Search and Replace
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are you ok with .. with calling it the STANLEY-BROWN astronomy nomenclature... a subset of rfc2616.
Yours truly,
Edward W. Stanley
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oh... I hate it when that happens... the browser ate my post...
satellites don't classify as smallsolarobjects, so, I think we actually need.
moon.naturallyoccuring.satellite.earth.mostlyharmless.planet.solarsystem.unfashionable.arm.milkyway.spiral.galaxy.cluster.universe.multiverst.fnord.42
or to get a bit back towards topic... I don't think the definition of planet should make exceptions... either bring back pluto, or do the accurate
neptune.dwarf.planet.solarsystem.unfashionable.arm.milkyway.spiral.galaxy.cluster.universe.multiverse.fnord.42
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that works... Stanley-Brown Astronomy nomenclature it is... (I'm becoming very tempted to throw up a website for this... who wants to start a project to classify 'everything' <kof>
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moon.naturallyoccuring.satellite.earth.mostlyharmless.planet.solarsystem.unfashionable.arm.milkyway.spiral.galaxy.cluster.universe.multiverst.fnord.42.
moon.naturallyoccuring.satellite.earth.mostlyharmless.planet.solarsystem.small.arm.milkyway.spiral.galaxy.medium.cluster.large.universe.multiverst.fnord.42.deity.chucknorris
and i'm down with that... let me know how you think we should oraganize it... domain names in mind...
hmmm.
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I don't consider it extremely scientific when the members have to vote on the matter! Is the earth flat - let's take a vote! Is water wet - let's take a vote!
Pluto shall always be a planet in my heart (and not some silly dwarf planet).
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white is black, good is evil, Tom Baker is the only Dr. Who, Hal Jordon is the only Green Lantern, and pluto according to the Stanley-Brown astronomy nomenclature is a type of planet.
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you go with mostlyharmless, but not unfashionable? you should be ashamed of yourself...
is the term for our cluster medium? I wasn't sure how galaxy clusters were defined, so I left that chunk out...
I have my domain, and a server sitting at home looking for something to do... but, if I actually put some programming effort into a classification system, I think I'd rather be atleast kind-of serious about it... (IE: I think most people would glance over the fnord, and 42 for undefineables... but diety, and chucknorris would cost us any credibility we attempted to have... )
the really sad thing is I'm completely serious... I could probably go home tonight, and whip together a framework tree system in a few min... the fun part would be trying to fill everything in starting from 42.fnord
onward... and of course, the necessary search function so you could query an item, and get it's fully qualified name... -
The term "planet" seems to me to be more a social definition than a scientific one. Everyone has their opinion of which objects should be classified as planets, and lobby to phrase the definition such that their favorite objects are included, and the rest are excluded.
Geologically speaking, Mercury through Mars have so much more in common with the newly-defined Dwarf Planets (Pluto, Charon, Ceres, and Xena) than they do with the Gas Giants. And yet the classification.
Items #1 and #2 seem to be simple, logical boundaries that clearly delineate one type of object from another. Item #3 seems to be nothing more than an arbitrary boundary intended to exclude the Dwarf Planets, for socially popular reasons (I don't want to have 12 planets in the solar system, etc.). And they didn't even get that right, since they have to add a footnote which overrides this item, for at least two of the "planets". Others have mentioned Neptune/Pluto. Jupiter is another, which has not cleared it's orbit of the Trojan Asteroids.
Personally, I think "planet" was a useless term before the Definition, and is a mostly useless term afterwards. They could have done so much better.
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I was kidding... about the diety and chuck norris... but society allways needs to feel there is something bigger out there either trying to kill us or save us.... i like the 42 though....
i'm serious as well ... the mostlyharmless.. fits nicely for places where humanity can exist conveinently.. the unfashionable... nvm .. its good too.... but including the possibilty that communcation problems are the issue... and the benefit of that saves us from really bad tv shows from other galaxies or vogon poetry readings... again jsut kidding... but the organizational structure is fundimentally sound...
i'm thinking tables for each and some session variables and a post to parse the data... also allow users not wikistyle but standard asp vote for classifications and objects can get moved.... up or around the structure....
oddly... http://www.mostlyharmless.com is available... check your private messages..
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and I was joking about the unfashionable. more likely a numeric designation, or quadrant designation would be better. it just fit well
unluckily I think we'll need atleast one quote of vogon poetry in order to make the site complete...
I'll need to put some thought into how to handle voting for classification. on the upper levels it will work well, but when we start getting below the planet level, particularly into the more mundane items without scientific backing for where it should go... things could get ugly (ref : alt.alien.vampires.flonk.flonk.flonk )
I'm thinking some combination of voting, and planning committee...
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I've been following this debate for a few years. I can see the logic on both sides, but when all is said & done, I come down on the side of leaving Pluto as a planet for historical reasons. 76 years is a long time.
There is a precedent for what's been done to Pluto. The asteroid Ceres (nearly as big a Pluto) was originally termed a planet after its discovery. It was demoted when it became clear that there was a whole swarm of asteroids in the same region of space.
The thing is, this happened after just a few years, so nobody gets worked up about it. 76 years is different. Seems to me Pluto ought to be "grandfathered."
Hmm, don't see an editing function for "quotes" so I'll indent them....
The one question that remains for me, I was taught that Pluto was "discovered" initially as a mathematic anomoly when studying planetary orbits & such. Does the development/discovery of the Kuiper Belt show that math as wrong?
Pluto was discovered while looking for a outer planet that would explain some anomalous motions of Uranus and/or Neptune. However, Pluto was nowhere big enough for that -- it just happened to be in the "right" place at the right time. I believe I recall reading that the "anomaly" was eventually explained another way -- it might even have been an error in the first place.
section C states that for an object to be considered a planet, it must "has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit." This excludes Neptune from being a planet
Yeah, strange. An earlier draft apparently read it must "be the dominant body in its population zone," which it seems would be better wording.
Neptune basically hasn't had enough time to eliminate Pluto, since close encounters between them are fantastically rare -- and may not even qualify as very "close" anyway.
"has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit."..... thats somewhat vague....
Not very vague to an astronomer, who is thinking of how planets gravitationally influence nearby bodies, eventually either capturing, smashing, or ejecting them from the area.
Would they agree that saying "Pluto is not a planet" is technically incorrect, since it is a kind of planet according to their definition ("dwarf planet")?
"Dwarf planet" is specifically defined to be not a subset, but a separate category. Similar to the official term historically used for asteroids ("minor planet"). A competing proposal that would allow for a planet subset failed.
P.S. Note that "Xena" is just a temporary nickname for the recently-discovered "10th planet" which essentially forced the issue of astronomers having to come up with a REAL definition of "planet." With our current state of knowledge, nobody wanted to call Xena (bigger than Pluto) and Ceres planets; hence the debate coming to a head. The International Astronomical Union only meets every 3 years, and they figured they'd look silly if they couldn't come up with a definition this time around.
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The main problem I have with 'the cleared out part' is that assumption that we know every single object that exists in our solar system. and how does clearing out a path define planetary 'only' behaviour... while at the same time calling it a dwarf planet...
and being afraid of looking silly is not a good excuse for bad science... i think civilization can handle it... while what we can't handle is a science that can't admit it doesn't know, or that it does not have the vocabulary to describe its own organizational structure... it creates a shift toward astrology rather than astronomy... once you start trying to mislead or make hasty decisions because of time contraints...
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how does clearing out a path define planetary 'only' behaviour
Because only a planet will be big enough to do that. That means it has enough significance, on a solar system scale, to merit special designation.
And of course there will always be a few rocks floating around, but the idea here is to be cleared of all except insignificant or companion objects -- you can look at your living room and determine whether or not it's "clean" without cataloguing every speck of dust.
P.S. Sure wish someone would clue me on where to find that "quote" button -- the system seems to have changed since the last time I posted here.
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Top right corner of every post...... near pluto...
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Again with the mixed metaphors... but previous women in my life and I have had quite the disagreement about the clean status of the living room... my typical response ... "whats the score on the hockey game"...
the astronomers were hedging their bets.... in theory.. it could be possible that two objects could exist in the same path just on opposite sides of the same orbit... not likely but they could be huge the size of saturn.... and there is nothing that stops it in any physics you like from happening...
not likely... but possible.. just as pluto and neptune never 'crossed' paths.. they would stop being planets...?
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