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Old 29-June-2007, 02:18 PM
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baric baric is offline
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OK, you seem to be so upset with my use of the term "hypocrite" with regards to Stern on this particular issue, so I've revisited my original thread on this to actually remember what we were arguing about:

Stern said this after the IAU decision:
Quote:
"It's patently clear that Earth's zone is not cleared, Jupiter has 50,000 trojan asteroids," which orbit in lockstep with the planet.[
When the Stern-Levinson paper clearly said this:
Quote:
we define an uber-planet as a planetary body in orbit around a star that is dynamically important enough to have cleared its neighboring planetesimals in a Hubble time
The paper goes on to categorize the 8 classical planets (but not Pluto) as uber-planets, and even includes a footnote to point out that the trojans are "locked into mean motion resonances with Jupiter". In other words, Stern clearly understands the concept of the "clearing the neighborhood" terminology used in the IAU decision -- even with respect to Trojans and Plutinos.

Here is my original complaint about Stern in the post you link:
Quote:
And yet now Stern wants to assert that the glorified rocks in the various Lagrange zones of the 8 planets somehow disqualifies them from planethood, despite the fact that he is perfectly aware of the huge, qualitative difference involved.
And that is my beef with him. Not that he has changed his mind, but that he is feigning ignorance about the meaning of the IAU decision, demeaning the organization, its members and its process. It is petty, unprofessional and, given what we know he already knows, hypocritical.

Hypocrite: a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he does not hold

While I have a tremendous amount of respect for Stern and his contributions to planetary science and astronomy, he really diminished himself in the eyes of a lot of people with his bizarre reaction to the IAU decision.
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