I was away for a week for the Chess Moves II Cruise to Alaska and a planet was booted. Now it is down to just 8. Imagine what would happen if I was gone for a month 🙂
Astronomers Give Pluto the Boot as Planet
By WILLIAM J. KOLE, AP
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (Aug. 25) – Pluto, beloved by some as a cosmic underdog but scorned by astronomers who considered it too dinky and distant, was unceremoniously stripped of its status as a planet Thursday.
The International Astronomical Union, dramatically reversing course just a week after floating the idea of reaffirming Pluto’s planethood and adding three new planets to Earth’s neighborhood, downgraded the ninth rock from the sun in historic new galactic guidelines.
Powerful new telescopes, experts said, are changing the way they size up the mysteries of the solar system and beyond. But the scientists showed a soft side, waving plush toys of the Walt Disney character – and insisting that Pluto’s spirit will live on in the exciting discoveries yet to come.
“The word ‘planet’ and the idea of planets can be emotional because they’re something we learn as children,” said Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped hammer out the new definition.
“This is really all about science, which is all about getting new facts,” he said. “Science has marched on. … Many more Plutos wait to be discovered.”
Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn’t meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must “clear the neighborhood around its orbit.” That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune’s, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine.
The rest can be read here.
What would Disney do now? Should they change the name of their beloved character Pluto? I am sure the chess community would be happy to lend Pluto a cool chess name like Champion? 🙂
Not sure why some people are so up in arms about this. I’ve always been an astronomy buff since I can remember. For those 25+ years, whenever I read about Pluto they always made sure to note that it really isn’t a planet. The biggest reason why is that it doesn’t even have an orbit on the same plane as the other 8 planets. Not to mention that it’s orbit actully falls within Neptune’s at times. So anyway, Pluto is still Pluto, regardless of how you classify it.
In chess terms, this seems to me to be like a debate as to whether Adolf Anderssen should have the title of World Champion or not.
Here
is a recent astronomical result that changes our understanding of how the universe works. Wouldn’t it be nice if that was getting front-page newspaper coverage everywhere?
Yes, stay away for a month and you will come back to find yourself a WFM.
The Grandmaster title is conferred for life, anonymous (August 26, 5:40), so there is little danger of Susan being demoted, even if you leave her excellent recent history out of account.
cels
RSA
Yeah, right, Pluto thought he was a Planet for life too.
I take great satisfaction in the fact that the world’s astronomers finally admitted that Gustav Holst was right after all!
I used to be a more active Astronomy Fan, but I am not happy with the demotion of Pluto. Nothing I can do about it. But I always liked having Pluto way out there.
Being in the same plane and crossing an orbit really should have nothing to do with being a planet. Pluto is big and goes around the sun. good enough for me. I was hoping to see the other ones be included as planets.
What will we do when we get to other star systems and find planets rotating in different planes. the definition is arbitrary.
Susan I do hope you will eliminate the snide remarks from anonymous posters.
Anonymous (linking the Dark-Space article), as T.S. points out in response 128 to your linked dark-matter, dark-space article:
“…After thinking about it, I think that the early part of the animation is qualitatively incorrect, and that the wrong part is more important than just a ‘fine detail’, and that a correct animation sequence would look somewhat like the image I put on the web at
http://idisk.mac.com/sm17h-Public/animbull.jpg
in which purple is a combination of Dark Matter and Hot Gas, blue is Dark Matter, and red is collision/shockwave concentrated Hot Gas.
The image is very crude but I hope it makes the idea clear.
If I happen to be correct that the early part of the mpeg [Dark-Matter] animation is qualitatively wrong, then I wonder how it got made that way. Was there a failure of communication between astrophysicists and PR animation illustrators ?
Since the animation is an important part of the media message sent to the public by the ‘media advisory’ and “media teleconference” it seems to me to be important that it be qualitatively correct.”
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More reason to accept the time-state-space-mass transfer TOE.
I am willing to bet no one at that conference even knew you were missing. The planetary status of pluto was being debated before you were even born.