{"id":2720,"date":"2008-06-12T12:05:08","date_gmt":"2008-06-12T12:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2008\/06\/12\/pluto-gets-consolation-prize-w\/"},"modified":"2008-06-12T12:05:08","modified_gmt":"2008-06-12T12:05:08","slug":"pluto-gets-consolation-prize-w","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/12\/pluto-gets-consolation-prize-w\/","title":{"rendered":"Pluto Gets Consolation Prize, Will Thumb Nose at Astronomers Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pluto is the ninth planet in our solar system. In our planetary mythology, it is the ninth planet, it is small, far away, cold, and there is an important cartoon dog named after it. But astronomers decided a while ago that Pluto is not a planet. That throws everything out of balance. Nine Planets is not just some number (nine, in this case) and the word “planets.” It is a balanced equation, an iconic formula. Like the Holy Trinity. Or the Ten Commandments. Or the Three Stooges. Can you imagine a world in which there are only two stooges?Well, Pluto has been given a kind of compromise …. a fully inadequate one … but also a kind of honor.From now on, Pluto is a Plutoid. <\/a>Plutoid <\/em> is the word that will be coined to refer to the so called ‘dwarf planets.” So pluto gets status above asteroid. And, Pluto takes a special place as the root of the term Plutoid. Pluto is to Plutoids as Kleenex is to Kleenex.This decision was made by the International Astronomical Union (the group that makes sure astronomers get paid above minimum wage, etc.)Are you surprised that this has happened? So is everyone else.<\/p>\n

“Most of the people in astronomy and planetary science community had no idea this was going to come out,” said Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Weaver called the process that produced the new definition “sort of outdated, outmoded, archaic.””In this day and age of transparency and mass communication, it seems a bit strange that such an important pronouncement would come out with so few people knowing about it, and, apparently, with no serious attempt to vet this with more people in the community,” Weaver said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, that guy obviously was not invited to the party…This is only going to get more complicated. For instance, what do you do with a heavenly body like Ceres. It is large enough to be a planet if Pluto is a planet. So maybe it is a plutoid (which is not an asteroid). But it is siting right there in the freakin’ middle of the asteroid belt.Controversy will continue about this issue until astronomers come to grip with the fact that there is no clear expectation of discontinuity from a grain of dust to a massive gasseious planet. Or maybe there is, but you are not going to find this discontinuity at the size scale that includes the dust particle and, say, The Earth. Sure, there are differences in how these non-star solar system components act, like there are differences between clay silt and sand particles on the surface of Earth. But the differences are more nominal then they are boundary-like.Astronomers: Pluto is a planet. Get over it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pluto is the ninth planet in our solar system. In our planetary mythology, it is the ninth planet, it is small, far away, cold, and there is an important cartoon dog named after it. But astronomers decided a while ago that Pluto is not a planet. That throws everything out of balance. Nine Planets is … Continue reading Pluto Gets Consolation Prize, Will Thumb Nose at Astronomers Forever<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[191],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-HS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}