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  #1  
Old August 17th, 2006, 03:22 AM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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

... Let's pitch some ideas.
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Old August 17th, 2006, 05:13 AM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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.
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Old August 17th, 2006, 03:17 PM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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.
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Old August 17th, 2006, 05:21 AM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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.
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Old August 17th, 2006, 05:32 AM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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?
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Old August 17th, 2006, 05:36 AM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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!
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Old August 17th, 2006, 08:31 AM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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

Won't somebody think of the children?!
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Old August 17th, 2006, 01:01 PM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

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.
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Old August 17th, 2006, 01:17 PM

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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

I think one of the criteria of a planet should be it's gravitational effect on the rest of the solar system. I had a solar system simulator at one point that showed that if you took any one of the 9 'classical' planets out of the solar system, then the other 8 planets went all squirrely. I have no idea what the magic cutoff point would be, but how many of the larger Kuiper Belt objects or even large asteroids (like Ceres) have that sort of effect?

Of course, according to Alf, the 10th planet in our system is named Alvin, not UB313
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Old August 17th, 2006, 01:31 PM
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Default Re: OT: The solar system has 12 planets

Quote:
capnq said:
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).

That's quite a messy definition... If I recall correctly the barycenter is influenced by the distance between the two objects, not just their mass. By this definition Charon wouldn't have been a planet if it had been in a lower orbit. I can agree with the rest of the proposal but the Charon thing is a bit weird.

edit: just found this link:
http://oklo.org/?p=120#comments
Apperently our moon will magically be promoted into planethood 30 billion years from now if this definition is accepted. (if the solar system is not destroyed before)
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