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Originally Posted by Planet X
I think it's time to spell out my own personal definitions....
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You say that as if everyone else has been waiting on tenterhooks for you to make your views known!
Your definitions are too arbitrary (why 2,000 and 6,000 km?) for most people - certainly most astronomers. Also, you not only redefine a term (minor planet) but completely change the meaning. You also use a term (planetesimal) that already
has a specific meaning relating to planetary formation without thinking of a replacement.
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Originally Posted by Ronald Brak
IAU has made a technical definition that might be used by astronomers, but it's not going to have much of an effect on the general public, except perhaps for the status of Pluto.
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Unless it's changed, it's what the general public will use. It's what they'll read in encyclopaedias and other factual books; what they'll be taught in school, even what the answers will be on quiz shows.
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For example most people are not going to be convinced that an earth type body that doesn't orbit the sun is not a planet.
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Well, as the IAU hasn't said that such a body is not a planet, I don't think there's much of a problem!
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And I don't think they'd be convinced that if the earth somehow stopped orbiting the sun that it would no longer be a planet.
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Not likely to happen in practice.
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After all, just because you take a fish out of the water doesn't mean it stops being a fish, does it?
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No, but it might if the particular species is re-classified as a non-fish!