13 Responses to “Pluto is a planet in Illinois”

1. SamW, on March 6th, 2009 at 10:02 am Said:

   Why do people get soooo worked up about the Pluto thing? I get worked up over plenty of insignificant stuff, but I just can’t see it in this case.

2. gianluca baccanico, on March 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm Said:

   I salute the great state of illinois

   as we pluto’s friends say

   size doesn t matter !

3. Austin Web Guy, on March 6th, 2009 at 1:06 pm Said:

   This is hilarious, Pluto is a dwarf planet. We currently know of 44 dwarf planets so far,and we will find hundreds if not thousands more.

4. gianluca baccanico, on March 6th, 2009 at 1:14 pm Said:

   web guyI
   I disagree
   if we’ve find him (it ?) first
   there must be a reason
   have you guy no emetions at all ?
   com on
   Pluto has been a committed planet so far
   we own him recognition

5. Laurel Kornfeld, on March 7th, 2009 at 2:13 am Said:

   The Illinois legislature has way more sense than the International Astronomical Union has shown in two-and-a-half years. It’s the IAU who have acted like idiots, with one tiny group forcing a nonsensical planet definition on everyone. The truth is there is NO scientific consensus that Pluto is not a planet. The criterion requiring that a planet “clear the neighborhood of its orbit” is not only controversial; it’s so vague as to be meaningless. Only four percent of the IAU even voted on this, and the vote was driven by internal politics. A small group, most of whom are not planetary scientists, wanted to arbitrarily limit the number of planets to only the largest bodies in the solar system. They held their vote on the last day of a two-week conference with no absentee voting allowed. Their decision was immediately opposed by hundreds of professional astronomers in a formal petition led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto.

   And the definition created by the IAU makes no sense, as it states that dwarf planets are not planets at all!

   Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader definition of planet that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body orbiting a star. The spherical part is key because when objects become large enough, they are shaped by gravity, which pulls them into a round shape, rather than by chemical bonds. This is true of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and comets. And yes, it does make Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake planets as well, for a total of 13 planets in our solar system.

   Even now, many astronomers and lay people are working to overturn the IAU demotion or are ignoring it altogether. Kudos to the Illinois Senate for standing up to this closed, out of touch organization whose leadership thinks they can just issue a decree and change reality.

6. Lee, on March 7th, 2009 at 8:16 am Said:

   Pluto’s status should be protected by some sort of astronomical grandfather clause.

   Interesting that our notions of the planets and the solar system are as much cultural as they are scientific. Taking Pluto away is a bit like unilaterally changing a symbol like the anthem or the flag.

   And how does the mythic god of the underworld feel about that?

7. davidw, on March 7th, 2009 at 9:06 am Said:

   Laurel, I agree with your critique of the arbitrariness of the IAU’s decision. But why do we care about bodies with enough mass to round themselves? We can slice the world up along the axis of any attribute or property — objects with water, objects spinning left or spinning right, objects that are smooth, objects with magnetic cores, objects that wobble, on to an indefinite etcetera — and they are _all_ arbitrary _unless_ we have a reason to be interested in that attribute. So, when there’s an argument about how to slice up the universe, the first question is always: What’s at stake? Why is it interesting to slice that way? And once we know that, we can argue about whether any particular object meets the criteria for that particular attribute. (I agree with your criticism of the vagueness of the “clears its orbit” criterion.)

   So, I understand and agree with your critique of the IAU. But doesn’t it apply to the Illinois legislature, which thinks politicians can resolve scientific disputes by vote?

   And ignoring Illinois, why argue over giving category of round objects orbiting stars a special name, whereas we don’t worry about whether bodies with volcanic activity have their own name, or bodies with craters, etc. What’s at stake in terms of science?

   (BTW, my book “Everything Is Miscellaneous” touches on these issues.)

8. Raymond Harrison, on March 7th, 2009 at 1:06 pm Said:

   Richard Tarnas, Harvard graduate, philosopher,and author of – The Passion of the Western Mind, has written a book entitled – Cosmos and Psyche, which explains the archetypal significance of Pluto’s discovery in 1930. Pluto, god of the underworld, embodies ” the powerful forces of nature emerging from nature’s chthonic depths (99).” ( Freudian Id, Nietzschean Dionysus, the splitting of the atom and the “unleashing of nuclear power”, the rise of fascism, modern technological warfare, the holocaust, ecological devastation, etc.) Of course you must accept his premise that the discovery of Pluto at a specific time reflects the archetypal constellations present in the human history of that time.

9. Lee, on March 7th, 2009 at 5:18 pm Said:

   “The Passion of the Western Mind” was a great read. I hadn’t heard of Tarnas’ other one though.

10. Stu Rubinow, on March 7th, 2009 at 6:34 pm Said:

    No one has yet mentioned the sad implications for mnemonics. Without Pluto we lose the excellent one for remembering the planets in order of distance from the sun: My Very Enthusiastic Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets. Now we’re left with the feeble “my very enervated mother just showed us…nothing”

11. Lee, on March 8th, 2009 at 8:50 am Said:

    “Astronomers declare February no longer a month”
    (Discover Magazine blog)
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/03/07/astronomers-declare-february-no-longer-a-month/

12. Get A Trip, on June 18th, 2009 at 1:29 am Said:

    Politicians, gotta love ‘em. I mean who cares what NASA says anyways-right?

13. Laurel Kornfeld, on June 18th, 2009 at 12:23 pm Said:

    Don’t blame NASA. It wasn’t NASA that demoted Pluto; it was the IAU–well, four percent of them, anyway.

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