Fight for Pluto !, A Campaign to Reverse the Unjust Demotion Options

[Decepticon]

I for one cheered when I heard the news!

I support the decision.

[David]

If it had been up to me, personally, to make a decision on the matter, I would probably have minimally dubbed 2003 UB313 a planet, drawn a lower size limit at 2250 km, and left it at that. If I thought the world was ready for a more meaningful set of designations, I would have mandated breaking up the "planet" group into at least three groups, and maybe more, that were to be considered at least as different from each other as they are from asteroids. I would not have taken any criteria into account other than mass and diameter, and although I probably would not have relabeled large satellites as "planets", I would have provided for a parallel set of divisions for satellites.

However, it wasn't up to me, and I have to say that the only thing seriously wrong with the IAU decision is the "neighborhood clearing" language, which is too obscure to even be useful. It's fair to say that some large objects exert a gravitational influence on smaller objects in their surroundings, which if not as continuous as their influence over their satellites, is in some way comparable. We can certainly say that Jupiter's Trojans are in Jupiter's gravitational sphere of influence, and in a different way Pluto is under the influence of Neptune. I doubt that such spheres of influence can be extended to include every single asteroid and KBO, except in the most general sense, in which all the planets (particularly the giants) have non-negligible influence on the orbits of the others (Neptune's perturbations of Uranus' orbit being a famous example). But we don't want to conclude that Jupiter is the only planet in the Solar system -- doubtless for sentimental and unscientific reasons! I am not sure that even a better definition of what is meant by "orbit clearing" is going to clean this up; if we regarded the orbits of all Solar system objects as alike, without regard to the mass of the objects, I doubt that the "major planets" could be easily picked out of the crowd.

Other than this problematic limitation, I am not terribly perturbed by result of the decision; it was one reasonable decision out of many possible reasonable decisions. I don't think it was the wrong decision; but that doesn't mean that I think it was the right one. I think the real mistake here is to suppose that there are absolutely right or wrong decisions on a topic like this; it's certainly not a moral question, and "Pluto is a planet" is not a statement that can be determined to be true or false in the way that "Pluto has a diameter of c. 2300 km" can be. The category of planet doesn't exist in nature; it's a creation of the human mind, and only has meaning relative to what humans want to make of it.

I don't expect this to be the last word on the question; I think that additional information about the nature of the Solar system, while not fundamentally changing the various rationales used by planetarians and antiplanetarians, may well change the emotional relationship people have to the word "planet". I appreciate that people may have strong feelings on either side of the question, but at present I'm happy to let those people engage. The result of the IAU vote reflects, I think, more politics than science; the antiplanetarians were better organized, more unified, and more passionate than the planetarians, and arrived in Prague prepared to win. Now the planetarians have got a Cause of sorts, and they will have three years to organize before they go off to Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps at that time they will be in a better position - and perhaps not. Public reaction -- especially the public consisting of professional and amateur astronomers -- to the decision is likely to play a role. If people cannot be bothered to do anything but laugh at the decision, then it is likely to stick. If it's generally rejected by ordinary people who have an interest in astronomy, then the IAU may merely have discredited itself. It promises to be an interesting time.

[alan]

I would have been happy with either of the possibilities they were voting on. If they passed 5B, potentially increasing the count to 50+ or even 100, how many of Pluto's defenders would now be objecting to all the riff - raff they were letting into the club?

[Guest_Myran_*]

Science isnt something that you can start a politisized campaign about, or even worse lobbying!
If you think so, then you're out on very thin ice indeed. If you set this snowball in motion you'd end up to lobby against the gravity or perhaps evolution.
Yes this is no different from the politization of science which have infected the entire matter about not only evolution but also biology in the USA, as a consequence about half dont even know what DNA is.
So isnt it time to come to your senses here?

You cant campaign against a scientific matter, else you are in the same boat with the Intelligent design people that some of you have critisized elsewhere!

[tedstryk]

Science isnt something that you can start a politisized campaign about, or even worse lobbying!
If you think so, then you're out on very thin ice indeed. If you set this snowball in motion you'd end up to lobby against the gravity or perhaps evolution.
Yes this is no different from the politization of science which have infected the entire matter about not only evolution but also biology in the USA, as a consequence about half dont even know what DNA is.
So isnt it time to come to your senses here?

You cant campaign against a scientific matter, else you are in the same boat with the Intelligent design people that some of you have critisized elsewhere!

That is well and good, but I really don't see how this is a scientific matter. It seems much more cultural/subjective, cloaked in scientific laguage, rendering the gravity/intelligent design arguement analogy out of bounds. Those deal with what is or isnt, or what happened versus what didn't. This debate is over how we want to define the word planet.

[Betelgeuze]

Im in!

I dont mind if Pluto is a dwarf planet, but dwarf planets ARE planets. So please call it the fight for the dwarf planets instead of the fight for Pluto

Also on my new planetology comminity site(launched yesterday); http://www.AlphaOrionis.be/ I consider dwarf planets as a type of planets just like the terrestral and giant planets. This is my way of participating in the fight for the dwarf planets.
No matter what, having a dwarf planet section is never wrong on a planetology forum.

[JRehling]

C - ommittee to
R - einstate
A - stronomy's
P - luto?

Nah.

S - ociety
L - iberating
O - utermost
P - lanet?

Nah.

C - ommittee
O - rganizing the
R - evitalization of
P - luto's
S - taus

Better.

O - rganization
N - ever

T - olerating
H - eretically
E -xcommunicated

D - iscovery
O - f
T - ombaugh

?

Maybe just Antipluto Defamation League? Pluto Liberation Army?

P - luto:
L - arger than
A - ny
N - egligible
E - xtraneptunian
T - errain

?

[djellison]

The classification of Pluto as non-planetary doesnt bother THAT much....I'd rather it WERE a planet...however..

What bothers me is the crap defintion "clear its neigborhood" - that's utter nonsense, NO planet has cleared its neigborhood. It renders the entire planetary description as pointless as nothing has a clear neigbourhood in this solarsystem - so as of now, I believe we have NO planets.

Sod fighting for pluto....we're fighting for EARTH, Jupiter...ALL OF THEM.

Seriously - take out the 'neigborhood' clause - and I'm happy.

Doug

[dilo]

I fully understand Alan is hungry, but, apart historic/cultural reasons, scientifically the Pluto privileges are hardly defendible... Alan's objection about "neighborhood clearing" do not consider that NEO and trojans are less than 1/1000 the size of Earth and Jupiter, respectively!
Pls, do not hate/heat me for this observation inside a pro-Pluto thread...

[chris]

I fully understand Alan is hungry,

Did he skip breakfast? That might make him angry

Chris

[djellison]

NEO and trojans are less than 1/1000 the size of Earth and Jupiter, respectively!

Dust is 1/1,000,000,000ths the size of my office - but I wouldn't say my office is clean

Doug

[Stephen]

You might want to carefully consider what, if any, counterproposal you make axiomatic to your movement. You might find that a majority support Pluto's planethood, but split with you on other subissues. Or, maybe you have already carefully considered the politics of it.

Which begs the question I have yet to get a straight answer to: why are so many astronomers (and maybe layfolk too) so keen to restrict the number of planets to a select few and what is the rationale behind it?

Even those in favour of including Pluto seem less than keen to widen the definition too far. Astronomers at the conference might have quibbled over whether there should be eight, nine or a dozen, but most if not all seemed to want some kind of cap.

Yet these same astronomers seem quite happy to accept that the terms "moon", "star", and "galaxy" should have no such limit. If there can be dozens of moons in the Solar System why can't that same solar system have dozens of planets?

What is the rationale for restricting the number of planets?

======
Stephen

[dilo]

Did he skip breakfast? That might make him angry

Chris

I skipped my breakfast, for sure!
Doug, about neghbord clearing you know what I meant... otherwise, I will issue a "Fight for Ceres!" campaign.

[djellison]

Truth be told - I think we should be fighting for Ceres. It's a planet - it's a world - it's round, it's got features. Just because it lives with a few friends...it's not a planet? Thats stupid!!

A cow is a cow if it's in a field....or in a field with 20 goats.

Doug

(PS - Dilo - no, I thought I did get what you meant with your neigborhood comment, but clearly I have it wrong. There is no part of the solar system that can be considered a clean neigbourhood )

[Patteroast]

The two results I was hoping for were either a definition with eight planets or one with lots. I think the most reasonable thing for everyone, though, would be having dwarf planets count as planets. I can't think of anything else where being called an 'dwarf x' can preclude being 'x'.

I also can't see why having lots of planets is a problem for people to remember.. you're only able to remember ~10 things? Just remember the classical planets. I don't think anyone is expecting schoolchildren to start memorizing every 400+ km object in the Kuiper Belt... but I'm sure I'd have fun doing it.