The search team should start a rumor that the planet is made of oil- then we'd actually send a probe to investigate it.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Or he was the Jason Abbadon of his generation. Ever think of that, pallie?
Yeah, me neither.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
The more we study the Oort Cloud the more of these things we're gonna find. I think we should stop now before we end up with a Solar System with 1,973 planets. And downgrade Pluto's status while we're at it. Of course, if they want to call it Tallulah I probably won't object.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I have a suggestion for a name. How about Angerona, the goddess of the winter solstice? She was an ancient Roman goddess whose portrait was that of a woman pressing a finger against her mouth for silence. December 21 marked the holiday for this goddess.
Registered: Sep 2002
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Brown is one of the discoverers of the object, and this site has his thoughts on what qualifies as a planet, as well as some hints about what the name of the object will be.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
It's good that they are *finally* going to put this issue to rest, but people are going to be arguing about the result for the next couple of generations. Any idea about what time they're going to announce it?
posted
According to the program book available for download at the IAU site, it looks like the "definition of planet" stuff takes place on August 22.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Just to chip in with my 2�... one thing that occurred to me several years ago is, what would any hypothetical extraterrestrial intelligence think if they received a map of, or else discovered and were mapping, our solar system? Which objects would they consider significant?
For example, since everyone's making a fuss over Pluto, I wonder what any aliens might think if they ever find the Pioneer 10 plaque and start looking for a system with nine planets, when they should only be looking for eight. Aliens might not consider Pluto at all significant because it's much smaller and is essentially a glorified asteroidal comet.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
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posted
Kind of reminds me of when one of the mapmakers left out the state of Oklahoma. (By forgetting to draw the borderline between it and Texas). If so-called PROFESSIONALS can't get it right.....
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
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To me, the most scientific choice (and hence the one I think spacegoing extraterrestrials would choose) is the third definition. All the current planets except for Pluto are dominant in their region of the solar system (and I think "dominant" is defined as having more mass than everything else combined, but I'm not positive). Furthermore, the astronomical community already has prescendent for this definition (i.e. the downgrading of Ceres, etc.).
However, I'd bet the IAU decides to go with the arbitrary first definition, if only because they think that the public at large wouldn't understand Pluto's downgrade.
EDIT: Does anyone know if they're taking care of establishing the upper range of planets (i.e. where gas giants like Jupiter end and things like brown dwarfs begin)?
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Or they might think "Holy flurking schnit! They destroyed one of their own planets - these are not people we want to mess with."
I wonder. . . what will be the implications for society (as it were) if we go back to 8 planets? I mean, would the switch be as accepted as the switch from eight to nine a century ago? Would the Solar System seem smaller?
posted
I imagine the media would make a big fuss for a few days and then it'd die down and most people would forget.
Not to mention the fact that it's unlikely everyone will go out and buy new, updated space books, so it'd probably be some time before the idea of Pluto not being a planet really sinks in on a large scale.
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