Pluto update

[ciphergoth]

According to the latest news it looks like Pluto may be denied planet status after all. Rah!

One of these things is not like the others:

Comments

[zotz]

One of these things is not like the others:

It's the one in the middle. It's too big and hot.

Why are they insisting on deciding on a definition now? We've only found about three Kuiper belt objects, so why not wait until we have a better idea of their size distribution? Is it really so urgent?

[reddragdiva]

Yes. They expect to find another fifty over the next five or ten years, I think.

[olethros.livejournal.com]

Not sure, but I suspect UB313 has a lot to do with it. If enough people start calling it Xena, I guess it'll be even harder to demote two planets than one. Maybe this would work.

[zotz]

According to a couple of articles I read over the weekend, Xena is the one thing we can be sure it won't be called, as the discoverers have confirmed that they've submitted a proposed name and that it isn't that.

I like the strip. Any chance we could extend it to Mayans?

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Man! Nobody is gonna believe me, but I really did make my earlier comment before I saw the strip!

[vulture23.livejournal.com]

Heh, Nahuatl is such a fun language!

(Though I feel obsessively obligated to point out that we have plenty of named non-planets. And we are already starting to use non-Greco-Roman names, e.g. Sedna and Quaoar. Btw, the story of Sedna is a fascinating one, and I recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in mythology...)

Personally, I don't much care whether Pluto is a planet or not, though I fervently hope that whatever is decided is a logically consistent rule -- that is, if Pluto *is* a planet, then Ceres and UB313 (and probably Sedna and Quaoar) should be as well. I'll only be upset about Pluto being both a planet and a Kuiper belt object if the definition prevents other KBOs (or asteroids) from being planets too. I'm happy with eight planets, or with 12, or 53, but nine planets is a silly number.