Well then I apologise if it was meant sincerely, but I disregarded that analogy because comparing solar systems and atoms is a useful picture, true, but bad physics; they happen to share a word (orbit) but that's all. If Pluto is a planet, then your electron is not surrounded by a cloud of other electrons, because you're only counting the planets; for simplicity, everything else is ignored. If you consider it surrounded by a cloud, then all the 'electrons' that aren't planets have equal status as your Pluto-electron, and so Pluto isn't automatically a planet.

Can I have a stab at an analogy then? Since the issue here is the definition, not Pluto explicitly, let's take the terrestrial planets and Ceres, for simplicity.

Imagine you're stood outside a car factory. You arrive early one morning as production begins. You stand by the end of the production line, and watch as a car comes along on the conveyor belt. Then a second car comes out, a third, a fourth. Then a bare chassis is transported out. The bed of the thing is there, it's got four wheels, maybe an engine is attached. But it's surrounded by scrap: sheet metal, plastic, leather, stuffing, wires. Moreover, there's clearly more scrap than car. You naturally think to yourself, "this is not a car".

This is what those studying the formation of planetary systems see when they look at Ceres. There would've been nothing inherently wrong with the rejected proposal, sphericity being a worthy condition. But it would've lumped together objects that have gone through different formation processes (or at least different stages of it), and are just as worthy as being treated as separate classes of objects. So that's why I think the accepted definition is preferable. I would've been as dismayed with the rejected one as you are with the one we have, but I would've had to reluctantly accept it on its own merits, as you seem to do.

True, but it's not about how many voted, it's about whether it was a good sample. I've yet to see evidence it wasn't.

No, the KBOs would still be haunting.

[plutonic object class]
Yes, looks like they messed up this one too …
And by their vote they left a funny stub.

I understand that he is not talking directly of the electoral college - but why then is he making an analogy between the IAU - which is a meeting/congress of invitees who are all professional astronomers - there by invitation only, to the entire electorate at large! Anyone over the age of 17 is enfranchised to vote in an election - is Stern then suggesting that the deliberations of the IAU should be put to a popular vote of the world's population?

I couldn't for the life of me accept that this was part of the analogy he was attempting to draw - it makes no sense at all! From that I deduced that he must be talking about a select group of individuals who get to vote on important issues - IAU on astronomical matters, Electoral College on the President of the USA. That seems a much clearer analogy to be drawn.

Or was he really suggesting that the decisions of the IAU should be open to a populist campaign?

Just what was the analogy that he was trying to draw?

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer - renowned 19th Century German philosopher.

This particular news article has some reaction from Astrologers


and the Disney corporation

The IAU has a lot to answer for, especially upseting Micky Mouse's dog

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I thought it was pretty clear that he was comparing the voting practice of the IAU with that of the general electorate (I know you find that hard to believe, but I'm not sure why you do). His point was that we don't have to travel to Washington DC to vote, why should the IAU all have to travel to Prague.

But shouldn't you have asked those questions before you accused him of staggering ignorance?

I don't see the point of such hyperbole--on another thread, someone else is accusing him of hypocrisy, also unfounded. Why?

That in this day and age professional astronomers should be able to e-vote (or equivalent) on issues, thereby not having to be present??

I suppose whether one agrees with him depends on whether you think the majority of non-voting professional astronomers:
a) left without voting because they didn't like the proposal and were objecting by abstaining
b) couldn't be bothered to stay till the end of the conference
c) had legitimate reasons why they couldn't stay till the end of the conference.

In my line of work, it is common to to go/be sent to only a portion of technical conferences. On the other hand, it is uncommon to have a vote of world-wide speculation scheduled for the last day.

It doesn't sound like a good sample to me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5283956.stm

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I'm sorry, but that's the opinion of a man who is disgruntled with the result, not evidence of bias. The only difference between the happy and unhappy astronomers is that the unhappy ones make more noise.

From Clyde Tombaugh's widow:

I think this Time magazine cartoon sums up the Pluto conundrum nicely:

http://www.time.com/time/cartoons/20060826/8.html

Is that probe getting near the planet Pluto yet?..

Nearer than it was. New Horizons will take about a decade to reach Pluto, IIRC.

Umm there is no planet Pluto. New Horizons will pass by Jupiter on February 28th, 2007, and pass by the dwarf planet Pluto on Bastille Day, 2015.

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Ahh...one of natures collies trying to
corral a perceived stray grrr

I am really looking forward to this. Any word on what kind of information they are going to be looking for on the Jupiter flyby?

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Hey now, how many times did the mods jump in and tell posters that Pluto was a planet, when it was? Fair's fair.

Scientists threaten not to use the new definition.

“We, as planetary scientists and astronomers, do not agree with the IAU’s definition of a planet, nor will we use it. A better definition is needed”

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Well, I must admit that the definition text is rather horrible and the way how it was accepted wasn't very diplomatic, but this is bordering ridiculous.

This is not a great scientific debate à la Shapley and Curtis but more like a semantics issue.

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This is counter-productive and will be perceived as childish by the majority of the astronomical community who probably have no particular preference on this issue.

It's one thing to disagree with the IAU definition, to seek (or even campaign) to get it changed, but it's another thing entirely to deny the IAU's authority over the issue. If you can do that on one issue, anyone else can do it on others. People will back the IAU simply to prevent that kind of free-for-all.

Everything seems to indicate that this debate won´t be settled until 2009 (and we´re better off this way).

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I don't agree with the definition but I do agree that this is childish.

I see multiple problems here:
- 300 disagree with a vote of 428 (outvoted)
- 300 are vocal of about 10,000 (minority)
- There is no indication that these 300 agree with what is wrong, only that it is wrong. So we may still have 300 disagreements within this petition.
- There is no alternative given.
- What are they doing in the meantime, and what kind of effect is this going to have. (in other words is it really that big of a deal?)

I was wondering... Regarding Pluto, wouldn't it be possible to please both sides? With something like this, for example:

There is the category of Planet. And within this category there are four subcategories regarding our Solar System:

1) Jovian Planets

2) Neptunian Planets

3) Terrestrial Planets

4) Dwarf Planets

Wouldn't this please more people than the distinction between Planets (including Jupiter and Mercury in the same category) and Dwarf Planets? And children could memorize the big eight and also learn that the dwarf planets are a real armada, with Ceres being by far the closest to Earth and Pluto being the second closest. And nobody forces them to memorize all the others.

I think we have to remove the arbitrarieties off the definition (like orbit clearing). The problem is that IAU apparently intends to put astronomy, astrophysics and planetary sciences in general, in the same sack.

Astronomy, the Queen of the Sciences in the saying of Comte, is essentially about gravity and gravitational interactions resulting in paths and trajectories of celestial bodies across the sky (take an astronomy chart and see that they include only the essential geometric information about the bodies). As I said many times before, the orbital characteristics of the bodies, their orbital pattern, should be the core of the definition.

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They will all look foolish soon enough. Right now, the debate is framed as "is Pluto a planet or not?"

But now that the "dwarf planet" category is created, we will likely have 50+ categorized in a few years. The question then will not be about Pluto, but rather do we have 8 planets and 50 dwarf planets, or 58 planets? Most of these petition signers will quietly back away from this option once the furor has died down.

The public would love to see Pluto as a planet, but not at the expense of adding 50 others to the group plus 2-3 more every year.

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Textbook case of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear:

Statement from NMSU Astronomy Department head regarding reclassification of Pluto

----

Pluto supporters to IAU: The debate's not over

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After reading Mike Brown, CalTech university, website: I am now convinced that the IAU did the correct thing to demote Pluto and 2003 UB313 to a dwarf planet. The IAU used the best scientific definition available for a planet. Mike Brown is probably not happy about this decision, but he says it is the best scientific defintion.

When we were kids, back in the ice ages, ha ha, they didn't know about the Kuiper Belt Objects, and so couldn't truly understand Pluto in a true context.

I hope the IAU doesn't change this definition again at their 2009 meeting. I think the world needs to accept the fact that there are 8 planets, and everything else in solar system.

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I really don't understand why the public should care whether there are 2 planets or 200. I don't understand why it would care, either, but deep down inside I know you're right.

I'm still holding out for the day when we have 2 Gas Giant Planets, 2 Ice Giant Planets, 3 or 4 Terrestrial Planets, 2 or 3 Silicate Dwarf Planets, and 50 Ice Dwarf Planets in our solar system.

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http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piP...ve_current.php