There's room for a few more honorablementionoids in the universe.

Welcome to modern American education where consensus and tolerance beats fact.

Those objects are Centaurs by darnit, and I'm sick of people trying to demote Pluto (the largest system of them) from a planet, or naming the Centaurs weird planet 10 names.

Changing the name of the brontosaurus had to be one of the stupidest things scientists have done. It's not like the Jesse Jackson of dinosaurs held a press conference and demanded the name be changed or anything semi-reasonable like that. Name-changing is just a way to make the general public lose the thread. It makes insiders feel smarter that they know the new improved name, but it makes everybody else get confused and lose interest.

This strikes me as one of those "used to be considered a planet and remains so in popular discourse, but no longer is scientifically" moments.

It's technically not a planet. Always has been treated as if it were. Only matters to a select few, of which you are not a part, and you know the deal at this point.

By "you" I mean random person, not anyone specific.

Gee, telling the real truth would be so hard... we just can't handle it, apparently.

Why are so many people afraid of common sense and the fact that each and all of us recognize our own screw-ups big and small every single day of every single year? It's called being human, and communicating like a human.

I was wrong. Not proud of that, but now it's fixed, at least as far as I know, and it doesn't seem to have messed things up too terribly.

Apparently a rather noble come-down these days. Explains a lot, unfotunately. The better answer remians...I'm still correct, all evidence to the contrary, and vocabularic machinations aside.

I don't think this is just kowtowing. Scientists themselves aren't agreed on the semantics of the term 'planet', which is being strained anyway as we discover new oddball satellites around other stars.

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Centaurs.html

Centaurs by darnit.

I don't think this is just kowtowing. Scientists themselves aren't agreed on the semantics of the term 'planet', which is being strained anyway as we discover new oddball satellites around other stars.

Besides, semantics is not the exclusive domain of scientists, nor a matter subjectable to the scientific method (at least when you're prescribing rather than describing). This is not a blow against science by anti-science know-nothings.

This is totally fucking mindboggling. What exactly are they concerned about? Do they really think that second-graders are going to be so upset about changes to the line-up of planets that they'll... what? Vote people out of office? What? I mean really, what the hell are second graders going to do to you? Why are you scared of them? Why are you even so deluded as to think that anyone of them really care?

It's not even like anything important rests on this. It's not like there is some planet-fund, and only planets get federal dollars or something. This entire debate is pointless. It's clearly not a planet, so just stop calling it one and everything will be fine and NO ONE WILL CARE.

Great SNL line Kevin. Mm-mm, that's good bass!

Damn! Pluto was my son's favorite "planet." He's only going into first grade but still I suspect he'll sense shenanigans. Nonetheless, it seems the that tide is shifting such that eventually Pluto will be a planet no more - it will only end up taking about 25 years of facts vs. nostalgia debate.

plunge, from Wikipedia:

"TNOs [trans-Neptunian Objects] are considered to be minor planets, so the question arose whether to consider Pluto to be one also.[citation needed] This planetary sciences debate landed in newspaper headlines, editorials, and on the Internet in the mid- to late-1990s. Thoughts that Pluto might be "demoted" to non-planet status created an emotional response in certain sectors of the public. Such news outlets as the BBC News Online, the Boston Globe, and USA Today all printed stories noting that the International Astronomical Union was considering dropping Pluto's planetary status.[citation needed] "Save Pluto" websites sprang up, and school children sent letters to astronomers and the IAU.[12]"

It regularly amazes me what does and doesn't get people all het up.

Ya know, maybe they should have checked first to see if the name "pluton" was already used for something else. Like, say, an body of molten igneous material that solidifies before it makes it to the surface?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

A giant collection of molten rock rising through the crust to form the Sierras. A magma chamber.

Isn't it already being used?

Not all scientists are smart. Why don't they just call it a pseudo-planet since that's what it is?

If they renamed brontosaurus, shouldn't the planetary scientists reconsider Uranus? I'm just sayin...

You're all blissfully oblivious to the real problem here: astrology. If Pluto lost its status as a planet, oh my oh my, what waste it would lay to so much arcanity.

And you do know the enormous power astrolgers weild behind the veil, do you not?

Weren't there riots in Europe at the introduction of the Gregorian calendar? Apparently the changeover involved renaming some days to bring everything into line and people were afraid that those days had been stolen from their lives and they wanted them back.

Completely OT, but wierdly not so, I suspect.

"I just want to go on record as saying that this is one of the most dimwitted proposals I've heard in a long time."

Kevin, you're obviously joking, right? (If this is "one of the most dimwitted proposals," what do you call the invasion of Iraq? And where were you at the time?)

Are you venting your spleen at the scientists because they're a pretty safe target? Maybe it makes you feel like you have some backbone after bending over backward to appear "moderate" toward Bush the past few years.

I really haven't given this a lot of thought, but I find it fairly reasonable that the astronomers would like to reclassify the objects in the solar system: the eight classical planets and now plutons. With the prospect of new discoveries likely to happen, the ranks of the latter will probably grow in future years. Not everything fits into the cookie-cutter categories we have today (planets, asteroids), so what's the big deal?

One thing I like about this announcement is that it will create a lot more interest in space and our neighbors in the solar system. That really is a good thing.

I would have gone more with Plutoid. Pluton definitely sounds like a particle and Plutid sounds like a biological condition or process (the body was warm and slightly plutid).

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"One of the most." It's possible for an idea to be smarter than the Iraq War without being a Nobel candidate. And while I agree that firming up the distinction between "planet" and "not quite a planet, maybe, we guess" is a good idea, saying that they're "making Pluto the head of its own special class" is incredibly stupid.

"Plutons" a problem? I read halfway through a blog post or comment before I realized that either I or the writer had confused neurons and neutrons.

Pharaonic monumnets, eidolons or ailerons?

Think of the possibilities of future Plutonic relationships.

cthulhu, that's all well and good, but astronomy isn't a political organization. Random websites about saving Pluto don't get to vote astronomers out of office. These campaigns have no force whatsoever. What are people going to do, boycott encyclopedias and astronomy textbooks?

Actually, we embrace diversity by welcoming Kuiper Belt objects. We have to bring Xena into the fold, but she probably isn't going to be the planet X we expected. Moreover, we can expect to find comparable candidates from XI to XV in the nearly immediate future.

The more planetoids the merrier.

Pluton does sound like a sub-atomic particle. They should probably have gone with "plutoid" like asteroid, meteoroid, and planetoid. Oh hey, what about planetoid!? Not only is the name already taken, but it actually fits. Maybe they didn't need to "invent" a new category afterall.

But honestly, this is all symantics and purely academic. The term "planet" is strictly a matter of convenience and definition. This is in contrast to terms like "proton" or "neutron" where there are distinct definable properties distinguishing the two, or even terms for species which generally have recognized hallmarks for determination.

The issue is if they call Pluto a "planet" then our solar system has dozens, hundreds, thousands or more "planets". If they don't call it a planet, then the obvious question is where exactly is the line between "true" planets and others like Pluto, Zena, Ceres (the largest asteroid).

There may be a certain reasonableness to using our own planet as a basis for definition, but if so then one might argue that Jupiter and the other gas giants are more different than Earth than Pluto is. So maybe we should strike the gas giants from the list of planets too. Or maybe planets should include them all but simply sub-divide into sub-categories: gas giants, ferro-nickel (like the four inner planets and some of the asteroids), stoney (other non-ferrous asteroids), and icy (includes comets, Pluto, Zena).

But it's all silliness of no real consequence to the actual science --- and I say this as a former astronomer.

More important than reducing the number of planets, y'all know they removed a color from the rainbow? The mnemonic Roy G. Biv is no longer.

Probably what they are afraid of is that 10 years after they declare Pluto not to be a planet, they'll realize it really is one, for example based on much more data from planets around other stars.
If the problem is objections from schoolchildren, this would be a great opportunity to provide a lesson in how science moves forward by being willing to change when new information comes in.
Unlike let's day, the White House

This debate -- whose endlessness is rivaled only by its sheer imbecility -- was the subject of my third piece for "SpaceDaily" back in 1999, and I still stick by my proposed solution then. Since any border between "planet" and "nonplanet" is purely arbitrary now that we're finding a steadly stream of intermediate-size objects in the Kuiper Belt (that whole new major division of the Solar System whose discovery in the 1990s was one of the most remarkable finds of modern astronomy), we should just set the official but arbitary dividing line (making it clear to everyone, especially kids, that it IS arbitrary) at a 2000-km diameter, which would (just barely) allow Pluto to keep its long-time historical membership in the Planet Club without letting in a lot of small and confusing new riffraff.

Instead, the IAU (while it does still call Pluto a planet) has decided to set the dividing line a lot smaller -- which, among other things, suddenly turns 620-mile-wide Ceres into a "planet" after 206 contented years in the "asteroid" category -- and, to confuse everyone still further, has apparently decided to rule that several Kuiper Belt objects LARGER than Ceres are nevertheless not "planets" because they're made mostly of ice rather than rock and are therefore not massive enough to "round" themselves gravitationally. Quite apart from the little fact that the definition of "rounded" is itself seriously ambiguous -- Saturn's 1000-mile-wide moon Iapetus varies from being round by about 50 miles; Neptune's second-biggest moon Proteus looks like a marshmallow; and the bizarre Kuiper Belt object 2003 EL61 is cigar-shaped, as wide as Pluto along its long axis but only half as wide on its other axes -- in a lot of cases we won't know for decades or even centuries how rock-rich and massive a lot of medium-sized Kuiper Belt objects really are, and thus we won't know whether they look "round" because they're massive enough for their gravity to mold them into a round shape, or just by accident. (See Dava Sobel's attempt to explain the decision at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/15/AR2006081501124.html , which just makes it worse.)

It's all enough to make one despair of the Enlightenment, and definitely of astronomers.

I'm cool with calling the gas planets brown dwarfs, or at the least awarding Jupiter an honorary designation.

Stellar wannabes? Vast cold collations of gas?

At the very least it's good news for Ceres, a much underappreciated goddess underrepresented by her virtually invisible designated planetesimal.

Um, this might be a little premature. The IAU won't be making a final vote until August 24th. So write your astronomer! There's still time.

See also the Bad Astronomer, who seems more inclined to agree with Moomaw.

Which brings me, finally, to my big point. This is all incredibly silly. We’re not arguing science here. We’re arguing semantics. For years people have tried to make a rigid definition of planet, but it simply won’t work. No matter what parameter you include in the list, I can come up with an example that screws the definition up. I’ve shown that already, and I’m just warming up.

The problem here is simple, really: we’re trying to wrap a scientific definition around a culturally-defined word that has no strict definition. Doing this will only lead to trouble. Why? For one thing, it’s divisive and silly. How does a definition help us at all? And how does it make things less confusing than they already are? Charon is a planet? It’s smaller than our own Moon!

I'm copacetic with the concept of Selene's planethood. Titan, too. Bring 'em on!

Welcome to the Bush era.

We don't admit mistakes.

What's with Charon? Why should that be any kind of a planet at all, rather than a moon of Pluto?

If they reclassify Ceres, asteroid no. 1, as a planet, are they going to renumber all the other asteroids?

Who cares what the hell we call them?!?!? Don't we have more serious matters to attend to RIGHT HERE ON EARTH?
Why all the fuss over a chunk of rock billions of miles away that in all probability no one alive today will ever set foot on?

Is it just me or does this smell like debate for the sake of distraction?

"This is not a blow against science by anti-science know-nothings."

True--it's a blow against science by scientists.

The real question is: Are there any Plutons circling Uranus, looking for Klingons???

"Mmmm ... delicious!"

"And leaves no black heel marks!"

"Heheheheheheheheheh .... "

Bob

I think I like Plutoid better ...

Bob

Me, I think we can keep Pluto in on the Grandfather Clause, and declare a Planet to be a body large enough that it has a spherical shape due to gravity, that orbits the Sun in the general plane of the solar system. While Pluto itself (nor any asteroids, nor any Kuiper belt objects) would qualify, let Pluto remain, rather than demote it.

But think of the implications for the arts! My third-grader daughter was recently in a play called Star Search, a musical about the planets and a handful of big, important stars (the burning, hot kind). She was Uranus (and, yes, she was a bit disappointed with that particular casting decision, as no matter how you choose to pronounce it, it sounds kind of icky).

Anyway, think of how the role of Pluto could be made much more complex and interesting! Is he a planet? Is he a pluton? Did his parents really love him? Does he need to go to an analyst?

Me, I think we can keep Pluto in on the Grandfather Clause, and declare a Planet to be a body large enough that it has a spherical shape due to gravity, that orbits the Sun in the general plane of the solar system. While Pluto itself (nor any asteroids, nor any Kuiper belt objects) would not qualify under this definition, let Pluto remain, rather than demote it.

To all you amateur astronomers out there:

What about the plane of the ecliptic?

Seems like that's a hard dividing line between the eight classical planets we know and love dearly and the other merely Plutonic relationships out there.

Bob

I say, when it comes time to give an official name to 2003 UB313, just pick "Pluto." And rename that other iceball "the Kupier belt object formerly known as Pluto." No fussing with mnemonic devices, no renumbering, no disappointed children.

Take a deep breath, Kevin! Who cares?

Hey, what color got removed from the rainbow?

Anyone who will stay up to two in the morning writing about planetoids and can work in a reference to a skit from the first year of Saturday Night Live deserves some sort of credit, but in fact the planet/pluton decisision makes a lot of sense. The eight "big" planets are all original descendents of the great gas ball that created the sun. Charon, the pluton to be between Mars and Jupiter, was probably part of another original planet that got ripped apart by the pull of Jupiter. (Our solar system: it's a jungle!) Pluto and the other outsiders, well, who knows where they came from! But they're here and we have to put up with them. But they aren't, you know, original, like we are. We're bigger, and we make the rules.

UB313?

Couldn't they at least call it UB40? Then we could call it the Red, Red, Wine Planet. Or maybe planet Bacchus, which would imply we had a revolving party planet. I'll bet astrologers would love it too.

How about naming one of them thar new ones (the 10th one) fabled Planet X?

The fact that it fooled so many scientists for so long has already given it very special status that a curious, smart second grader could understand.

They have proposed a similar new category for the not quite human- the Bushon.

Kinda sounds like a pluot, the tasty plum/apricot hybrid.

Doesn't this tempest exist because of the discovery of "Zena" which is both larger and farther out than Pluto. As I recall a couple of other similar sized objects have since been discovered. Astronomers are horrified that there might be 50 "planets" in the solar system. Hence the need to demote Pluto.

Planet Claire. Call it Planet Claire.

fel: You're all blissfully oblivious to the real problem here: astrology. If Pluto lost its status as a planet, oh my oh my, what waste it would lay to so much arcanity.

But they get a whole new category of astronomical objects to include, which fits with part of the basic astrological motif: when you can't make the cold reading work with the random stuff the sky gives you, add another layer of complexity.

Conjer: More important than reducing the number of planets, y'all know they removed a color from the rainbow?

Gasp! How did they do that? I'll bet it's done with mirrors.

It's sounds like a marriage of convenience. Join together the facts with the ideals of our romantic past of how things used to be. Nobody is happy, but it is adequate for our needs. We can call it a Plutonic relationship, I guess.

I've always thought that we need a bright line between planets and asteroids. I can think of only one that's easy to determine on discovery.

1) The object must orbit the sun. Othewise, it is a moon (or a space station.)

2) Gravity must collapse the object into a spheriod.

This means Pluto qualifies -- but so does Ceres. I don't have that much of a problem with that, but it shows that it isn't the ideal line we apparently want -- one that say Pluto is a planet, but random TNOs and 1 Ceres are not.

We could set a mass line or a diameter line, but the problem is with the various TNOs we are finding at increasing distance, it's hard to tell what the exact mass and diameter is -- and it is probable that Sedena is larger and masses more than Pluto.

We can't use a moon test, Mercury and Venus would fail, lots of asteroids pass.

Limit on orbital eccentricity? Tough line to draw -- Mercury has an eccentrictiy of .206, Pluto, .249. So the obvious ".200" or ".250" don't work, and ".300" puts many of the TNOs into play -- the probably larger Sedena is out, at .855, but Orcus is in, at .226, and Quaoar is almost earthlike at .034

Better would be angle to the orbital plane of earth, but an angle that accepts Pluto is going to have a large range of possible objects (and include the largest asteroids.)

Historical isn't that good either -- 1 Ceres, 2 Pallas and 4 Vesta were considered planets when first discovered.

So roundness and orbital anchor is the only physical anchor I can find -- which keeps Pluto as a planet, but adds Ceres and a few new TNOs -- Sedena, Orca, etc.

The answer may be arbitrary.

1) Planets are Mercury sized or larger objects in orbit around the sun.

2) Pluto is a planet, for historical reasons.

That lets Pluto stay a planet, but keeps those lousy TNOs out.

Yeah, but the paleontologists live because everyone is ignoring them about brontosaurauses, anyway -- like reasonable people ignor the PC crowd who want to change the name Neanderthal to Neandertal. Changing a scientific name just is not kosher, and people who want to do that are heathens.

I have a different similar question. What is a moon? the rings of Saturn are composed of dust particles. Could each little particle be considered a moon? If there is a continuous range of object sizes around the big planets, then the dividing line between dust and a moon is arbitrary, and maybe a moon is anything that can be discerned as an individual. Or maybe there's a bimodal distribution of sizes - lots of little things and some big things, with a whole range of sizes where there's nothing. If that's the case, it's clear what a moon is. Does anyone out there have any insights?

Isn't UB313 a VanHalen album?

My, aren't all our panties in a twist this morning, just because of that nefarious IAU! I believe it was Clark Kerr who once said something like, "The reason that debates in academia are bitterly contested and vituperative is because the stakes are so low."

Calm down, people. I find the whole IAU discussion to be wonderful, because it highlights something very important to understand, but which is frequently overlooked: nature doesn't feel an obligation to adhere to our strict definitions and distinct categorizations. People often seem to labor under the concept that the things we give names to are what we say they are, precisely because we have christened them so. But the reality is that instead of clear delineation between planets and asteroids, there is a continuum of objects with varying sizes and shapes - nothing clear or clean about it. The same applies in biology with the things we call "species". You think the planet thing is confusing? Try keeping up with animal taxonomy.

This isn't to say that categorization is a waste of time - I don't believe that's the case at all. What it says is that knowledge is provisional, and that we should be free to discuss what we know, evaluate merits and demerits. That's exactly what I'm seeing here, which is why I'm not nearly as cynical as Kim Hanson, who for some reason equates this process with "American education". I wish American education was as spirited in its give and take as this one. I also wish our political leaders were as forthright in their discussions, and their thoughts and opinions as these scientists are - god forbid we actually have some transparency and that we admit some uncertainty in our lives.

The value here is in the meta-topic, and not the topic itself.

Kevin, all

Brontosaurus was not 'renamed'. Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were names given to 2 fossils back in the 1870s, and it turned out afterwards that they were found to be the same genus. Because the name Apatosaurus had been given FIRST, this name was retained for the genus (while Brontosaurus has been preserved in popular literature).

This isn't exactly hard to follow along with, either. I remember reading about this in my dinosaur books when I was about 7 or 8, and I didn't have much of a problem understanding it.

And here I thought "Oh those wacky irrelevant scientists" was a genre reserved for the wingnuts.

Kevin, my sincere compliments on the "floor wax / dessert topping" reference. Well done.

Humans are fascinating.

THEY CHANGED THE NAME OF THE BRONTOSAURUS?!!!!!!

I have been eating organic pluots this summer.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine . . . ?

Of course, by "UB313" you mean "Xena".

They could follow the lead of those luminaries, the Coca-Cola Company, and call their 12-planet concoction the "New Solar System", while calling the old 9-planet model the "Classic Solar System." Then popular culture would just ignore the newfangled one and go on happily using the "Classic" version.

KerouacZac on August 16, 2006 at 6:43 AM: Is it just me or does this smell like debate for the sake of distraction?

Just be happy that Congress, with its sprited debates about urgent, America-threatening issues such as flag burning and steroid use in baseball, isn't getting involved.

Yet.

This is one of the Silly Kevin posts.

MDP is right: "Brontosaurus was not 'renamed'. Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were names given to 2 fossils back in the 1870s, and it turned out afterwards that they were found to be the same genus. Because the name Apatosaurus had been given FIRST, this name was retained for the genus (while Brontosaurus has been preserved in popular literature)."

Any parent of a young boy (and most parents of young girls) knows this. When I was growing up, there were only about 6 dinosaur species, including Brontosaurus, that you ever heard about. Now there are more than 6 relatives of Triceratops alone.

Talk to a 5 year old boy, Kevin. He will lay it out for you.

Isn't a pluton a mass of hot rock oozing its way toward the surface, where it'll turn into granite and eventually make up the core of a mountain range, like the Sierra Nevada? (I'm not using Google to fact-check. It's just what popped into my mind).

Pluton is already a geological term.

The Pluto/Planet argument is probably the best example of asshattery in all of science.

The Red Lectroids are from Planet 10. Not Planet 9. Therefore, Planet 9 is Pluto.

You can classify it all you want when you land troops on it, and conquer our base. Until then, your stupid "debate" is just a big academic circle-jerk of Eunochs.

End of story.

Monkey-bois.

So what qualifies as a planet? The fact that it rotates around the sun and isn't the satellite of another planet doesn't qualify? It has to be made of something more than ice?

Sorry, I haven't studied this much at all since junior high. Didn't someone send a rocket to Pluto recently? Maybe that will settle it once and for all.

Plutons? I prefer the more in-your-face term "plutes", as in, "Man, check out the plutes in THAT solar system."

Yes, I'm glad to see political pundits should weigh in on this. I was getting tired of the astronomers being the only ones involved in their own field.

The fact is, the "official" definition of a planet is outdated and relatively meaningless, and should be revised. For example, the Earth does not orbit the Sun, it orbits the center of mass of the solar system, which is a point outside the sun.

Furthermore, some "planets" are chunks of rock, others are balls of sub-solar gas, and other potentially planet-worthy objects in the solar system, probably including Pluto, are chunks of ice. Do these distinctions mean nothing?

Perhaps astronomers should simply retire "planet" altogether as a scientific term and let the masses have their emotionally attached word.

If they reclassify Ceres, asteroid no. 1, as a planet, are they going to renumber all the other asteroids?
Posted by: Gunnar on August 16, 2006 at 5:58 AM | PERMALINK

Please.

We're talking about astronomers here.

Not software engineers.

The Pluto/Planet argument is probably the best example of asshattery in all of science.

Spoken like a true anti-idiotarian rottweiler. And to think, they're doing it all on OUR TAX DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!

why can't they just grandfather in Pluto as a planet?

I missed it; did they happen to mention how this will affect the President's horoscope?

I just want to go on record as saying that this is one of the most dimwitted proposals I've heard in a long time. It's craven and calculated, it's going to confuse everyone, and it creates God knows how many new "planets."

Getting all bizarrely upset about this is ridiculous; the lines between different classes of balls of non-fusing matter in space are entirely arbitrary, creating a new class that incorporates some of two older classes isn't any worse than creating the old classes, and its not going to confuse anyone who cares (it might invalidate some old trivia questions, but so what?).

And if this is one of the most dimwitted proposals you've heard in a long time, you haven't been paying much attention to the world, or you have a very odd definition of a "long time", or a very generous definition of "one of".

Poor Pluto. Sort of reminiscent of "the artist formerly known as Prince."

Eventually, even he gave up the charade.

Pluton is already a geological term.

Geology is not astronomy.

Specialized terms get reused in different domains fairly frequently.

Welcome to modern American education where consensus and tolerance beats fact.

Definitions are always matters of consensus or authority, not questions of external, non-socially-derived, facts.

I didn't know they'd changed the name of the brontosaurus! Is nothing sacred? What will I tell my children when they're loading their toy dinosaurs onto their toy Noah's Ark?

Hey, it worked for Prince!

George Bush should decide. He's the Decider in Chief. Scientific questions like these are too important for scientists to decide so politicians and pundits should make the decisions.

Plutos best source for the info on Led Grow Lights!

http://ledgrowlights.blogspot.com

Just grandfather it in dear god. What part of THREE SETS OF THREE don't they understand?

Seriously though, the problem with space scientists (in the vernacular) is that they think the science involved in astronomy is so cool, that they don't need to PR it. This is dumb because the average person does not find it nearly as cool and things like three x three planets make it better.

Wow, what an incredibly silly debate!

Just to add to the silliness, I suggest we call the Kuiper belt objects crutons.

And if there is a UB313, then does that mean there is an object called UB40?

Yikes! That should have been spelled "croutons".

So is Yosemite's Half Dome now to be considered a planet as well as a pluton? I suppose it does indeed orbit the sun.

I can live with "pluton" (though my nine year old son will probably object), I'm okay with apatosaurus, but can we please leave the poor starfish alone? I know they're not really fish, but changing the name to "sea stars" is just stupid.

They changed the name of the Brontosauras?

Bolo: The story of how the official name of what is commonly called the Brontosaurus and is officially Apatosaurus is documented in one of the essays in the late Steven J Gould's "Bully for Brontosaurus"

Okay, leave Prince alone! That was a fight between him and his record label! And if you want to see the republicans turn this into a "flag protection" or "marriage protection" issue, just try and demote the only planet ever discovered by the US.

Seriously, if you think this kind of stuff doesn't constantly happen throughout the history of science, pick up a copy of "A Short History of Nearly Everything," by Bill Bryson. It's a wonderful book and proves that this is just the latest in a long proud history of gaffes, blunders, and eventually, course-corrections.

"If they renamed brontosaurus, shouldn't the planetary scientists reconsider Uranus? I'm just sayin..."

Not a chance! If they had renamed Uranus, then when my son was four, he wouldn't have been able to ask my wife, "Mommy is there a ring around Uranus?"

My wife didn't see the humor in it, but perhaps she was distracted by the tears of laughter streaming down my cheeks.

In the defense of the astronomers, I think they're simply trying to avoid confusion in the long run by agreeing once and for all what should be called a planet. This is somewhat irrelevant for our solar system, but now we've got telescopes doing planetary searches of nearby star systems. It can get pretty annoying if one person is writing papers referring to a borderline object as a 'planet' while another refers to it as an 'asteroid', and so on. Semantic quibbles are a waste of time, and it's probably good for them to just get it over with now.

For the record, as I understand it, our moon does not count as a planet because its mass is small enough compared to the Earth so that the center of gravity lies within the Earth. Pluto's largest moon, on the other hand, is comparable in size to Pluto and it is probably most accurate to say that they are orbiting each other - hence they both count.

Not to be confused with pluton, a term used by geologists referring to an igneous intrusion or a rock formed by mineral solution and replacement by circulating fluids.

Okay, I didn't even know that Pluto had a moon--is that the UB40 think?

I'm actually revelling in my ignorance of this issue, chanelling Peter Griffin.

Kevin,
Is this a parody? Aren't you like, um, overreacting just a tad? You're sounding kinda like some right-wing bloggers who take umbrage at stoopid shit.

Maybe an opinion from an astronomer would be handy.
Let's start with a question that put this in perspective:

What is the difference between an island and a continent?

They're functionally the same, but there is an arbitrary size boundary that we've agreed upon. Greenland is an island; Australia is a continent.
I'd set the size boundary at Pluto (for historical reasons) and call anything larger a planet. This means Ceres isn't a planet (much smaller) and Charon is by definition a moon (a smaller object gravitationally bound to a larger one). Some of the KBOs could well be planets when we figure
out reliably how large they are.

If you're interested, here are how we define other things. Astronomers can agree on the difference between

1) a star (an object that is kept hot by nuclear reactions, or was kept hot before it exhausted its fuel)

2) A brown dwarf (a smaller object, between 15 and 85 Jupiter masses, that can ignite nuclear reactions but cannot sustain them). An alternate definition is anything formed by the same mechanism as the Sun, i.e. gravitational collapse of a gas cloud; this would permit smaller objects to be called brown dwarfs, down to a few Jupiter masses.

3) A planet (object formed by accretion of solids rather than a gravitational instability). Terrestrial planets form by accumulating rocky solids. Gas giants form where the temperatures are cold enough to permit ice to form, and they are massive enough to accrete gas once they've gotten large enough (10 Earth masses, give or take).

In the solar system today, we see

Small rocky objects in the inner solar system (asteroids)

Rocky terrestrial planets in the inner solar system, formed by accumulation of things like asteroids

Small icy object in the outer solar system (comets and Kuiper belt objects (KBOs), e.g. Pluto/most moons of the giant planets/Sedna etc)

Gas giants in the outer solar system

The distinction between rock and ice is crucial for understanding the formation of the solar system; the distinction between KBOs and planets is not.

Well, as someone who has for 20 years used variations on pluto (referring to the planet) as my various online handles, I admit to having a soft spot for it and sort of hoped it could remain a planet. Nevertheless, the gymnastics that astronomers seem to be going through in order to massage definitions so that pluto remains a planet but we don't end up w/ 80 of them seem ridiculous at best. Just find a definition such that the demarcation is fairly clear, and reclassify whatever needs to be reclassified! Or don't -- just accept the fact that nature will always come up with something that doesn't fit easily into our classifications, and that our divisions are arbitrary, so be arbitrary. But either way, get rid of this ridiculous name pluton.

And thanks Marc for a dose of sanity.

My Venerable Earth Mother Can Justify Setting Up New Planets, Can't Xu?

Planet, schmanet, Janet. :)

They should have just said, "We're defining the planets of our Sun, as a term of art, to include only the eight planets known of a century ago. But colloquial use of a word can and often does differ from its term-of-art definition, and it won't bother us in the least if non-astronomers continue to regard Pluto as a planet."

"This is totally fucking mindboggling. What exactly are they concerned about?"

Generating a bunch of astronomy press coverage and articles about every planitarium in every local newspaper in the country during the prime summer 'take the kids to the planatarium' season?

And wasn't Pluton a Roman god of money, or minerals, or something?

I want them to name a planet Bizarro and that's where the Republicans (and Al) will feel most at home.

cld:

Hephasteus (sp?) / Pluto lived in Hades and was the Greco/Roman god of metallurgy, and by extention, extractive wealth.

It's why rule by the massively wealthy is called plutocracy.

Hephasteus was also lame and a helluva blacksmith as you might imagine -- and married to that hot babe Aphrodite (Venus) -- who cheated on him all the time with Ares (Mars), who was always down in their digs, bugging Hephasteus to hammer him up some new, improved weapon.

Bob

"Let's keep it simple: Eliminate Pluto and make it eight.
9.5%"

And some fraction of those people thought they were voting for nuclear strikes on Pluto. To keep it simple, doncha know.

Send In The Plutons!

It's a great way to resolve this debate! Would that all debates were so easily resolved!

In related news, Reuters reports that more high-school students can identify the three stooges than the proper nomenclature for Pluto. Why do astronomers hate America?

I don't see any problem with admitting that it was a mistake to classify Pluto as a planet. It made sense when it was the one exception in an otherwise relatively orderly category, but now that there are other exceptions, it seems better to exclude one than to include all the others.

And to correct an earlier post, Brontosaurus wasn't "renamed". It was realized that the species we had been calling Brontosaurus was the same one that we call Apatosaurus. Since the Apatosaurus name came first, the Brontosaurus name was dropped.

think of how the role of Pluto could be made much more complex and interesting! Is he a planet? Is he a pluton?

I think there's therapy for that, now. Plutons can be "cured" with faith and prayer, and that's a good thing, because we can't have plutons marrying plutons and planets marrying planets. That would be a threat to heteroplanetoidanal marriage!

But seriously... why do these planets hate America?

But, if they're defining a planet as something spherical which orbits a star and not another planet, why are they including Charon, a moon of Pluto?

Now I get it,

Thanx to Wikipedia,

Under the latest proposal, which will be decided on August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union may classify Charon as a pluton, officially making Charon a planet. Under this proposal, Charon would be considered a binary planet with Pluto since the two orbit each other around a center of mass that is outside either body.

It's much harder to take something away from people than to give them more. Taking away Pluto is much harder than adding a few more planets.

You've failed to talk about the criteria for a planet, which I find rather elegant --- a body orbiting a star that has a mass great enough to make it spherical.

This is a definite standard that should be able to be applied to bodies orbiting other stars in the future.

The plutons idea is less elegant, apparently based on a combination of a 200-year plus cycle around a star and ragged orbits and different composition. Discrepancies around other stars could cause this definition to need revision in the future. But not, probably for a very long time.

In the meantime, if we could start to focus more on subcategories of the bodies that are present in a solar system, terrestrial planets, gas giants, plutons --- this might help people to grasp a greater complexity about these things we learn in kindergarten.

How many people today think that planets like Jupiter have a hard surface similar to earth's?

How many really have any idea of the size scale of the different planets and the sun and the sun versus other suns. I just saw a beautiful web page on this yesterday, and I know I hadn't realized just how tiny the sun is, compared to stars like Aldebaran.

How many of us really learned about the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter and the Quiyper belt with pluto?

A little complexity will be good for us.

What? They changed Brontosaurus??

Under the latest proposal, which will be decided on August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union may classify Charon as a pluton, officially making Charon a planet. Under this proposal, Charon would be considered a binary planet with Pluto since the two orbit each other around a center of mass that is outside either body.

Yeah, but thx to Jupiter, the center of mass of the Solar system is outside the body of the sun. Guess that means that Jupiter is a mini-brown dwarf and that we really live in a binary star system....

And if you saw Titan orbiting a star you wouldn't think twice about calling it a planet.

I still think that UB313 and its moon should be "Xena and Gabrielle" as inititally nicknamed.

Let's be fair to Goofy....shall we call him Goofton

Let's be fair to Goofy....shall we call him Goofton

An amusing post, but it certainly reeks of no-nothingism.

First of all, under the proposed definition, plutons ARE planets. They are a type of planet, just like "gas giant." But when I spoke with Binzel yesterday, he stressed that they are not "second-class" bodies. He should know. He's on the committee which drafted the new definition.

He also stressed the scientific nature of the definition - a body, in orbit around a star, of sufficient mass that it naturally coalesces into a sphere.

The lower size limit will depend on several factors.

The advantage of this definition, Binzel stressed, is that it is scientifically based and not arbitrary.

And, OK, it appeases school kids and folks like me, who couldn't say MercuryVenusEarthMarsJupiterSaturnUranusNeptune and then stop.

And yes, there are, under this proposed definition, 12 planets now known, and there will probably be many more. So what.

There are a lot more sub-atomic particles known now than when I went to school. I can learn to live with quarks and muons. I can, likewise, learn to live with Ceres, Charon and 2003 UB313 ("Xena" to her friends).

One very interesting sidelight is that Charon has graduated from a moon of Pluto to being a double planet with Pluto, just like a double star.

Anyway, the proposed definition isn't final, and will be voted on by the IAU next week. Its passage not necessarily a foregone conclusion.

One curious effect of the new definition would be the destiny of the Earth/Moon system as binary planets (though this might require their survival of the Sun's evolution through the red giant phase). In a few billion years, the Moon will have slipped far enough from the Earth for their gravitational center to lie beyond the Earth's surface. The Moon would then become a planet.

I just can't wait for this to happen.

One very interesting sidelight is that Charon has graduated from a moon of Pluto to being a double planet with Pluto, just like a double star.

Yeah -- that was a case that I missed, since you then get into the argument of which is the moon, which is the planet.

Another argument for Charon's promotion is tidal locks. All of the large close moons are tidally locked to thier planets -- except in the Pluto/Charon system, where they are both tidally locked to the other, with Nyx and Hydra orbiting around the pair. So, given the barycenter above the surface, the dual tidal lock, and the presence of moons orbiting the pair, I have no problem with promoting Charon to the level of planet.

Of course, the current nomenclature for the Pluto system needs to change. If Charon is now a planet in a binary system, it shouldn't be listed as Pluto I (Charon) -- unless we start also talking about Charon I (Pluto)

Plutons!

If you hate that, you're really going to love Cubewanos and Twotinos.

Just make an exception for pluto dammit. Our solar system is special cause we're in it if for no other reason. Keep a def. that denies Pluto planetary status but say "becuse of pluto's long service as a planet, it will continue to be called as such and that's the only reason why. Pluto = planet, but any other bodies same as pluto are not."

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