OT: The solar system has 12 planets

[Black_Knyght]

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]

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]

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!

[PvK]

From the first article linked in the initial post:
"Under the plan, a planet would be any object that orbits a star, is neither a star itself nor the moon of another planet, and contains enough matter that gravity forces it into a nearly round shape."

Er... how much loose dust does it take for it to gravitate into a ball that isn't scattered by the solar wind? Seems like, especially if one goes out to the Kuiper Belt and beyond, there might be many many many of these, and they wouldn't fit an intuitive definition of what a planet is.

[PvK]

In the US, schools and students are frequently buying the latest editions... quite an industry...

But 30-year-old chemistry books? Wow! The opposite extreme.

[AngleWyrm]

Maybe we don't want any more brilliant chemists...

[Suicide Junkie]

Schools don't buy books... they make students buy books.

[Renegade 13]

Suicide Junkie said:
Schools don't buy books... they make students buy books.

I'm not sure how it works in Ontario, but here in BC, when you're in highschool the schools purchase the books, not the studnets... If you're referring to university's/college's, of course the students have to buy the books.

[Suicide Junkie]

Sure, in theory the highschools buy the books...
But have you ever seen a newly purchased text book in highschool?

[Renegade 13]

It's classified as a "Dwarf Planet".

Seems stupid to me to call something a dwarf planet, not a planet. Semantics.