Pluto Planet Status

[vger]

Is Jupiter a star?

.... Dwarf star?

[Hagen von Tronje]

What I find particularly odd is the very next decision made AFTER downgrading Pluto, was to say that Dwarf Planets aren't any kind of Planet.

Why a name like "Dwarf Planet" when it isn't even recognized as a sub-class of a Planet?

Because astronomers rely in large part on public funding and issuing a press release laden with very precise jargon almost certainly does not bring in the funding dollars.

If you want a real travesty of terminology, try figuring out why we still use herpetology to cover reptiles and amphibians, but not birds (hint: it's actually because bird lovers hate us dirty herpers ).

[Mr Shifty]

If you want a real travesty of terminology, try figuring out why we still use herpetology to cover reptiles and amphibians, but not birds (hint: it's actually because bird lovers hate us dirty herpers ).

I suspect it's far more because it wasn't obvious until very recently that birds should be included in that clade: no other living reptile has feathers or an endothermic metabolism or can fly.

[Hagen von Tronje]

I suspect it's far more because it wasn't obvious until very recently that birds should be included in that clade: no other living reptile has feathers or an endothermic metabolism or can fly.

Archaeopteryx has been known for a century and a half. Even without detailed cladistics, it's been obvious that birds evolved from dinosaurs for basically as long as we've known about evolution.

I was only half kidding, by the way. The real reason almost certainly is due to very mundane human interests, or so I've heard from good authority.

[windows_x_seven]

Planet Pluto = Pluto.

Dwarf Planet Pluto = Pluto.

You see, it doesn't matter if we label Pluto a planet or a dwarf planet. It'll still be Pluto.

[UmbralRaptor]

Because astronomers rely in large part on public funding and issuing a press release laden with very precise jargon almost certainly does not bring in the funding dollars.

The endless releases about water on Mars, extrasolar Earth twins, etc. get annoying after a while though. And they distract from the cool weird things we find.

[fredinno]

My mistake, ok?

[BagelRabbit]

This... um... this pretty much sums it up in my opinion. (Drawing by me, pardon the poor quality )

[Albert VDS]

What I find particularly odd is the very next decision made AFTER downgrading Pluto, was to say that Dwarf Planets aren't any kind of Planet.

Why a name like "Dwarf Planet" when it isn't even recognized as a sub-class of a Planet?

The reasoning behind that, at least that's what I think, is to give the pro-Pluto-planet camp some sort of consolation.

They should have just used plutoid instead of dwarf-planet. I know Pluto is a plutoid, but that's only because it's an icy tran-Neptunian dwarf-planet.

It would have been easier to sell to Pluto fans if it was brought like this: "Pluto isn't a planet any more, instead it's a plutoid. The king among likely classified objects in the universe."

[Hagen von Tronje]

The endless releases about water on Mars, extrasolar Earth twins, etc. get annoying after a while though. And they distract from the cool weird things we find.

I'm with you there. It's that way with a lot of sciences unfortunately, things get a ridiculous dressing of buzzwords and misleading headlines (is a planet with double earth's mass and surface temps comparable to Mercury or even Venus really earth's identical twin?) so that even things that really are interesting get obfuscated and you suspect every headline is 75% BS. Remember when the Higgs Boson was detected and nobody could shut up with the "god particle" nonsense, to the point that people thought this actually had something to do with religious concepts?

But that's sadly what brings the money, is it not?

[HafCoJoe]

This... um... this pretty much sums it up in my opinion. (Drawing by me, pardon the poor quality )

http://i.imgur.com/T3HPUQi.png

LOLOLOL please post that on Imgur I want to see it go to the front page! XD

[Bill Phil]

Archaeopteryx has been known for a century and a half. Even without detailed cladistics, it's been obvious that birds evolved from dinosaurs for basically as long as we've known about evolution.

I was only half kidding, by the way. The real reason almost certainly is due to very mundane human interests, or so I've heard from good authority.

I thought birds were in th clade Dinosauria?

[Hagen von Tronje]

I thought birds were in th clade Dinosauria?

It's complicated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archosaur

Cladistic taxonomy and Linnaean taxonomy for this entire group are ludicrously at odds. Reptiles as popularly defined (squamates, crocodilians, chelonians, tuataras) really have no business being grouped together. Turns out "it has scales" isn't the greatest diagnostic.

[Shpaget]

Is Jupiter a star?

Well, yeah.

Earlier in this thread, we've established that, etymologically, planets are wandering stars, so Jupiter is a star, right?

[vger]

Because astronomers rely in large part on public funding and issuing a press release laden with very precise jargon almost certainly does not bring in the funding dollars.

I'm just saying that if I decided something wasn't a planet, I wouldn't give it a technical name that had 'planet' in it. Neither Dwarf Planet nor Minor Planet makes much sense for a non-planet. Just come up with something new. The etymology of "Planetoid" ("Sorta like but not quite a planet") makes much better sense than "Dwarf Planet" ("Little Planet"), but nobody ever seems to use it.

[Albert VDS]

The etymology of "Planetoid" ("Sorta like but not quite a planet") makes much better sense than "Dwarf Planet" ("Little Planet"), but nobody ever seems to use it.

Planetoid is the name for a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, some languages even use planetoid(or something similar to it) for asteroids.

[Voyager275]

Well, yeah.

Earlier in this thread, we've established that, etymologically, planets are wandering stars, so Jupiter is a star, right?

That question has actually caused some debates on what a star technically is

Edited August 26, 2015 by Voyager275