David H

[dhvibe]

Hello group!

This is my intro to this blog scene.

I got interested in it after the enormous blunder of the new planetary definition.

Granted, I'm just a guitarist, but I can still tell which side of my bread is buttered. It seems to me that if some group of high priest class of astronomers are going to sit down together over coffee and call this a planet and that not, they ought to be consistent about it. By the new rules Earth and Mars are demoted, right?

Any thoughts on it? Its more than losing a planet, it is losing a grip on good scientific practice. If there are rules they have to apply to all examples not just the far out ones of Pluto. I am interested in facts, not egos of cosmologists who cannot get along with one another.

What do you folks think?

[Nicolas]

That according to the new rules, earth and mars are planets and pluto is not, using the same definition.

What exactly is the inconsistency according to you?

Welcome to the board btw!

[AGN Fuel]

Hello group!

This is my intro to this blog scene.

I got interested in it after the enormous blunder of the new planetary definition.

Granted, I'm just a guitarist, but I can still tell which side of my bread is buttered. It seems to me that if some group of high priest class of astronomers are going to sit down together over coffee and call this a planet and that not, they ought to be consistent about it. By the new rules Earth and Mars are demoted, right?

Any thoughts on it? Its more than losing a planet, it is losing a grip on good scientific practice. If there are rules they have to apply to all examples not just the far out ones of Pluto. I am interested in facts, not egos of cosmologists who cannot get along with one another.

What do you folks think?

Welcome to the board, dhvibe! What style of guitar? There are quite a few musos inhabit who these fora.

Under the new definition there will be 8 planets so far in our solar system, including both Mars and Earth. I'm not sure that I agree that it is losing grip on a scientific practice. If anything, it is the opposite, as there was previously no formally agreed and defined description of what a planet actually was. This nomenclature issue is now resolved.

[TriangleMan]

Welcome to the board dhvibe. :)
It seems to me that if some group of high priest class of astronomers are going to sit down together over coffee and call this a planet and that not, they ought to be consistent about it.
As AGN Fuel noted previously there was no astronomical definition of what a planet was. Planets were a historical/ cultural invention that generally boiled down to 'large objects orbiting a star'. I think the first problem occurred when the asteroids were discovered but that was resolved by everyone essestially agreeing that asteroids were too small, though there was never anything written in stone as to what 'too small' was.

With the discovery of numerous objects in the Kuiper Belt the debate was reopened as many of those objects were close to Pluto's size (Sedna, Quaoar, Varuna, etc). One, 2003UB313, was found to be larger than Pluto. With so many objects now around Pluto's size astronomers now had to come up with an official definition of what a planet was. Basing it on size would be pretty arbitrary so the new definition tried to come up with measureable, less arbitrary ways to determine if an object was a planet or not.

I'm okay with the new definition, under the original proposal by the IAU we'd have at least twelve planets right now, with more on the way. I thought that would not have worked as I didn't think society would accept that Ceres, 2003UB313 and Charon were all planets suddenly. Demoting Pluto is easier to swallow.