of the magic of the '30s-'50s Warner Brothers cartoons.

Think there's a UK connection here, too. That song sure sounds a lot like another tune I heard in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, and that movie explained things as adequately as I've ever needed...

EDIT: Well, oDoug was all over it already! smile.gif Animaniacs is actually great fun for young & old; my daughter was a big fan, and she & I would watch them together.

Posted by: Stu Jun 14 2008, 06:30 AM

Ah... "Animaniacs"... yes, heard of those, I didn't make the connection. Didn't catch that, sorry. Spielberg well ahead of his time again, as usual.

Posted by: Stu Jun 14 2008, 06:35 AM

QUOTE (nprev @ Jun 14 2008, 07:28 AM) *
Think there's a UK connection here, too. That song sure sounds a lot like another tune I heard in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, and that movie explained things as adequately as I've ever needed...


Ah yes, you mean "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2JU4gX6rg8"... laugh.gif

Posted by: J.J. Jun 14 2008, 01:45 PM

Can't add much other than to say that I totally agree with Nprev et al: definitions--and the languages they're couched in--are subjective fluid, while science is necessarily rigid and objective; it cannot be nominalist. Though I suspect time will gloss over most of the rancor associated with this conflict with respect to planethood, I don't think we'll ever have an answer that pleases everyone.

Posted by: Betelgeuze Jun 15 2008, 12:13 PM

I like the term 'dwarf planet', what I don’t like about it is the fact that dwarf 'planets'(!) are not planets. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, its like saying a human dwarf is not a human.
Call Pluto, Eris and Ceres dwarf planets, but classify dwarf planets as planets just like you have terrestrial planets and gas planets.

Let the children only learn about terrestrial planets and gas planets and tell them there are dwarf planets too. Problem solved!

I wasn’t sure what to vote on, for me Pluto is a planet of the subclass dwarf planet, just like its both correct to say that Jupiter is a planet and a gas planet.

Posted by: Greg Hullender Jun 15 2008, 02:02 PM

Nearly all English words are a bit fuzzy -- even scientific ones. Take "star" for example. Is a brown dwarf a star? If we agree stars have to fuse, then is a white dwarf no longer a star? How about a quasar -- is that a star? And is there a star so small that if we removed a few kilograms it would cease to be a star? Also, important distinctions like type G vs. type K are almost completely arbitrary.

Note that even the definition that says a planet is any non-fusing body that's large enough to be in hydrostatic equilibrium does have this fuzzy edge problem -- on the high and low ends both.

The fact that words have fuzzy meanings doesn't mean they're useless, but it does mean you need to think carefully about what you want to get out of a definition. Also, and most germane to the "what's a planet" questions, do you have enough examples to make a useful definition?

If we cast the problem as "how should we classify subtypes of non-fusing bodies in hydrostatic equilibrium," then I'd claim that since we only know of a couple dozen such bodies, it's not at all clear that we have enough data to make a proper definition. When we know of hundreds such bodies, we'll have a much better chance at knowing what's important and what's not. Until then, we're just guessing, and debate without data is almost always sterile.

--Greg

Posted by: tanjent Jun 16 2008, 05:18 PM

I don't understand why this topic provokes so much emotion.

The more different space objects we identify and interact with,
the more details we will want to take into account when we try to categorize them.
And for the above mentioned continuum reasons, none of the categorizations will ever be a perfect fit.
But this shouldn't matter to the people here on this site who are already well aware of the
imperfections of whatever classification system is in force. When those imperfections become too
constraining, the system will be modified again, but it is only ever going to be an heuristic convenience.

It seems we are all up in arms about how OTHER people will be confused - children, politicians,
the man and woman on the street. How will the imperfections of the labeling scheme warp their
understanding of the underlying science? The incentive to learn more probably comes from the
subject matter itself. Some of those other people will push on to learn more and others won't. This
seems quite normal and not especially deplorable, since many of those who continue to rely on an
oversimplified and somewhat inaccurate view of outer space will obtain a deeper understanding of some
other area in which they become the experts who are best in touch with the underlying reality. I don't
worry that interested children are going to be stopped in their tracks by Pluto's demotion.

Disclaiming any serious knowledge of linguistics, I am still not too surprised that languages evolve.
All the heated debate is entertaining and certainly not harmful, and the fact that some organized group of experts is
trying to direct the process probably inspires a "Who do they think they are?" response, but ultimately the
constructs that survive will be those we find convenient to use. And after a while they won't seem so convenient
any more and something else will come along. "Plutoid" will do for now, but certainly not forever.

Posted by: Greg Hullender Jun 17 2008, 03:50 AM

Note that there was a small fuss when they renamed the surface features on Mars, too. Who else remembers when Olympus Mons was called "Nix Olympica?" Scientists can handle change, when it's merited.

Had the IAU simply ruled that no KBO could be a planet, and that on those grounds, neither Eris nor Pluto was a planet, I think there would have been less fuss. Further definitions should probably have waited until we had more data on the Kuiper Belt and the regions beyond it (not to mention more data on extra-solar planets).

--Greg

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 17 2008, 04:24 AM

QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Jun 16 2008, 10:50 PM) *
Note that there was a small fuss when they renamed the surface features on Mars, too. Who else remembers when Olympus Mons was called "Nix Olympica?" Scientists can handle change, when it's merited.

I not only agree, I was planning on writing up a post this evening that made that same point. You beat me to it.

With Mars, the IAU decided that since we have additional data, we can make better and more illustrative placenames than were used for the low-resolution telescopically viewed features. Thus mares became plana and planitias, bright points became mons, etc. Some features retain their original names -- Hellas comes to mind.

I still think of Mars in terms of Syrtis Major, Mare Meridiani and Mare Cimmerium, though... and Nix Olympica. More a product of what I learned as a child than anything else, I'm sure.

-the other Doug

Posted by: Stu Jun 17 2008, 07:33 AM

Not another comment on the basic debate, I'm done with that, but I thought this Comment submitted after an MSNBC "Cosmic Log" http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/13/1140398.aspx with Alan Stern was quite amusing...

"A "Scientist" is an entity that orbits a central idea & clears its area of all facts & figures. An entity that orbits a "scientist" is a "specialist". An entity that has not cleared its area of facts & figures is a "research student"."

smile.gif

Posted by: JRehling Jun 18 2008, 06:53 PM

QUOTE (tanjent @ Jun 16 2008, 10:18 AM) *
I don't understand why this topic provokes so much emotion.

The more different space objects we identify and interact with,
the more details we will want to take into account when we try to categorize them.
And for the above mentioned continuum reasons, none of the categorizations will ever be a perfect fit.


However, calling this application of nomenclature "not a perfect fit" is like calling Mariner 1 "not a total success."

The great contribution of the IAU's effort to name these various classes of body is that one day it will be remembered as a failure in nomenclature the way that cold fusion is remembered as a failure in application of the scientific method.

"Never let scientists name your product."

The interesting thing is that star nomenclature has proceeded fairly smoothly. Supernova, white dwarf, neutron star, pulsar, black hole -- all of these terms were examples where the scientists basically got it right on the first try. But even before 2006's controversy, we had "plutinos", "KBOs", and "TNOs". Now we have "dwarf planet", "plutoid", and two controversial attempts at "planet". I think part of the answer is that people didn't previously have any concept of any of those star types until scientists theorized or discovered them. The terms described new things; they didn't replace terms.

But we've had fully six terms for denoting Pluto (not counting "Pluto" and "minor planet") with one of those terms given two new definitions. Any way you slice or dice it, you can tell when a good job is being done and when a poor job is being done, and seven categories for Pluto is not a good job being done. It's horrendous.

Posted by: alan Jun 19 2008, 05:13 AM

I noticed this in the IAU's press release

QUOTE
for naming purposes, any Solar System body having (a) a semimajor axis greater than that of Neptune, and (cool.gif an absolute magnitude brighter than H = +1 (see Notes) magnitude will, for the purpose of naming, be considered to be a plutoid, and be named by the WGPSN and the CSBN.
http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/release/iau0804/

I guess this means 2005 FY9 and 2003 EL61 will be treated as Plutoids at least for the purpose of naming.
How this affects the naming isn't apparent as there is no mention of a different naming convention being used for plutiods or dwarf planets in the press release or on the IAU's webpage.

Posted by: peter59 Jun 19 2008, 08:13 AM

In my opinion, IAU should only officially sanction notions and names crataed naturally for years and accepted by planetary science community, but should not create them ad hoc.

Posted by: Stephen Jun 19 2008, 08:23 AM

QUOTE (JRehling @ Jun 19 2008, 04:53 AM) *
The interesting thing is that star nomenclature has proceeded fairly smoothly. Supernova, white dwarf, neutron star, pulsar, black hole -- all of these terms were examples where the scientists basically got it right on the first try. But even before 2006's controversy, we had "plutinos", "KBOs", and "TNOs". Now we have "dwarf planet", "plutoid", and two controversial attempts at "planet". I think part of the answer is that people didn't previously have any concept of any of those star types until scientists theorized or discovered them. The terms described new things; they didn't replace terms.

The two cases are not parallel. Nobody (so far) has attempted to re-define the word "star" by excluding neutron stars and white dwarfs from being regarded as stars. A white dwarf, for example, is (AFAIK) still regarded as a kind of star. That is, "white dwarf" is merely a subcategory of "star". (Even a black hole, for all its outwardly bizarre characteristics, is at its heart basically a star. A DEAD star. Just as neutron stars and white dwarfs are (nearly) dead stars. That is to say, they are the cinders/corpses of the objects they used to be--back when they were still alive and well and burning hydrogen.)

In contrast, the IAU definition specifically excluded "dwarf planets" from the category of "planet". As Betelgeuze pointed out earlier in this thread, that was "like saying a human dwarf is not a human". That is, such an exclusion would carry the implication that "planet" and "dwarf planet" were fundamentally different kinds of celestial objects, just as "star" and "planet" are (intermediate types like brown dwarfs notwithstanding) fundamentally different.

======
Stephen

Posted by: Greg Hullender Jun 19 2008, 02:44 PM

QUOTE (Stephen @ Jun 19 2008, 01:23 AM) *
. . . that was "like saying a human dwarf is not a human

Since this is another "argument from linguistics," I want to point out that it's kind of unreasonable. Note that a lightning bug is not a kind of lightning. There's probably some instance elsewhere in scientific nomenclature where a dwarf X isn't actually an X.

A black hole, by the way, is a very special thing, in that the dividing line really is so sharp that a difference of a single kilogram of mass (in theory) separates a black hole from a neutron star. As a paper in Science a year or two ago showed, there's even a fairly sharp line at the lower end of stars -- a minimum mass for fusion. I'll bet there's a bright line in planetary mass too -- above which you always get a gas giant -- so there might even be a range of "forbidden" planetary masses. That would be one heck of a bright line. We'll just have to get more data to be sure.

--Greg

Posted by: laurele Jun 19 2008, 05:02 PM

"Since this is another "argument from linguistics," I want to point out that it's kind of unreasonable. Note that a lightning bug is not a kind of lightning. There's probably some instance elsewhere in scientific nomenclature where a dwarf X isn't actually an X."

But a lightning bug is a type of bug (though this term is not scientific but colloquial). The first word, lightning, is the adjective modifying the noun bug, meaning the object is a type of bug, the same way the word dwarf in "dwarf human" is the adjective modifying the noun, human, indicating a type of human.

Posted by: JRehling Jun 19 2008, 05:28 PM

QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Jun 19 2008, 07:44 AM) *
Since this is another "argument from linguistics," I want to point out that it's kind of unreasonable. Note that a lightning bug is not a kind of lightning. There's probably some instance elsewhere in scientific nomenclature where a dwarf X isn't actually an X.


Well, with a few years of professional experience in linguistics and a PhD minor in it, I'll chime in.

A noun phrase has a head noun, and it's usually the case that the thing referred to by the noun phrase is also an instance of the class of the head noun. And "lightning" is not the head of "lightning bug"... "bug" is. And a lightning bug IS a kind of bug. There are also cases of noncompositionality, where a lexical term with multiple word-tokens both of which happen to be words on their own are nonetheless totally unrelated semantically: The poker hand "full house" is not a house.

So while in principle a shadowy committee could create a term like "dwarf planet" and then claim that it is as unrelated to planets as Long Island iced tea is to actual tea, that would be disingenuous in this case, and I don't think anyone's claiming it.

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 19 2008, 06:35 PM

Honestly, if you're hung up on making differentiations, then simply call everything big enough to round itself and that primarily orbits the Sun a planet. Then subdivide into:

Rocky Dwarf Planets: Mercury, Ceres
Icy Dwarf Planets: Pluto, Eris
Terrestrial Planets: Venus, Earth, Mars
Ice Giant Planets: Uranus, Neptune
Gas Giant Planets: Jupiter, Saturn

The only subdivision that is likely to see any change in the future will be Icy Dwarves, of course. And there *is* actually a good argument to be made to remove Pluto/Charon from its subdivision and create a new one, Double Planets, for any pair of objects big enough to self-round which orbit each other around a common point not contained within the surface of either planet. Fact is, we're probably likely to find many other such double planets out in the realm of accretion-without-perturbation (i.e., away from the gravitational harmonics Jupiter and Saturn created in the "main" system).

Heck, this could be exciting -- right now, our own team, the Terrestrial Planets, are in the lead with three! Those Icy Dwarves are on our tail, though, with two and more on the way! It looks like someone's making a move to pass around the outside!

(OK -- so I'm just thinking, if you could get the average NASCAR fan interested in the Solar System, it would have to be a good thing... *grin*...)

-the other Doug

Posted by: Greg Hullender Jun 19 2008, 10:32 PM

Sigh. People are getting too serious again; it's probably time for someone to delete the thread.

My point was that in language the whole isn't always the sum of its parts. On reflection, trying to work in the Mark Twain quip about lightning/lightning bug was probably too cute. Here's one I'm sure you'll love. A "minor planet" isn't a planet. Anyone disagree? :-)

Summary: If you want to argue the term is bad, do it on a scientific basis. Don't appeal to linguistics.

--Greg

Posted by: David Jun 20 2008, 01:35 AM

QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Jun 19 2008, 10:32 PM) *
My point was that in language the whole isn't always the sum of its parts. On reflection, trying to work in the Mark Twain quip about lightning/lightning bug was probably too cute. Here's one I'm sure you'll love. A "minor planet" isn't a planet. Anyone disagree? :-)

Summary: If you want to argue the term is bad, do it on a scientific basis. Don't appeal to linguistics.


I hope you weren't intending to suggest that linguistics isn't a science. tongue.gif But of course, as a science, it deals with different questions than astronomy: it doesn't answer the question of how the natural world is categorized (if at all), but rather how human minds categorize their experiences using language. To some extent, both questions are being discussed here, which is itself a kind of category error; the two questions "is Pluto a different category of object from Mercury" and "does it make sense to call that category, if it exists, 'dwarf planet' or 'plutoid'" are just not the same kind of question.

As for "minor planets" vs. "planets" -- this is a bit of terminological sloppiness. From Copernicus on down to the turn of the 19th century, anything (other than comets) that orbited the Sun was a "planet" -- even moons were "planets" in some astronomical writings for a while. When asteroids popped up, they were "planets" too, to everybody but the far-sighted William Herschel. When the asteroids were finally downgraded, they remained, in a sense, "planets" -- just "minor" ones. The other eight objects should have been "major planets", but as they were the ones that had been called "planets" from a much earlier period, it was easier just to say "planet" instead of "major planet".

But if we wish terminological consistency, then "planet" should be the general name for any periodic object in solar orbit, and "planets" can then be subdivided into "major" and "minor" -- and now, apparently, "dwarf". But of course terminology is not consistent.

Posted by: tedstryk Jun 20 2008, 01:40 AM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 19 2008, 06:35 PM) *
(OK -- so I'm just thinking, if you could get the average NASCAR fan interested in the Solar System, it would have to be a good thing... *grin*...)

-the other Doug


Easy on NASCAR fans biggrin.gif

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