Canis Minor.
You realize of course that Lord Pluto lost his Imperial Patent after the creation of the Solomani Autonomous Region, and they scrubbed his holdings:
CT Only: updated data for Book 6, page 56 — “The Terra System”
- Thread starter Kakistocrat
- Start date
You realize of course that Lord Pluto lost his Imperial Patent after the creation of the Solomani Autonomous Region, and they scrubbed his holdings:
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
The IAU has gotten rather DUMB about "what qualifies as a Planet" and they desperately need to update their definition.I'm afraid the scientific community who decides this cares little about your oppinion (or mine, for what's worth)
For starters, "Planets" can only orbit the star ... Sol ... not other stars, according to a strict textualist reading of the IAU definition of a Planet.
The whole excuse for demoting Pluto was also DUMB based on the notion that "planets cannot orbit barycenters outside their surface" ... because (thanks to Jupiter, Saturn and to a lesser extent Uranus and Neptune) the barycenter for the entire Solar System does not reside exclusively within the photosphere of Sol, the local star.
Also consider that Terra+Luna is really more of a "double planet" situation than a "planet with moon" situation.
Terra + Luna also orbit a barycenter between them, although at present that barycenter lies "inside" the outer crust of Terra. However, as tidal forces move Luna further and further away from Terra, that barycenter will continue to shift ... until eventually the barycenter that Terra + Luna orbit around may lie OUTSIDE the surface of Terra, in which case, according to IAU definitions (currently), Terra will STOP BEING A PLANET.
Suffice it to say that "Reality" does not follow IAU standards for compartmentalizing celestial objects quite so neatly and cleanly as the IAU might like.
The original (greek) definition of the word Planet meant "wanderer" ... meaning that the Planets did not move through the night sky the same way that other stars did. The number of planets that could be seen with the naked eye was limited to Mercury, Venus, Sol, Luna, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Then the "toys got better" (because: telescopes) and we started finding all kinds of stuff that really ought to have been classified as "planets" too, but there was enough academic SNOBBERY going on to prevent that from happening.
Now there's pressure building towards redefining what a "planet" is which is more in keeping with (and useful in relation to) Observable Reality™, rather than perpetuating the world view of people (and their mindsets) that have been deceased for centuries going on millennia. It's about time for another Paradigm Shift™ in definitions at the IAU.
Marcatlas
SOC-12
Consensus is not science. Whenever something is voted on ya KNOW science has been thrown out the windowI'm afraid the scientific community who decides this cares little about your oppinion (or mine, for what's worth)
All of this was discussed time ago in this thread, among others.
I'm not an expert on the matter, but Aramis explained it quite well in post #6. I guess it's still controversial, but I won't dare to ammend IAU consensus
Consensus is not science. Whenever something is voted on ya KNOW science has been thrown out the window
The problem is that what is being voted on is a definition. "Definitions" do not arise naturally out of the data. They are human-made constructs to classify data.
The issues becomes whether or not a chosen definition is a good one or a bad one.
So at what point does a body cease being a planet and start being something else? Just because it moves/wanders? Is an asteroid a planet? What about a meteor or a comet? Is that a useful definition/distinction?
Pluto is a body within a belt of similar bodies, the largest of which are of comparable size, composition and orbital characteristics to Pluto. Should we classify everything in the Kuiper Belt as a planet?
Ceres is a body within a belt of similar bodies, the largest of which are near to its size and composition. Should we classify everything in the asteroid belt as a planet because it wanders, or just Ceres and a few others because they are spheroidal? That was the question being asked for the entire 1st half of the 19th Century as Ceres, and then 3 more bodies were discovered in its orbital zone, until the number increased to about 50 by mid-century and the solar system no longer had 11 or 12 planets, but 50+. The "definition" of "asteroid" was invented at that time to cover this new class of object, of which Ceres was the largest.
What constitutes a "meaningful" and "useful" definition?
G. Kashkanun Anderson
SOC-13
That is because they are not planets, at least under the current definition. Only the Solar System has planets; all other star systems in the universe are currently orbited by exoplanets. As far as I know, no dwarf exoplanets have yet been discovered, for pretty much obvious reasons.
You know, it's not like we have not been here before. Ceres was classified as a planet for most of the 19th Century, and some astronomers were still calling it as such up until the 1950s.
For the record, I have a minor beef with the IAU's established doctrine for deciding the difference between a planet and a brown dwarf (the deuterium fusion limit), although I do recognize that my preferred method (formation by accretion vs gravitational instability ) is not determinable under current tech levels.
Marcatlas
SOC-12
Yes, arbitrary human created definitions. NOT science. As I stated. ALSO, there was no consensus even. EXTREMELY far from it. Out of 9,000 IAU members ONLY 424 voted on the issue...
So then what is the criterion? You apparently missed the point entirely.
Yes, this is the heart of the real issue.
Would you make a tri-fold distinction between Brown Dwarf (D-D Fusion), Sub-Brown Dwarf (non-Fusion), and Gas Giant (planet)?
Marcatlas
SOC-12
No YOU missed the entire point. Science is the heart of the issue. And you missed that LESS than 1% of the members voted to remove Pluto as a planet. So you missed everything
Perhaps you should read for content what people write instead of flying into capitalized responses. As my responses already noted if you had actually read them, I am aware of the fact that the problem is that the "consensus" was in fact not a consensus at all. That is the issue. Going back to the time of he original decision, many of the dissenters said they might likely have agreed or been persuaded, but were entirely put off by the manner in which it was forced thru almost behind the back of those involved without sufficient discussion.
I am responding to your implication that "consensus" about a "definition" is not science as it is not based on "facts". A definition is always man-made, by definition, because man is the one who does the defining as a way to organize his understanding of what he is observing.
