How many planets in the solar system?
The New York Times has had a few articles of late on a meeting of astronomers to attempt to define what makes a planet with Pluto's (and Xena's plus a few others) fate hanging in the balance. Since we have a few astrophysicists around, what are their opinions on the matter?
8 Comments:
I don't really care. Eight, nine, a gazillion, whatever. If pressed on the issue, I'd probably go with eight, since it's not clear where to draw the line between KBOs and planets. But if you actually tried to define a planet in a way that excludes Pluto, all the Pluto-lovers would throw a fit. It doesn't matter one way or another to astronomers.
And here's what the Onion has to say.
-Qian (forgot my login)
Er... there are a couple of obvious astronomy errors in the quotes. But perhaps that's just The Onion being more real than reality. Not many people really know what a light year is.
Why is that good news? Why should we declare that there cannot possibly be 2- or 3-planet systems? There are plenty of binary star systems, after all.
Noooooooooooooo! I am still calling Pluto a planet. It's the cutest planet in the solar system. Dwarf planet sounds cute but you might make Pluto angry and, if I know my mythology, you don't want Pluto to be angry... ;)
This is so silly; it's going to cost a bunch to change lots of elementary to high school textbooks and stuff. It's been a planet for ~70 years; leave it the way it is and move on to doing useful stuff instead of spending time on this. I think it is just a marketing ploy to make astronomy hip again...
And there was much rejoicing in the halls of science textbook publishers. :)
Actually I think they might have been even happier if the other Kuiper Belt objects made it as planets, one at a time, with about 2 years in between each one.
What I want to know is when they'll decide there are really only 25 letters in the English alphabet. After all 'W' is really just two 'U's. There is no reason for it to be its own letter...
(for some reason, the password I set with my blogger account isn't working. oh well.)
Unsurprisingly, the reaction in Tombaughville was in support of retaining planetary status for Pluto.
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