He's flipped at least on his opinion of orbital dominance. He apparently is very bitter with the IAU ruling, but check out this hypocrisy...

In the Space.com article noted elsewhere on this forum, Stern complains about the "clearing the neighboorhood" criteria with the following comments:

"I'm embarrassed for astronomy"
"It's a farce. It won't stand"
"This definition stinks, for technical reasons,"

and this zinger...

"It's patently clear that Earth's zone is not cleared, Jupiter has 50,000 trojan asteroids," which orbit in lockstep with the planet.

So clearly Stern has an issue with the various small bodies that are locked into submissive orbits around the 8 major planets (as moons, trojans, or resonant bodies)

However, in a 2002 paper (referenced in a subsequent paper linked from this forum) entitled "Regarding the criteria for planethood and proposed planetary classification schemes", Stern and a colleague studied the "dynamical dominance" of bodies in the solar system and found a "gap of five orders of magnitude between the smallest terrestrial planets and the largest asteroids and KBOs".

Think about that. FIVE ORDERS of magnitude. That is freaking huge.

And yet now Stern wants to assert that the glorified rocks in the various Lagrange zones of the 8 planets somehow disqualifies them from planethood, despite the fact that he is perfectly aware of the huge, qualitative difference involved.

Months ago, I pointed out Mike Brown's seeming hypocrisy when it seemed that he flipped his opinion on Pluto's status precisely when he had a chance to be an official planetary discoverer. To his credit, he has accepted the IAU ruling with grace since it matched his original opinion, anyway. Hopefully, Stern will come back to his senses.

__________________
"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph" -- Conan

JTFC What are you smoking?

He's questioning the concept of clear, which has thus far not been defined as dominance. As you say, he wrote a paper detailing the answer, so he should be considered an expert. And if an expert is confused at the IAU's contorted resolution than maybe it's not so good. You relaly need to look up the definition of hypocrisy before you go on rants like this.

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

No... Stern said Jupiter had not cleared its orbit because of "70,000 trojans". Nevermind that the mass of all of those trojans combined is less than .0001 of the mass of Jupiter.

*correction* less than .0000001 of the mass of Jupiter

He's not quibbling about the definition being vague, which would be a valid complaint; he said it "stinks" for "technical reasons".

But 4 years ago, Stern himself did a study that found a HUGE qualitative difference between the orbital dominance of the 8 planets and everything else.

He knows exactly what the IAU meant with their definition precisely because he is an expert on the subject. He's just playing the devil's advocate, I think, because he's the world's leading expert on Pluto and maybe he's taking the "demotion" a little too personally.

__________________
"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph" -- Conan

That's still not hypocrisy. People can change their mind, or fight over details without engaging in hypocrisy.

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

Alan Stern strongly supports the idea of "left no ice ball behind", i.e. all the big, round asteroids and TNOs should have been classified as planets.

__________________
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

I'm not sure I understand your point. If Stern feels that the words "has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit" do not equate with orbital dominance, then he is being perfectly reasonable in criticizing the existing language.

You are simultaneously criticizing him for disengenuousness ("He knows exactly what the IAU meant with their definition ") and hypocrisy. Perhaps there is a third option (he's smart enough to know what the IAU meant, but feels that they used the wrong language) then he's not being hypocritical.

I didn't see any limits of determination for what qualified as "competing". "What they meant" is irrelevent. The definition should be absolutely clear, and this muck is anything but. Too much must be inferred, and too much is unwritten. Its untechnical.

Maybe the definition cleared the neighborhood of competing proposals... or was it the dominant proposal? Either way, with only 400-something astronomers voting out of a congress of 2500 and a world of 10,000+ we can see that the legitimacy of the vote is as circular as the reasoning.

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

How is that an example of hypocrisy? Hypocrisy would be when he believes one thing, but says another, or acts in two different ways. All we know of his beliefs is what he has told us, and his responses seem to have been consistent. That means it is not hypocrisy.

PS: the orbital dominance parameter that you mention does not mean that a planet has cleared out its orbit--it is computed without any reference to anything but the planet's mass and period. It's proportional to the mass squared over the period, and it divided into the Hubble time gives a characteristic time for the planet to clear its orbit. In other words, a small planet farther out may eventually dominate its orbit, but it needs more time to do so. And according to that same table, the Earth parameter is a hundred times the parameter for Mercury or Mars.

baric, not only he found five orders of magnitute gap between planets
and KBOs, asteroids, comets; Stern also defines 8 planets to be quite distinct
and calls them " 8 uberplanets" as opposing to large number of "unterplanets":


--------
Stern, S.A., & Levison, H.F. 2002.
Regarding the criteria for planethood and proposed planetary classification schemes.


pages 6 and 7:

Hence, we define and uberplanet as a planetary body in orbit about a star
that is dynamically important enough to have cleared its neighboring
planetesimals in a Hubble time. And we define an unterplanet as one that has
not been able to do so.

... From a dynamical standpoint, our solar system clearly contains 8 uberplanets
and a far larger number of unterplanets, the largest of which are Pluto and Ceres.
--------

this work is also available here:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/planet_def.html

or on direct link to the file:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/PDF/planet_def.pdf

Status: To appear in IAU Proceedings 2000.

Abstract:
We examine the question of planetary classification, making recommendations
both for the criteria by which planethood should be evaluated, as well as for
more detailed physical and dynamical subtype classification schemes.



I think I know what is his agenda, but he definitely flipped!

Check the numbers again... Steven Soter's Table 1 shows the Earth parameter only 18 times for Mercury, or 9 for Mars.

As far as I can see from the past years Alan Stern is actually a very smart and reasonable man, just with an unfortunate habit of occasionally freaking out, verbally. Now his favourite definition (which he had been advocating for some years) was rejected and he has to bother with the public view on NH, maybe all this is itching his nerves. I am more than willing to give him a week or two for cooling down. Should he change his attitude, I am able to forget.

Some of Alan Stern's contradictions:


################################################## ###########

1st contradiction:

(originally Alan Stern writes that there is clear distinction
between "uberplanets" and "unterplanets", now 6 years later
he says there is no clear dividing line between them)


Stern, S.A., & Levison, H.F. 2002.
Regarding the criteria for planethood and
proposed planetary classification schemes.
Status: To appear in IAU Proceedings 2000.
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/planet_def.html
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/PDF/planet_def.pdf

"From a dynamical standpoint, our solar system
clearly contains 8 uberplanets and a far larger number
of unterplanets, the largest of which are Pluto and Ceres."

--------------------------------------------------------

Friday, 25 August 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5283956.stm

Dr Alan Stern told BBC News:
"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line
between dwarf planets and planets."


################################################## ###########

2nd contradiction:

(originally Stern claims that "uberplanets" (planets) have cleared its orbits,
but now he claims that the same planets did not clear its orbits)

Stern, S.A., & Levison, H.F. 2002.
Regarding the criteria for planethood and
proposed planetary classification schemes.
Status: To appear in IAU Proceedings 2000.
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/planet_def.html
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/PDF/planet_def.pdf

"Hence, we define and uberplanet as a planetary body
in orbit about a star that is dynamically important enough
to have cleared its neighboring planetesimals in a Hubble time.
And we define an unterplanet as one that has not been able to do so."

--------------------------------------------------------

25 August 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5283956.stm
"Dr Stern pointed out that Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune
have also not fully cleared their orbital zones."

24 August 2006
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...efinition.html
"It's patently clear that Earth's zone is not cleared," Stern told SPACE.com.
"Jupiter has 50,000 trojan asteroids," which orbit in lockstep with the planet.

################################################## ###########

emphasis mine...

Perhaps he has changed his mind in those intervening 6 years? Or is that unallowable??

You're reading the wrong column, that's the mass column.

No, I was reading "μ" column, because Soter refers to μ as the planetary discriminant:

(page 5)

that's still the wrong column--and it's proportional to the mass for the terrestrial planets, so it gives the same ratios as the mass column.

Rats!

What ridiculous arguments to make!

I find it amazing that Alan Stern & Owen Gingerich - both astronomers, and members of the IAU, who are opposed to the resolution in fact adopted, can complain about the end result of the process when they did not even bother to hang around and participate in the final debating session and subsequent vote over the definition!

Any complaints they may have with the decision are simply sour grapes and completely without foundation! They knew full well of the process that was being followed, and their non-attendance indicated staggering hubris, and its hard to believe they can't realise and accept that their non-attendance meant they forfeited their ability to legitimately criticise the decision arrived at. If defining a planet was really as important as they seem to be making out - why on Earth were they not able to hang around for a few days to participate in the final deliberations?

For Owen Gingerich in particular, its hard to believe he has any complaints - given he was there in Prague a few days prior helping to try and come up with a definition, and then he left!

BBC Article from Sticks

Alan Stern's complaint here is simply staggering in its ignorance. For someone of this education, what he says bears little resemblance to reality. Has Mr. Stern ever heard of the Electoral College that convenes after each Presidential Election in the US to vote upon who will assume the Presidency? Is he aware that if a member of this Electoral College fails to turn up, they can not cast their vote down the wires and expect it to be counted?

In fact, after the election of 2000, the results were so close in the Electoral College - 271-267 (IIRC), if only a handful of people had have decided they didn't need to turn up (far less than the number of astronomers who apparen