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Plutoids: a new class of objects beyond Neptune, Astronomy, politics or damage control
Classification of Pluto
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dmuller
post Jun 12 2008, 09:44 AM
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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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akuo
post Jun 12 2008, 09:51 AM
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While classified as a plutoid, Pluto is still a dwarf planet, as the IAU release 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."


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David
post Jun 12 2008, 12:36 PM
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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.
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hendric
post Jun 12 2008, 01:49 PM
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Jovoids?

*ba-dump dump ching*



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ngunn
post Jun 12 2008, 02:11 PM
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Ganymoids?
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hendric
post Jun 12 2008, 02:18 PM
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Galleoids?

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


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climber
post Jun 12 2008, 03:14 PM
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If they rotate in 24h40 minutes, they'll be Solenoïdes then.


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Decepticon
post Jun 12 2008, 07:13 PM
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LOL laugh.gif
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laurele
post Jun 12 2008, 09:55 PM
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They actually are considering calling Ceres a "ceroid" (and the only one of that category), which sounds way too much like "steroids."
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volcanopele
post Jun 12 2008, 10:44 PM
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I propose Ioids, terrestrial bodies with silicate volcanism from the last 2 billion years. Current members include Io, Earth, Mars, and Venus.


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hendric
post Jun 13 2008, 02:22 AM
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Duh, we're missing the most obvious one:

Earthoids!

And of course

Flaming Jupiteroids (for hot jupiters)


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Greg Hullender
post Jun 13 2008, 03:29 AM
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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) :-)
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mchan
post Jun 13 2008, 04:22 AM
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The ones there are classed as hemorrhoids. ph34r.gif
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Stephen
post Jun 13 2008, 04:26 AM
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A space.com article on the issues gives a few quotable comments from Alan Stern and others.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0806...uto-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'."

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nprev
post Jun 13 2008, 04:54 AM
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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.


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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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