Old, old topic revived for unimportant news. I'm an ember fanner. I like the flames... Pretty flames... I'd really hate to see this significant nonissue die.

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory: The Great Planet Debate

To be fair, they're not, like, obsessed with Pluto's status (like some seem to be), but they are leveraging on Pluto's status. JHUAPL press release:

Cage match! Two astronomers enter, one sees stars!

What is a planet?

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I've registered to attend this conference and am looking forward to it tremendously.

Man, the two hardest nuts in this farce squaring off. I'd love to see the weigh-in. Dunno where I'd put my money, but there will be blood. Oh yes. There will be blood.

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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.

BA Blog: The Great Planet Debate

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The contenders in this debate are real heavyweights.

Which is more than I can say for Pluto.

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A bit of a bump, but apparently Time just found out that Pluto's no longer a planet.

Time: The controversy over demoting Pluto
Actually it's Neil deGrassy Tyson's new book: the Pluto files. But thats the headline on CNN.
Sounds like a cop out, but...
...Is a good point to make.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Which way did NdGT vote?

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

That was my point...he didn't. He just said we should drop the idea of "planet" status altogether.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

It is a fun book filled with lots of facts and events. I knew I would enjoy it as soon as I saw his Dynascope on the back cover. That was my first scope. [I wondered what happened to it. ]

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was not at the IAU General Assembly and therefore did not vote at all on the Pluto resolutions.

The statement "Pluto's no longer a planet" is not a fact; it's one interpretation in an ongoing debate. Time magazine should treat it that way. Professor William B. McKinnon has a podcast on the Sky and Telescope web site that provides a different view:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/skyte.../38235059.html

I bet Pluto stays up nights, fretting over what them humans think.

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How can that be given that the IAU has now defined the term planet, thus forcing Pluto out of planethood since it does not meet these new terms. It is now a "dwarf planet", right?

Of course, it can still be debated and even changed. But, I'd bet a Sundae it ain't ever coming back into the big-league fold.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

The IAU (or in this case four percent of it) can say whatever they want. That doesn't make it reality--especially since many leading planetary scientists have formally rejected the IAU decree.

I'm betting that when all is said and done, dwarf planets will be included as a subclass of planets, meaning Pluto will be back in the "big league fold" but that "fold" will be a lot more broad.

If it does, Charon could try to comfort it with a song.

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"Outside his own ever-narrowing field of specialization, a scientist is a layman. What members of an academy of science have in common is a certain form of semiparasitic living" - biochemist Erwin Chargaff.

Well, whatever the IAU (or you, or me, or anyone else) says, it doesn't change reality. It's all a discussion about terminology that ultimately is about the same thing.

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NPR aired an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson yesterday in which he discussed the Pluto flap. It's worth a read and a listen.

(I am bothered that she kept calling him Mister Tyson. He holds a PhD in astrophysics.)

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He stole one of my lines!

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