Sign the Pluto Petition

[Dan Neely]

Paul Watson wrote:

As for AIDS and cancer I doubt astronomers would be of much help solving them

SETI ;P:laugh::-D

[Geoff Gariepy]

Yes, let's not have any wars over the silly petition. Gee, whiz, if you don't agree with it, don't sign. :) People are awfully worked up over nomenclature, which is sort of the point of the petition in the first place. :confused: "They" ought to just grandfather Pluto into the Planets club, and everything else that's like it discovered from now on can be called a dwarf planet, "trans-Neptunian object" or whatever science deems necessary. Yes, this is an emotional appeal. Why else would I make this sort of appeal, it's not like I'm an astronomer, I'm a Perl and C# developer. :laugh: All I know is that if I were one of Tombaugh's great grandchildren, I'd be more than a little upset about it. Heck, I'm not an astronomer and I'm no relation to his family and I find it a little upsetting. :-O --Geoff

[Baj22]

Wow, good point. As an American, I completely agree. We should remove Pluto as a planet and re-enter it as "The United States of Pluto" and make it king of the planets because we Americans do everything out of our foolish pride.

[El Corazon]

Paul Watson wrote:

Are you serious? Can you really back that claim up?

can you pull the microfiche on newspapers in Las Cruces and Alamogordo, NM since 1940's? Clyde Tombaugh retired here, so there was a great deal of local controversy over our resident. Astronomers would come from all over just to give speeches in our backwater community to show us that our resident knew nothing and convince us to throw him out as science has done. Google won't produce one result, but many results on the controversy of Pluto. Because Pluto was a controversy from almost day one. True AIDS and Cancer research probably weren't hurt by the Astronomers per se, but since the Astronomers were using their government grants for Apollo objects (threats to Earth) to research Pluto to downgrade it, there was often the demand for more money in finding Apollo objects because the money was being syphoned off. Governments pretty much gave up the search for a new planet after Tombaugh's statement, but various governments have been concerned about asteroid impacts, especially after a few "snuck up" on us because people were looking at Pluto instead of other parts of the sky. Of course, the Astronomers defend that even if they had not been looking at pluto with the time alotted for Apollo object searches, there is never a gaurentee to find anything "unknown" until it gets close enough to become "obvious" -- however, as a few people pointed out, if you never look, there is the gaurentee you will never find it. :) Think rather that the money was ill spent and required additional grants and budget extensions world-wide from money that could have been spent on many things other than trying to prove Pluto is or is not a planet. :)

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

[El Corazon]

dan neely wrote:

then how did far smaller and less dense Ceres form itself into a sphere?

there are some theories... One of the most accepted "with current knowledge" is that it once took a low orbit toward the sun, close proximity to the sun, like Mercury heated the rock slowly molding it to round. A near miss (why don't they call it a near hit) with another astronomical body changed the orbit to where it is now. It is one reason why we would like to land on Ceres and see if it perhaps has a hard core and a very light surface (which would spread out the light material evenly around a say iron core) -- which is one of the other more common theories. Think pumice around an iron core.

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

[El Corazon]

Kastellanos Nikos wrote:

I insist on searching for a perfect platetary system where we can find aliens with -common- sence!

If you blow us up in an interplanitary war and I am telling on you!! ;P

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

[El Corazon]

dan neely wrote:

That's an unprovable assertion since we currently cannot detect any planets in a solar system like our own. Our inner planets are too light, our massive ones too distant.

actually it is not unprovable, since we have found very few large planet systems with even planes as ours. Although we can only detect the larger planets, to medium planets, nothing as small as Earth. Very few fall all in near the same plane. Even the larger planets in other systems follow pluto like orbits against other giants, making for very strange orbits. It would be like putting Neptune and Jupiter in orbits as eccentric as Pluto. We would consider that strange, because our system doesn't look that way, but it seems in the exoplanet world, that it is more common to have a few planets in an off plane orbit with a strong eccentricity. Making pluto the rule, not our planets. So, as I said, the fact that pluto has an eccentric orbit in no way disqualifies it as a planet since even gas giants in other systems follow Pluto-like orbits. To base a definition on its orbit alone, we would have to disqualify one of the largest gas-giants every found (I can't remember if it has been demoted once or twice, I mostly remember its discovery and first demotion).

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

[Gary R Wheeler]

You know something, I would really like it if you would go away now. You openly advocate ignorance of the universe outside the planet we live on :|. In your sig, you also quote from a forum post on www.dailywtf.com that disparages the work of contributors to The Code Project :mad:.

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Software Zen: delete this;

Fold With Us![^]

[joeyjr]

Joseph Jones :confused: :cool:

[rancir]

Of course, by the time we discover a truly advanced civilization we will be completely unable to communicate with them. They'll actually want to talk, and we'll only be able to communicate by blackberry. The first interplanetary incident will probably be when our first contact specialist rudely ignores the alien ambassador in order to read his IM's or answer his cell phone!

[BoneSoft]

JLengi wrote:

Sentimentality has no place in astronomical definitions or designations

Very true... But the logic to disqualify Pluto is flawed, and we don't even know if there really is a Kuiper Belt, much less the nature of it. One article said that a "Planet" had to follow 3 rules: 1. Orbit the sun. 2. Be large enough to have a fairly spherical shape. 3. Must have accumulated all (or most) matter in it's path. They disqualified Pluto because it's orbit passes through Neptunes, so they claim #3 was broken. So why is Neptune not disqualified from planet status on the same grounds?

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[BoneSoft]

Thank God scientists don't base their beliefs on there own laziness of memory. That's why we invented paper.

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[BoneSoft]

Is it not emotion instead of reason that makes you not "want" 647 planets?

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[BoneSoft]

There will NEVER be a cure for AIDs. Never. No virus in all of human history has been cured. Have a nice day.

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Try code model generation tools at BoneSoft.com.

[BoneSoft]

You're an idiot. Is there anything else I can clear up for you?

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Try code model generation tools at BoneSoft.com.

[JLengi]

Well, estimates of the total number of so-called KBOs larger than 100km in diameter range in the tens of thousands, which seems reasonable, since a thousand or so KBOs have already been found, so I don't think there's a debate any more about whether the Kuiper Belt exists. The only difference between Pluto and those objects is that Pluto was discovered several decades earlier.

[Kastellanos Nikos]

:laugh:

[Kastellanos Nikos]

BoneSoft wrote:

Is it not emotion instead of reason that makes you not "want" 647 planets?

In the current context, no. It isn't. :rose:

[AlistairConnor]

My Very Early Marrows Just Suited Uncle Ned. That's all, folks. Yes, poor little Pluto has been kicked out of the family. Pretty rough. It was always obvious that he was adopted (orbital plane is way out of line with his siblings). The International Astronomical Union has decided that, to be called a planet, an object must have three traits. It must orbit the sun, be massive enough that its own gravity pulls it into a nearly round shape, and be dominant enough to clear away objects in its neighborhood. i.e. to be a "real" planet, you've got to be a big, fat bully. Pluto is relegated to runt-planet status, along with new girl on the block, Xena, and (humiliatingly) Ceres, a mere asteroid.

[BoneSoft]

It seems to me that most people arguing both sides of the issue are driven by emotion, though those that agree with the decision mostly claim to be non emotional. Science is charged with describing reality as accurately as is possible. Tinkering with the definition of a planet to fit the list we "want" doesn't accomplish that goal. If 647 objects fit the description, then 647 planets there are. What's next, we're limiting the list of planets to the number of Olympic gods that we have to name them after? At the same time, it's equally asinine to argue that it should keep its status because children relate to its small size, or because that's what we were taught. When I was in school, they were still teaching that protons neutrons and electrons where the smallest constituants of matter. Particle Physics has come a long way since then. Obviously the solar system is more complex than our previous understanding, but I think this is just a quick fix. I vote for 647, and I still reserve the right to critisize those that fail to respond to warnings of impending doom. New Orleans should relocate, not rebuild. But that's another discussion. Cheers

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Arguing on the internet is a lot like running in the special olympics... Even if you win, you're still a retard. ;P