As reported on the BBC News Online website

__________________
Moderations in purple

Fame, glory, adventure, a cyber warrior craves not these things.

To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the upper-right corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄ Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄ Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►

I'm sorry, but that's stupid (I'm directing that at the dialect society, not 01101001). I have never heard anyone say "plutoed", even those against pluto's change in status. It is one thing to make up new words, but it is another thing if no one actually uses them.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I haven't heard it either, but you must admit-- it's pretty right on in the appropriate situation! I hope it does catch on, even though I think minor planets should be viewed as a subclass of planet.

I haven't heard of the American Dialect Society !

Anyway, I see nothing in the article to say whether or not they made it up themselves. And, I'm not sure, but this sounds to me like they may have.
In conducting the vote, members do so for fun and not in any official capacity of inducting words into the English language.

__________________
Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Agreed! Calling Earth a terrestrial planet does not make it less of a planet than Jupiter, nor is Jupiter more of a planet, just because it is a gas giant planet. Modifiers such as gas giant, terrestrial, dwarf and minor merely define sub-classes of planets!

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Yeah, I think if the IAU had taken that simple approach, there would have been a lot less distress caused to the Pluto enthusiasts! We could still count 8 major planets in the solar system, but Pluto would still be considered a planet. I predict that's how the terms will end up being applied in the research domain.

I will make sure to use it nowadays instead of "You've been Netscaped"

__________________
The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

As reasonable as that may be, that's not the usage for the past hundred years, and it's not the situation that the IAU addressed of course--in the current nomenclature, a minor planet is not a planet (similar, and I know I'm pushing it, to how a mock turtle is not a turtle ).

Actually, "for the last hundred year" people have not always distinguished "minor planets" as not being "planets" in the professional literature. Indeed, the term "planetology" includes the study of many more than nine things in our solar system, and references to Titan and Io as "planets" are not hard to find in the literature. I think it would be fairer to say that the debate has existed long before the Pluto decision, and kind of depends on who you ask.

I didn't mean to imply that there had never been incidents of such usage--and the debate has been going on for decades, I know. But I meant in the context of "Q: How many planets are there? A: Nine."

But my contention is that for many researchers in the field of planetology, that question has always carried the implicit modifier: how many major planets are there? Kind of like the statement that none of the stars are bright enough to be seen in broad daylight.

Exactly. That's my point as well. Our definition of "planet", for the past hundred years (and more) has always included that implicit modifier (for most people )

Can I be Plutoed to minor observer or will I still have to orbit this thread?

__________________
TIME Man of the Year

Swift's BAUT Dictionary
Plutoing - Ploo-to-ing (verb) - To endlessly debate the classification of the astronomical body Pluto. See "One-equals-infinite-ninesing"

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

My point is the opposite-- the definition of star includes the Sun! A definition must be distinguished from "implicit modifiers".

I dunno, but the definition has been clear for probably a hundred years, regardless of sporadic spurious usage. That's not unusual in the language history.

Are you talking about the professional definition of a planet? If you think that has been clear for a hundred years, you'd have to go with the one that includes minor planets as planets. I would tend to think even the professional definition has always been murky on that, depending on who you ask. I would rather believe that the professional definition (as distinguished from popular media) has always included minor planets as planets, but if that were true the IAU would have gone a different way.

POSTERS AND READERS
Pluto lost status of planet because it is in the team of killer planets...
www.cosmogeology.ge/chapter-11.htm

Ummm....this is the Astronomy forum. Cosmogeology is most certainly an ATM (against the mainstream) idea.

Perhaps you should post this to that forum...

__________________
"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

This post is utterly absurd. First, your claim has no merit or evidence. Secondly, are you claiming some secret influence on the commitee?

__________________
"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

Plus I got interupted with this in a PM

__________________
Moderations in purple

Fame, glory, adventure, a cyber warrior craves not these things.

To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the upper-right corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄ Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄ Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►

That last sentence is exactly right. I mean, last (help me out, Gillianren, what is that called, starting with "but"? my grammaranium fails me. Independent clause?)

Well as you know, I feel the IAU dropped the ball and did something that is true to the traditionally correct nomenclature of neither planetology nor astronomy in general, caving instead to popular pressure to make "planet" just mean the ones you find in children's books.

Weirdly, I think they'd characterize it has not caving into popular pressure, so that planet did not mean what is found in children's books.

They did exactly opposite.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

You guys are referring explicitly to "Pluto", I am talking in the more general sense of the definition of "planet". The motivation for saying minor planets are not planets was simply to avoid having lots of planets in our solar system-- how was that not caving to popular opinion? To me the current definition is just as if they had taken the current definitions of "hot star" and "cool star" and said that since most of what we see in the sky are hot stars, and the Sun isn't counted as a star in most people's lingo, this means that cool stars are not stars, they are their own separate class of object. That'll sure cut down on the number of stars people have to keep track of! But the whole point of categorizing things is to see similarities, and the similarity between Pluto, Titan, and Earth are why they are all a type of something. What something? There is no other word than planet for that similarity. This will be patently obvious when we start exploring their surfaces with robots, and the terminology will return to what makes sense.

But, would the star registry give me a refund?

__________________
Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Not if they follow the First Rule of Acquisition:
"Once you have their money, never give it back."

I never got the feeling, over the past twenty years, that there was a popular groundswell for that position

I have heard of Jupiter referred to as a cool star also. It emits more energy than it receives. Anyone got a match?