OT: The solar system has 12 planets

Renegade 13 · #1 August 17th, 2006, 01:31 AM

Does no one have anything non-nonsensical to say? I know, that didn't make a whole lot of sense...oh well.

cshank2 · #2 August 17th, 2006, 03:22 AM

UB13 should be renamed to something better. (Seriously, it sounds like something from the AvP universe.)

... Let's pitch some ideas.

Randallw · #3 August 17th, 2006, 05:13 AM

I assume you disagree with Xena rather than just UB313. I hope they choose something better otherwise in 1000 years a little girlboy asks her 4th clone father what does Xena mean.

geoschmo · #4 August 17th, 2006, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Randallw said:
I assume you disagree with Xena rather than just UB313. I hope they choose something better otherwise in 1000 years a little girlboy asks her 4th clone father what does Xena mean.

If that's the name they settle on, then most likely in 1000 years when she asks what Xena means the answer will be "It's a planet." Just like these days there aren't too many people that know the mythology behind the other planet names.

Black_Knyght · #5 August 17th, 2006, 05:21 AM

I've been reading a lot about this lately. Seems there's been a big ongoing debate over WHAT constitutes a planet, and what DOESN'T, and somewhere in the process even ol' Pluto almost ended up on the chopping block. For awhile there it was up in the air as to whether we had anywhere from 8 to 12 planets in our neck of the woods.

dogscoff · #6 August 17th, 2006, 05:32 AM

I think the solution they came up with (include pluto etc) is a cop out. Pluto isn't a planet, it's a trans-neptunian ice-ball, and all that other junk out there should be given the same status. They should go even furher though: Having calssified those things as "ice worlds" they should reclassify saturn, jupiter, neptune and uranus as "gas giants", since they have very little in common with anything else currently called a "planet" and that leaves Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Ceres to be the "Rock worlds." Things like Vespa which aren't even spherical should remain asteroids. Not sure wwhat to do with moons mind you - is our moon just a satellite or is it a rock world? I mean technically it's both, so what would you call it?

Kamog · #7 August 17th, 2006, 05:36 AM

Charon being included as a planet was a bit surprising. Well, we'll know in a week or so whether this new redefinition is approved by the vote. If more planets are discovered, we could end up with more than 12 in the future.

I can imagine that many years from now, I'll show my future kids my old astronomy book that shows only 9 planets, and I'll say, see, there were only 9 planets back then!

Suicide Junkie · #8 August 17th, 2006, 08:31 AM

If Pluto AND Charon are planets, then Luna should surely be a planet too.

Won't somebody think of the children?!

capnq · #9 August 17th, 2006, 01:01 PM

Quote:

Suicide Junkie said:
If Pluto AND Charon are planets, then Luna should surely be a planet too.

Not by the proposed standard, which involves where the objects' barycenter is. If the point the objects orbit around is inside one of them (Earth-Luna), the other is a moon. If the barycenter is outside (Pluto-Charon), both are planets (if they're both round).

One of the objections to this new definition is that the number of planets in our solar system could be as high as 53. I'm not sure why that upsets some people, though.

Renegade 13 · #10 August 17th, 2006, 10:00 PM

The first estimates and predictions of Pluto's mass were far too high, I believe due to miscalculations of the mass of Neptune, which in turn affected the calculations of the mass of Pluto. When they thought it was the size of the Earth, it logically was designated a planet, and when the error was discovered it was a little late.