Jupiter emits more light than it receives, that's right. But it has to be capable to fuse in order to be a star. It needs about 80 times more mass in order to do that.

You can't burn Jupiter, it is made of hydrogen which doesn't burn. You need oxygen which Jupiter doesn't have.

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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

Really? Not to bust your chops or anything, but what proof can you offer on your expertise in civilizations from other star systems? There are LOTS of ways to categorize the things orbiting our star, and an alien might use any number of them to make the determination. An alien society might not even understand the distinctions we draw or why we draw them. They might not name planets, dwarf planets, or even stars. On the other hand, they might name everything down to the bolt that got lost on the last space walk. We just don't know.

Lets see....how could you arbitrarily define "Planets" versus "Rocks orbiting stars"

Must have an atmosphere (with some specific minimum pressure/volume/etc so that 4 molecules of O2 doesn't qualify)

Origin of life (you could really conserve names with that one)

Currently supporting life (you want us to bother calling that crappy ball of dirt ANYTHING, you get your lazy butts off that rock and colonize it)

Specific minimum (or maximum?) mass and/or size

Specific minimum (or maximum?) densisty (Pluto is back to planet status, but Saturn gets the boot?)

Must have moons (again with some specification as to what makes a moon)

Minimum and/or maximum distance from the parent star

Must orbit couter-clockwise when viewed from their star

Must produce a minimum number of twinkies and moon pies

Or who knows what....

I mean really, other than confusing school children, what purpose does this serve? Pluto is still Pluto. It gets to keep its name, its orbit, and its moons. Nothing changed about the object. Its just a big rock with a name, like several other big rocks in the system.

when viewed from what hemisphere of the star?

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Who says they separate by hemisphere? Which, of course, is kind of the point....

They do, though. If your head points north and your feet south, the revolution will be one way (counter-clockwise by our defintion), but flip yourself in the other direction and the revolution appears to go the other direction.

It would probably be better to specify that the planets orbit in the same direction as the star rotates instead of counter-clockwise. (And that's more your point.)

"Plutoed" is a word and has been used on the net since the resolution. A Google shows it.

Sorry if someone posted this already, but I happened upon a Pluto Petition, apparently done by the fellow who does spaceweather.com, where you can vote for or against Pluto's planet status. I wonder when one of the candidates for US president will take a position on this issue?

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

I've signed it

It was really underhanded how they managed to have the vote when most of the astronomers had to leave to catch flights home

Pluto deserves more than that, plus he keeps staring at the photo of Mickey in tears asking what he did wrong

Shame on you Mickey Mouse

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For Disney fans I found this

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I've signed it now too. In favor of Pluto not being a planet. Now if we could only revise most of the other outdated astronomical conventions - like the magnitude system and stellar classifications.

Yeah, like that's gonna happen!

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

T. Anderson

Frankly I don't give a rat's butt whether it returns to planet status or not. I want a reasonable, universally applicable definition for what a planet is that is logical and consistent. The one slipped in by the IAU is none of those.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Happy Pluto Planet Day!

Per the New Mexico state legislature:

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

How high up do New Mexico's skies extend??

What a proud day for us New Mexicans.

Now, if the state legislators could just get on to more serious state business, I'd really be happy.

.

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I remember when I went to the premiere of The Hi-Lo Country at the Lensic, and Gary Johnson came onto the stage and declared it "Max Evans Day." He seemed to mean it.

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

If you ain't proud that Clyde Tombaugh lived in New Mexico, you didn't know him

Ah New Mexico. Home of Clyde Tombaugh, Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic spaceport, the Alamagordo Harry Potter book burning and the only creationist I have ever met who had the guts to claim the universe was "Three thousand years old, perhaps four." I'm not sure what all that means, but it means something.

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

A Goofball Called Pluto

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Meanwhile:

Illinois town hosts Planet Pluto Expo

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

That's creepy nightmare material. Worse than clowns.

Huh, I thought it was kinda cute

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"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit."
Stephen Hawking

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein

Uranus's eyes are crossed

They all seem to be cross. (emotionally)

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Cute, but where's Charon?

And why doesn't Venus have any clouds?

Earth isn't all that clothed itself.

Are we talking dirty pictures here?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

And why is Pluto as big as Mercury?

(edit: oops, wrong planet. was: mars)

Forced perspective, it's in front of the others.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I've talked to a professor emeritus of astronomy from a local university who was at the IAU conference and voted for the resolution. He stated that there was absolutely nothing untoward about the vote or the way it was conducted.

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.