Goose the Blog 2.0

"Oh, ha! Sarcasm: The last refuge of sons of bitches!"

what am I, on crazy pills?!

by John at 8/22/2006 12:55:00 PM

Astronomers are super unhappy with the new definition of planet. The original proposal was revised yesterday to alleviate some objections, but that plan didn't work. The revision tried to distinguish between planets that dominate their local population and those that don't, but the originators of the alternate proposal weren't happy with the changes. The subproposal to call Pluto-like planets "plutons" also did not have majority support, nor did the concept of binary planets. The proposal went back into a private meeting to try to sort things out so that there is enough support to pass the measure to define planets.

I'm still behind the first proposal. What seems to be getting in the way here is that many people have a preset notion of what a planet should be and shouldn't be, and they are trying to fit the wide variety of stuff orbiting our sun into those categories. They should let the physics decide - Ceres isn't going to be any more or less interesting if it is a "planet" instead of an "asteroid." The thingness of an object doesn't change because it's name does.

I'm still trying to figure out why this whole issue seems to matter so much to some folks. It will all end in tears.*

Update: It seems like they will be going with the "most dominant body" proposal, so Pluto will no longer be a planet. I don't care much as long as they settle on a definition. The actual vote is Thursday, and we should have the final language of the proposal then. Like you care. :^)

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As an aside, one of the guys from my college dorm** (Doug Clowe was a year behind me, I think) just proved that dark matters exists. What have I done? Nothing that gets me on CNN's web page.

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* I'm just kidding. I think it's fun.

** Ruddock House!
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