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Pluto may still qualify for planetary status.
centersolace
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-Leonard Nimoy, RIP
It is this third point that will prove the challenge. That said, I did note several of the comments added at the link, and one comment caught my eye:
I've not investigated the accuracy of this claim, but it does sound intriguing. I'm wondering, given Pluto's huge orbit, what if all criteria are met, and it will clear its orbit, but has not done so yet?. Do we give it planet status if we recognize that it will clear the neighborhood one day?
Personally, I like to cheer for the kicked-around underdog, so I'm hoping they find enough to either change the definitions or demonstrate that Pluto qualifies.
As for the "clearing your orbit" requirement, you have to take into consideration the much longer, and therefore slower, orbits the farther out you get from the Sun. Pluto has completed far fewer orbits; it just needs more time.
K way oar , I think!
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I have a feeling if they did that, they would probably group them into two areas:
Kuiper belt planets
Non-Kuiper belt planets
Otherwise we would have a HUUUGE list of 'planets in our solar system'.
Pluto was always a planet. It was just reclassified as a dwarf planet. The same as Ceres, Juno, Vesta, Pallas, Eris and a couple hundred thousand more objects in our own solar system. Not counting Sedna (a scattered object, but also controversially lobbied to become a planet).
For those who grew up way back in the day (up until around the early 1950's), might recognize Vesta, Ceres, Juno, and Pallas in your textbooks as planets, but were reclassified later.
This is science, not religion. There is nothing sacred in science. By very definition, it is used to better explain the reality we live in. We can't make exceptions if we are to progress forward into further scientific advances.
Those who say their children cry when told Pluto isn't a planet anymore (for example), and therefore should be classified as a planet again... are what is wrong with society. It's this kind of anti-science, and anti-intellectual nonsense that rustles my jimmies.
The sciences, particularly astronomy is constantly being redefined as we are able to gather more information about the heavens above us.
We simply can not cling to the past and what we thought was science, and at the same time say we should move forward and learn and explore more. Because eventually we're going to find something that challenges our former beliefs. And if we are good enough -- this will happen quite often.
So no, nothing is sacred in science. Pluto's reclassification as a dwarf planet should be seen as an educative experience -- not a sacred cow that the IAU is slaughtering to make our children cry and cause schools to buy more textbooks.
Even then, that isn't going to help you. There are many objects between Mars and Jupiter that share characteristics similar to Pluto (and other Kuiper Belt Planets), such as Ceres. You make the problem even worse when you consider the Centaurs between Saturn and Uranus, most notably Chiron (which some say should be a dwarf planet) -- however, that too is controversial since we've not even photographed Chiron.
If Pluto is readmitted as a proper planet, you can expect that it isn't going to be permanent (at worst), as we redefine what makes a planet a planet... or it will be controversial and not fully accepted by the scientific community (at best).
But that is the fun part of science -- it is always important to question.
Never stop questioning, and never make exceptions for questions (like Pluto's planetary classification).
more overthinking on an idea and its nothing new there. the complex they make these things the more difficult is is to grasp who the bloody hell classifies what and where that eventually it becomes really silly and needs a new way to reclassify it with an even more silly system.
the issue is that we have no real data from around pluto to even be sure of anything. to classify something it needs to fit a criteria and i doubt half the boxes can be filled with anything more then 40 year old data from some ancient probe we launched an ice age ago. what would fill the missing blanks would be to get a mission together to fully explore out the various planets and moons in more depth then what we got.
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Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
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Yeah, I've heard a couple of the scientist mention the reclassification to keep from having a long list of planets. While I don't believe that is the only reason for classification changes, it is a pretty ridiculous one and should not have been thrown into the mix.
I do agree semantics are involved, and I suspect a pair of words carry a lot of emotional weight: "demotion" and "dwarf". The resulting effect makes it seem like fan-favorite Pluto is some sort of cast-off. I would have preferred if they always had used the term "recategorized" (especially in casual conversation), which is perceived as more of a lateral move. "Dwarf", I understand. We've had that term associated with stars for decades. Perhaps if they'd done a better job making it seem like the categories "planet" and "dwarf planet" were on equal footing, as I think the perception is about "star" and "dwarf star", things might have gone better.
As the guy on the TEDtalks vid said, they will be revisiting the definition of a planet at some point, and likely the controversial point #3 will be refined or changed. Next January, we may discover that Pluto is unique in our solar system, and may have to write all new definitions. It certainly has points to warm a discussion:
- only 50 km smaller than Mercury
- an atmosphere, unlike Mercury
- 5 known satellites, unlike Mercury
I should point out that in 2015 we will have a probe on close approach to Pluto--the closest we have ever had, if I recall. Perhaps the scientific community should be tabling this discussion until we receive full results from that mission?
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And apparently some folks got upset about the definition, because it changed The Way We Always Did Things, which I thought was kind of the point of scientific advancement, but whatever, I don't have any emotional attachment to it either way.
And yes once we finally get a good look I'm sure there will be some new revelations.
As for other Kuiper Belt objects which may or may not be larger than Pluto: all that is largely based on extrapolation and certain assumptions at this point. It may take decades/centuries to really have a good understanding of this region.
Even so, I'm eager for the New Horizons project to get there and send us some pretty pikshurs. Wouldn't we freak out if we got there, and all eyes of the world were stuck to the TV and we watched as Pluto revolved around, and suddenly an abandoned space base appeared? I doubt it'd happen, but it's fun to imagine our response.
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Science is full of meaningless definitions like how big does a geological formation have to be to be considered as a mountain and as proved by the mountain definition, organizations can have different definitions for the same thing.
It's simple.
It's defined by a tourist board.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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The whole problem arose when they found other objects similar to Pluto. Another problem - as jonsills points out - is that until lately there were no rules regarding classification. I think Pluto should be considered a normal planet as an exception that proves the rule.
I have no real problem with altering the new definition to make Pluto and similar worlds planets. Personally, I think it would be interesting to live in a system with 13+ planets in it...
It certainly would make Joss Whedon's Firefly system more realistic sounding.
Not quite. A Solar System with a bunch of inhabitable planets would require planetary engineering by some unknown race. The farther away a planet is, the requirement for geothermal energy to heat up the planet becomes necessary. Mars might be able to be use sunlight for heat, but Pluto and the moons past Mars would require geothermal energy since there is not enough sunlight.
And there will be no end of complaints when an object is found that fulfills all of the criteria for planethood except for being just below the cutoff size. Any sharp line will result in borderline cases, simply because there's a whole continuum of objects in nature as opposed to everything fitting into neat categories.
Science is full of these sharp lines that have no basis in fact. Where our atmosphere ends has been based on distance and atmospheric pressure like 100 kilometers or 1 psf. There are very few objects in our Solar System that have a radius over 1000 kilometers. Various moons like our moon and Titan apply, but that is a completely different problem. If a moon is bigger than the planet, is it defined as a planet or moon or both? There are binary stars so why not binary planets. The whole borderline issue will only occur when we actually send people to other stars and that might be centuries from now.
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