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[bar] 224/59%
No
[bar] 155/41%
379 total votes
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Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by Discipulus (Canon) on Mar 02, 2017 at 11:09 UTC
    mah.. planethood seems exaggerated to me: last time i saw it he was a dog..

    L*

    There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
    Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.
Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by pryrt (Abbot) on Mar 02, 2017 at 14:01 UTC
Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by perldigious (Priest) on Mar 02, 2017 at 14:14 UTC
Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by afoken (Chancellor) on Mar 22, 2017 at 12:27 UTC
Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by chacham (Prior) on Mar 02, 2017 at 21:36 UTC

    As far as i am concerned it never lost it's "planethood". I am not constrained by idiots who decide silly things by their own silly rules.

      bump... agreed
Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by Amphiaraus (Beadle) on Mar 08, 2017 at 16:00 UTC
    I don't see what harm it would do to give Pluto back its status of "Planet", for tradition's sake, and to honor its discover Clyde Tombaugh.
    Any other small planets found in the solar system's outer boondocks should get the new "Dwarf Planet" status. There are several such "mini-planets" already discovered, orbiting beyond Pluto
    I have read that astronomers have found evidence that there is a very large gas giant planet much further from the Sun than Pluto, and are now searching the part of the sky where it is suspected to be.
Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by wjw (Priest) on Mar 10, 2017 at 19:09 UTC
    From http://www.universetoday.com/13573/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/

    We constantly redefine our world based on new information. Things get re-classified. Hell, I am now classified as 'old'! :-)

    Is Pluto a planet? Does it qualify? For an object to be a planet, it needs to meet these three requirements defined by the IAU:

    • It needs to be in orbit around the Sun – Yes, so maybe Pluto is a planet.
    • It needs to have enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape – Pluto…check
    • It needs to have “cleared the neighborhood” of its orbit – Uh oh. Here’s the rule breaker. According to this, Pluto is not a planet.

    ...the majority is always wrong, and always the last to know about it...

    A solution is nothing more than a clearly stated problem...

      The definition of planet the IAU came up with in 2006 was shortsighted. It was crafted to make sure that only bodies that formed from the accretion disk are planets, hence the third definition part. (By the third part, Neptune is not a planet since it has not finished clearing Pluto out of its path.)

      Their whole definition falls apart when applying it to the almost weekly announcement of new planets orbiting other stars (which also violates the first part.) Do we know if those new planets have cleared their paths? Do we know if they are all in their ecliptic planes? We don't even know if they are spherical (although I don't know how they couldn't be for the size we have been finding.)

      Why should it matter how a body got into orbit around a star? If we have a huge round ball orbiting, it is a planet. Doesn't matter if it is in the ecliptic or 90 degrees off. Doesn't matter if it was born there or left on the doorstep from a close stellar encounter. Should we do the same for moons? Jupiter has four moons and umpteen dwarf moons? Mars has no moons?

      I would rather say we have dozens of planets orbiting the sun than the current artificial distinction. Modify the definition above to replace sun with star in the first part and get rid of the third part completely. Then just live with the idea that there are still planets orbiting the sun waiting to be discovered.

      The page I linked to earlier mentions that
      In the new paper, which the scientists plan to put forward to the IAU, the current definition is described as "technically flawed" - it only recognises planets as objects that are orbiting our Sun and not other stars. It also says the need for zone-clearing means "no planet in our Solar System" meets the criteria for planets.

      The authors argue the new definition is "geophysical" and based on the physics of the world itself.

      So e.g. if the positions of Earth and Pluto were swapped, the Earth would no longer be a planet according to the IAU's definition.

      The paper they refer to is short and readable.

      We constantly redefine our world based on new information.

      But what's the point?

      When classification for the purpose of helping or understanding, reclassification helps. But what does reclassifying what a planet is help? Classification for the sake of classification doesn't seem to be very popular.

        But what does reclassifying what a planet is help?

        Reclassification becomes necessary when our thinking (or models, if you will) on a certain subject cannot jive or be sustained given the new findings. (Re)classification is going on all of the time. There is already substantial resistance to it since doing so means rerunning potentially thousands of experiments and rewriting a very many papers/textbooks on anything involving it. Imagine how many things had to be rewritten/done when Einstein's theories were verified!

        Let me be clear that there is no classification for its own sake going on. The sheer amount of work and potential embarrassment involved if your findings are unsound is enough to keep most people in the scientific community from doing virtually anything trivial.

        Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

      You forgot one... a planet's orbit should be distinct from other planets' orbits... in other words, two planets' orbits should not cross paths... This is true for the other 8, but Pluto cuts across Neptune's orbit, which is a big no-no.

        in other words, two planets' orbits should not cross paths

        And why is that Pluto crosses Neptune's path? Why not the other way around? It's not like Neptune hasn't done this before.

Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by sweetblood (Prior) on Mar 02, 2017 at 16:21 UTC
    Why not, he's one of my very favourite Disney characters

    Sweetblood

Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by chacham (Prior) on Mar 02, 2017 at 21:38 UTC

    Why does this poll only have two options? It's missing: Whatever, I don't care, and All of the above.

Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by ambrus (Abbot) on Mar 08, 2017 at 16:22 UTC

    I just call it an "honorary planet".

Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by mr_mischief (Monsignor) on Mar 30, 2017 at 17:35 UTC

    I propose a middle ground. Let's have "planets" include "dwarf planets". We can have "major planets" and "dwarf planets" and call them all "planets" when there's no reason to distinguish between the two.

      We can have "major planets" and "dwarf planets" and call them all "planets" when there's no reason to distinguish between the two.

      Wow! That's actually a great idea.

Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 02, 2017 at 20:41 UTC
    we need another planet as much as we need another day in the week

      Hey now, who *wouldn't* want Saturday, Saturday-2, Sunday?

        $management
Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 04, 2017 at 22:40 UTC

    It's orbit is tilted out of the ecliptic. The orbit is sufficiently irregular that it comes inside Neptune's (every umpty-ump years...). It just doesn't match the established pattern. A reg-exp that matches "planet-like" chars would not match Pluto (sorry Percival).

Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Mar 30, 2017 at 16:33 UTC

    Unless I missed it I'm a bit surprised that no one has mentioned that the search is presently on for the mysterious Planet 9 in our solar system. Evidence suggests that is should be there but there is a very large space where it could be apparently. NASA is crowdsourcing the search right now, so those you desperate to return to the Nine Planet Realm can participate!

    Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

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