you didn't think it was over, did you?
by John at 8/25/2006 10:09:00 PM
The issue of what is a planet and what isn't still hasn't been settled in a meaningful way.
On Thursday, when IAU members voted to define "planet" and consequently demote Pluto, it seems that less than 5% of the total membership of the IAU was allowed to vote. No email votes were allowed, so only the conference attendees were able to vote - this sounds like something far less than a quorum to me! The IAU has no method of actually enforcing the use of the new definition, so as a practical matter it is necessary for a majority of astronomers to actually support it. If there is not a substantial majority support for the definition among the non-voting members, then the definition is moot.
Even worse, the scientists pushing for the part about a planet being the dominant body in it's local area may have goofed up when they decided to define dominant and local area as "cleared the neighborhood around it's orbit." That because Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune, by some criteria, have not cleared their orbits of other bodies. There are, for instance, thousands of near Earth asteroids that cross the Earth's orbit, and the other three all have Trojan asteroids that actually share the same orbit as the planet. So, there may now only be four planets in our solar system. I hate to say I told you so, but I did mention that this could be a problem. The first proposal was better.
On Thursday, when IAU members voted to define "planet" and consequently demote Pluto, it seems that less than 5% of the total membership of the IAU was allowed to vote. No email votes were allowed, so only the conference attendees were able to vote - this sounds like something far less than a quorum to me! The IAU has no method of actually enforcing the use of the new definition, so as a practical matter it is necessary for a majority of astronomers to actually support it. If there is not a substantial majority support for the definition among the non-voting members, then the definition is moot.
Even worse, the scientists pushing for the part about a planet being the dominant body in it's local area may have goofed up when they decided to define dominant and local area as "cleared the neighborhood around it's orbit." That because Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune, by some criteria, have not cleared their orbits of other bodies. There are, for instance, thousands of near Earth asteroids that cross the Earth's orbit, and the other three all have Trojan asteroids that actually share the same orbit as the planet. So, there may now only be four planets in our solar system. I hate to say I told you so, but I did mention that this could be a problem. The first proposal was better.
