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Author | Topic: Pluto's planet status | |||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Pluto's status affects other objects
Getting to be fairly far reaching ... ... or is that far fetched we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
( ok i do agree dwarf palnet is a naff term , manyb better ones where offered ) I kind of liked planette except for the association of feminine with diminuative ... one must be PC about these things eh? (do not respond this is a joke) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
someone unclear on the concept of clarity?
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
If we didn't have moon's bigger than planets then there would be no problem ... everything would orbit the earth and things would be much cleaner to set arbitrary labels on.
Personally I think the major contributions are ... ... finding the numbers of distinct bodies orbiting within the solar system, ... seeing how they fit into concepts of how the solar system formed over astronomical time spans ... how that contributes to our understanding of the formation of distinct bodies orbiting other star systems (binaries?) ... different kinds of distinct bodies and their association with orbit and the mass of the central star ... how the numbers, sizes and compositions of the distinct bodies orbiting other distinct bodies contributes to the above information ... etc. Now we could also say that every 'distinct body' is a planet, that the earth and moon are a binary planet system orbiting the sun, that the jupiter and saturn (etc) systems operate as sub-solar systems orbiting a central system (and I'm sure if we look close enough we will find objects orbiting moons), but classifications just get so messy when you have to dea with arbitrarily formed randomly distributed clumps of matter ... So now we have three 'kinds' of distinct objects: (1) hard rocks -- mercury, venus, earth, mars and numerous moons and asteroids, (2) gas giants -- jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, and (3) ice balls -- pluto and its 'moon' and other new friends, and the controversy will rage whether these need to be broken down further to separate out (?) oort cloud objects -- comets But they are still distinct bodies formed from the original matter of the solar system and in general orbit about the center of mass of the solar system (whether they form binary or other subsystems in the process). enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
you're right -- see Jack Higgins (click) for more on this aspect of the situation ...
the problem is that we don't have any other word for a large ball of stuff. we inherited "planet" and "moon" from old views of what they were and they have become to mean what the planets (that we know) are, sort of a reverse definition. And the difference between planet and moon has always been curious as well. If you redefined "planet" to be any body larger than the largest moon ... that would cut out mercury as well. If you redefined it to be limited to objects bigger than the smallest moon ... then Pluto stays due to charon (and several others ... the asteroid Ida is orbited by dactyl ... ) see Natural satellite - Wikipedia (note already changed to show pluto as a 'dwarf planet') I think we'll find that the term planet stays, just because of a lack of other suitable terms that don't seem silly. And we'll probably get stuck with 'dwarf' for the same reason. these are what I got from thesaurus.com404: This page could not be found Earth, inner planet, Mars, Mercury, Venus apple, cosmos, creation, dust, globe, macrocosm, old sod, orb, planet, real estate, spaceship Earth, sphere, star, sublunary world, terra, terra firma, terrene, terrestrial sphere, universe, vale apple*, ball, balloon*, orb, pellet, pill, planet, real estate, rondure, round, spaceship Earth, sphere, spheroid, terrene, world but even those are not "planet" synonyms, they are for "terrestrial planet" (best fit) "earth" (just us) and "globe" and certainly both "earth" and "globe" traditionally only apply to this one planet. Probably except that "planet" already seems like its a diminuative, the most sensible would be "planetlet" ("planetet" is just silly and "planetkin" just seems weird) Call it an ice planet, like the gas giants are gas giant planets and the others are 'terrestrial' planets. Why do we need to keep the number small enough to count on two hands anyway? we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
actually, seeing as the aspect used to predict the existence of planets -- extrasolar and pluto --
that should be mass-challenged. (as long as catholics don't get offended ... )
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
the term dwarf is already use to class stars We also already have giant planets (the gas giants) so this is just more in that line as well. So now we can add a bunch of other "ice dwarfs" ... like 2003 UB313, which is bigger than Pluto ... and has a moon (nicknamed "gabriella" to go with the nickname "xena" for the ... but we also have added at least one 'rock' dwarf (Ceres, former asteroid), as it has has ~1/3rd the mass of all the asteroid belt combined and may have an atmosphere, and was the first planet to be demoted from full planet status: it returns now as a dwarf planet. There are other sizable rocks in the belt, but they appear to be irregular in shape (can't pull themselves into a sphere), so the ability to be spherical can be used as a limit to the classification of a planet, with the asteroids essentially being planet fragments or partial planets, but this would discriminate agains rock dwarfs compared to ice dwarfs where there is less resistance to forming a ball shape for the same mass eh? But when you come down to {{{all planets in the solar system}}} you will have to include the dwarf planets now for a complete discussion (especially if you are going to go all PC on it, what with including giants, and middle-sized, and not implying that "dwarfs" don't cut it). Certainly any kid doing a science project to show the solar system would include every body they could find in the literature eh? There is also the question whether pluto is a main dwarf planet or part of a binary duo, seeing as charon and pluto orbit a common center outside either body (not sure what the other 3 moons orbit, pluto or the common center -- ie inside or outside charon). Using the location of a common center outside a body as a defining characteristic of "binary" would also keep the moon as a moon rather than a binary "rock dwarf". On the other hand using the existance of an atmosphere as a characteristic of a planet would mean that our moon and several others could be considered rock dwarf planets. But where do you draw the line on what is an atmosphere and what is part of the planet -- especially for the outer bodies (are the ice dwarfs anything more than frozen atmosphere?) Such a problem. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : No reason given. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
What I'm wondering is: what kind of redefinitions would be necessary to get earth busted down to buck-planet? LOL. Is that a private joke? I think "rock planet" is more appropriate, as it is much more descriptive of the group than "terrestrial" -- what other planet is really "terrestrial" eh? we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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