Is Pluto a planet or not?

Earth type planets = 4
Jupiter type planets = 4
Pluto type planets = 50

Pluto wins!
 
bflynn said:
Asteroids.
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Even the other so-called dwarf planets that Pluto is grouped with including one that has more mass than Pluto?

I personally couldn’t care less how the experts define it but their logic in changing its status does make sense.
 
tinerj said:
Earth type planets = 4
Jupiter type planets = 4
Pluto type planets = 50

Pluto wins!
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According to Wikipedia, as of 2018 there were 757,626 minor planets, 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets in our solar system. Apparently dwarf planets are also minor planets.
 
Salty said:
The opposite of whatever celebrity “scientists” like degrasse Tyson say it is.
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Being famous has no bearing on whether a person is a good scientist or not.
 
The whole planet/not-planet thing is getting way more attention that it deserves. I can see the argument for being consistent, but it's just a naming convention. It has no real-world implications whatever, that I can see.
 
Palmpilot said:
Being famous has no bearing on whether a person is a good scientist or not.
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Seeking celebrity makes for practicing bad science.
 
Palmpilot said:
The whole planet/not-planet thing is getting way more attention that it deserves. I can see the argument for being consistent, but it's just a naming convention. It has no real-world implications whatever, that I can see.
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I remember watching a very old Sherlock Holmes show where Watson discussed his friend Holmes. In the introduction, Holmes didn't know that the moon revolved around the earth, or that the earth revolved around the sun, I forget. Anyway, when Watson was shocked that Holmes didn't realize this, Holmes made the point that it doesn't impact his life in any way whatsoever.

Holmes is correct - none of this impacts us, at least not directly. But it's worth researching.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I remember watching a very old Sherlock Holmes show where Watson discussed his friend Holmes. In the introduction, Holmes didn't know that the moon revolved around the earth, or that the earth revolved around the sun, I forget. Anyway, when Watson was shocked that Holmes didn't realize this, Holmes made the point that it doesn't impact his life in any way whatsoever.

Holmes is correct - none of this impacts us, at least not directly. But it's worth researching.
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What research is needed? Whether Pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet is primarily determined by how the terms are defined.
 
Salty said:
Seeking celebrity makes for practicing bad science.
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That's only true if the person's first priority is celebrity instead of science, AND lacks integrity.
 
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SkyDog58 said:
How did you feel about Carl Sagan?

How about Einstein? He was a celebrity in his day.
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Same about Sagan and even moreso hawking. Einstein was different. He was true to his science, not what was popular at the moment.
 
Salty said:
Seeking celebrity makes for practicing bad science.
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Science needs to not just be practiced by active practitioners locked in their labs, but also *disseminated*. And not just to other scientists, but to the world. That's the role that folks like Tyson and Sagan and Nye have played, and continue to play. Pooh-pooh that role all you like as "seeking celebrity", but I view their role as an essential one, and they are very good at it.

I grew up on "Cosmos" as a young kid, and credit Carl Sagan as an inspiration; now I'm an astrophysicist. Many scientists in my generation would say the same thing. Don't want scientists on TV? Then we'll inspire far fewer people (young and old) into STEM.

I can't claim to have seen everything Tyson has done, but I did enjoy the reboot of "Cosmos", and there was nothing in there that is not well supported by an abundance of evidence, and where evidence is lacking, folks like Tyson are usually pretty good about acknowledging it. (String theory, for instance.) Clarifying what science rests on solid evidence, and what doesn't, is part of their job. I see it as an important part of mine, whenever I'm out there giving public talks...


P.S. I'm just fine with Pluto being classified as a dwarf planet. Doesn't make it any less what it is.
 
kath said:
Science needs to not just be practiced by active practitioners locked in their labs, but also *disseminated*. And not just to other scientists, but to the world. That's the role that folks like Tyson and Sagan and Nye have played, and continue to play. Pooh-pooh that role all you like as "seeking celebrity", but I view their role as an essential one, and they are very good at it.

I grew up on "Cosmos" as a young kid, and credit Carl Sagan as an inspiration; now I'm an astrophysicist. Many scientists in my generation would say the same thing. Don't want scientists on TV? Then we'll inspire far fewer people (young and old) into STEM.

I can't claim to have seen everything Tyson has done, but I did enjoy the reboot of "Cosmos", and there was nothing in there that is not well supported by an abundance of evidence, and where evidence is lacking, folks like Tyson are usually pretty good about acknowledging it. (String theory, for instance.) Clarifying what science rests on solid evidence, and what doesn't, is part of their job. I see it as an important part of mine, whenever I'm out there giving public talks...


P.S. I'm just fine with Pluto being classified as a dwarf planet. Doesn't make it any less what it is.
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It’s not that they are on tv, it’s that they are on tv pushing the political and popular claptrap of the day to make a buck, not practicing science.
 
Salty said:
It’s not that they are on tv, it’s that they are on tv pushing the political and popular claptrap of the day to make a buck, not practicing science.
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There's nothing about appearing on TV that prevents a person from practicing science.
 
Palmpilot said:
There's nothing about appearing on TV that prevents a person from practicing science.
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We don’t agree. No need to create strawmen to argue with.
 
Why do we just call our moon “the moon” but we give proper names to other planets’ moons?
 
Actually, IIRC, our moon is named Luna. Not sure why we don't call it that in every day life, but we do refer to it when we speak of Lunar orbits and what not.

I guess it's the same as Sol, our sun.
 
A pluto type planet has to orbit the sun at least Pluto's average distance from the sun and be large enough to have a gravity that is strong enough to pull it into a globe. A bunch of 'plants' meet that condition.
 
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tinerj said:
A bunch of 'plants' meet that condition.
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Plutoraniums

03863_01_pluto.jpg
 
Anymouse said:
Actually, IIRC, our moon is named Luna. Not sure why we don't call it that in every day life, but we do refer to it when we speak of Lunar orbits and what not.

I guess it's the same as Sol, our sun.
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Gotta love the name of the galaxy that Earth, Luna and Sol are in: The Milky Way.
 
In a weird coincidence, this question came up this morning among the coffee klatsch regulars at Spike's Coffees and Teas.

I texted the guy who bought my 172 in July, Dr. Jamey Szalay, who is an astrophysicist and researcher at Princeton, and was deeply involved in the NASA New Horizons mission. I asked him about the current status of Pluto.

He responded: "There's been a big movement from the NASA's Pluto mission (New Horizons) to get Pluto (and actually most moons and other large round bodies) to be called planets. The effort has been spearheaded by Alan Stern, the PI of that mission. The recent paper that came out was one of the stronger cases towards this, but to officially change it the IAU has to vote (I think), as they're the ones who are in charge of naming."

He didn't mention the title of the paper or the journal it was published in, but it apparently has caused quite a stir.

EDIT - Found it. The journal Icarus.
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-pluto-reclassified-planet.html
 
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Thanks for the link. Looks like Pluto gets to come out of the doghouse. I think Ganymede is bigger than Pluto and has been classified as a minor planet, so should be, too. Pluto is a Kuiper Belt Object and its been theorized that we share a Kuiper belt with our nearest neighbor star. I wonder if some catclysmic event kicked Pluto from a Ganymede like orbit into the Kuiper belt and it made its way to our solar system. Food for thought, anyway.
 
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Stan Cooper said:
He responded: "There's been a big movement from the NASA's Pluto mission (New Horizons) to get Pluto (and actually most moons and other large round bodies) to be called planets. The effort has been spearheaded by Alan Stern, the PI of that mission. The recent paper that came out was one of the stronger cases towards this, but to officially change it the IAU has to vote (I think), as they're the ones who are in charge of naming."

He didn't mention the title of the paper or the journal it was published in, but it apparently has caused quite a stir.

EDIT - Found it. The journal Icarus.
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-pluto-reclassified-planet.html
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Yes, I've read about that proposal before. The result would be lots of moons and other objects being called planets that haven't been called planets in my lifetime. You're right, it's the IAU that came up with the current definition and they would have to vote to change it.
 
Crashnburn said:
Thanks for the link. Looks like Pluto gets to come out of the doghouse. I think Ganymede is bigger than Pluto and has been classified as a minor planet, so should be, too. Pluto is a Kuiper Belt Object and its been theorized that we share a Kuiper belt with our nearest neighbor star. I wonder if some catclysmic event kicked Pluto from a Ganymede like orbit into the Kuiper belt and it made its way to our solar system. Food for thought, anyway.
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Ganymede is indeed larger than Pluto, I'm pretty sure it is even slightly larger than Mercury. But what do you mean by a Ganymede-like orbit? Are you thinking that it may have once been a moon of one of the gas giants, such as maybe Neptune? I think I may have read somewhere that someone proposed that, but I have no idea where now, or whether there is any evidence for it.
 
Stan Cooper said:
...He responded: "There's been a big movement from the NASA's Pluto mission (New Horizons) to get Pluto (and actually most moons and other large round bodies) to be called planets. The effort has been spearheaded by Alan Stern, the PI of that mission. The recent paper that came out was one of the stronger cases towards this, but to officially change it the IAU has to vote (I think), as they're the ones who are in charge of naming."

He didn't mention the title of the paper or the journal it was published in, but it apparently has caused quite a stir.

EDIT - Found it. The journal Icarus.
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-pluto-reclassified-planet.html
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It would seem odd to me to start referring to moons as "planets." It seems to me to be a useful distinction to have different terms for objects that orbit around a star and objects that orbit around something else.
 
Palmpilot said:
It would seem odd to me to start referring to moons as "planets." It seems to me to be a useful distinction to have different terms for objects that orbit around a star and objects that orbit around something else.
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Yeah, I get the logic in somehow differentiating between spherical celestial bodies orbiting stars and those orbiting other spherical celestial bodies that aren't stars.
 
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