12 Planets?

[NewMariner]

What do you think about adding more planets to our solar system? I think its rather ridiculous.. How many chunks of rocks in our solar system are we now gonna start calling planets. I personally think that a better definition of a planet needs to be made then the one they are proposing. We dont need 600 planets in our solar system...

Planets

[NewMariner]

Geez do I smell that bad

[Habib]

It will mess up my horoscope.

[Habib]

Brian doesn't have horoscope but a hororscope

Nina has a horse-o-scope.

[pnosko]

I don't think it's a bad idea to formalize a vague definition that has meant different things to different people and ends up being taken for granted. Isn't that happening with the definition of marriage too?

[Habib]

I just bought the new planets on E-bay.

[NewMariner]

Originally posted by pnosko
I don't think it's a bad idea to formalize a vague definition that has meant different things to different people and ends up being taken for granted. Isn't that happening with the definition of marriage too?

I dont think its bad to formalize the definition...but I also dont believe that formality should include everyone rock in the solar system as a planet. I think it should be detailed enough to determine a planet from a rock.

I would vote to leave things as is until we have more information that would regulate a change. If Pluto is to iffy as a planet then just release it from its planetary status and we would have 8 planets instead of 9..

[Travis L. Stevens]

What gets me about that article is they called Charon Pluto's moon. So, why do they want to call it a planet? Does it orbit Pluto or not? If it does, then it's not a planet. It's a moon. As far as I'm concerned about Ceres, it's an asteroid. They already said it. Just because something is round with a significant mass shouldn't be labelled as a planet. Now, UB313, that's another story. From what I know of this celestial body, I think it should be considered a planet.

[NewMariner]

Originally posted by Travis L. Stevens
What gets me about that article is they called Charon Pluto's moon. So, why do they want to call it a planet? Does it orbit Pluto or not? If it does, then it's not a planet. It's a moon. As far as I'm concerned about Ceres, it's an asteroid. They already said it. Just because something is round with a significant mass shouldn't be labelled as a planet. Now, UB313, that's another story. From what I know of this celestial body, I think it should be considered a planet.

Thats what the whole debate is about Travis...they are stating that anything roundish(spherical like a planet) that does not orbit another planet or asteroid should be called a planet. If they allow this definition, then whats to say that some little asteroid which happens to be spherical is now called a planet instead of an asteroid...

[Travis L. Stevens]

Well, let me put it this way. I'm round and people tend to gravitate towards me. Does that make me a planet?

[NewMariner]

Originally posted by Travis L. Stevens
Well, let me put it this way. I'm round and people tend to gravitate towards me. Does that make me a planet?

If that definition passes then yes

[DHyslop]

Originally posted by NewMariner
Thats what the whole debate is about Travis...they are stating that anything roundish(spherical like a planet) that does not orbit another planet or asteroid should be called a planet. If they allow this definition, then whats to say that some little asteroid which happens to be spherical is now called a planet instead of an asteroid...

Because things in the solar system that are round tend to be so for a reason! That is, they have enough gravity that their surface has formed into a roughly equipotential surface.

I think this is a very elegant way to define a planet. Basically they're saying big things can be planets and little things cannot, but instead of picking an arbitrary number to represent the littlest possible planet, they've chosen a criterion that does the same thing, but also appeals to our aesthetic ideas about what a planet should look like.

Dan

[pnosko]

Originally posted by NewMariner
Planets

How come when I follow this link, this is what I see? Refresh doesn't help. Did Mike hack MSNBC?

[masson]

Wasn't there an alf episode about this lol ??

[Scuba_Dave]

I think anything bigger then a breadbox should be a planet

I mean we don't want the neighbor galaxies to have more then we do

[Anemone]

Pete,

I think you need to order some more cookies, the ones you have are rotten.

Kevin

[Scuba_Dave]

His cookies were corrupted by a gaseous exhaust that might be explosive

[bsaastad]

I think it makes sense to formalize the definition. Until now there has been no fixed set of criteria by which a determination could be made as to whether or not a given body is a planet. There is bound to be controversy over any set of guidelines, but I think this is at least a good start. The broadcast media characteristically left out a number of details, so I'll try to fill in a bit. If the object a) is massive enough to gravitationally force itself into a round shape (about 453 miles in diameter, I think), b) orbits a star, and c) is not a star itself, then it is a planet.

Charon/Pluto make up a special case because Charon is so large in comparison to Pluto that the center of the orbital mass is somewhere between the two bodies. Pluto/Charon essentially make up a dual planetary system, as opposed to a planet/moon system like Earth where the center of the orbital mass is inside the planet.

It doesn't bother me a bit to see objects like Ceres and Xena recategorized as a result of the new definitions. Things like this go on in science all the time as more is learned and errors are corrected or refined. Science is supposed to be self-correcting and dynamic. That's what makes it so fascinating. This instance of the scientific process just happened to make headlines because it affects so many people's view of "the way things are."

Rant off ... did somebody mention cookies???

[jpfelix]

if they start making these changes they should really reclassify the Earth & moon as a double planet system (since it is!).

[needyreefer]

I saw a really good show on the Science Channel on Pluto. The show discussed if pluto should really be a planet or not, and how the definition of "planet" is very undefined. They ended up talking about how there are major and minor planets, and how Pluto sits in the same astroid belt as all of these "minor" planets. It doesn't make much sense to call it a major planet if all of these other astroids/ space material are not also considered planets. Wish I could think of the name of that show now....

[bsaastad]

The other end of the spectrum is very large bodies -- something like 17 times larger than Jupiter -- that are massive enough to sort of glow, but aren't quite massive enough to trigger a hydrogen fusion reaction and become a full-fledged star. They've been loosely called "brown dwarfs", but what does that mean? More than a planet, but not quite a star ... the archetype of the middle child. I'm really interested to see how this plays out because there is a fair amount of controversy among astronomers as to how the classification should work.

[bsaastad]

Originally posted by needyreefer
They ended up talking about how there are major and minor planets, and how Pluto sits in the same astroid belt as all of these "minor" planets.

Pluto is an interesting case for a number of reasons. It's orbit alone suggests that it may be a captured object, may have fallen out of the Kuiper belt -- the area far beyond Pluto's orbit where comets come from -- or had its orbit perturbed in some fashion. It's orbit is inclined something like 17 degrees from the orbital plane of the rest of the planets and is highly elliptical, to the point where its orbit sometimes passes inside the orbit of Neptune.

[DHyslop]

Originally posted by jpfelix
if they start making these changes they should really reclassify the Earth & moon as a double planet system (since it is!).

No it isn't. The center of mass of the Earth-moon system is inside the Earth. That's the criterion that's being used. For Pluto and Charon, the center of mass is somewhere between the two: the mass advantage that Pluto has just isn't enough!

As the Earth travels around the sun it wobbles a bit as the moon moves around us. Pluto, on the other hand, is spinning around Charon nearly as much as Charon is spinning around Pluto!

Dan

[kfisc]

I own them all!!! I thought we settled this...

[pnosko]

Originally posted by Anemone
Pete,

I think you need to order some more cookies, the ones you have are rotten.

Kevin

I closed all browser windows and cleared the cache. Still shows up that way. I ain't deleting my cookies!