Solar System To Have 12 Planets

[Quatrux 4]

Yeah, I saw this on the TV News too and I really found it interesting.. I myself on physics lessons where we had astronomy too was arguing with the teacher that I don't agree that Pluto is a 'real' planet and same with Ceres and the so called 2003 UB313.. I am glad that they, the Astronomers came to such a conclusion, I don't have anything against it.Furthermore, I disagree that this isn't interesting information as said on the previous page, to know what is around us, if you like to live a monotonic life and only know how to use a computer and go to job, then it is alright, but to understand "everything" around us is really great, I mean physics, chemistry, astronomy and especially history - a lot of whom say that this is stupid Well, of course you don't have to get superb deep into it, but the normal basics and a little bit more is good enough to be an intelligent guy.. I used to call art and music stupid, but knowing some basics and history of it, you can have interesting conversations and you don't really get lost among other when they say some kind of a word like: Gothic style Church. I think I got a little of topic.I also think that there is life somewhere out there, but I don't think that I myself will see it, now it seems to impossible to reach the nearest star even if traveling by the speed of light and besides, the aliens can be little organisms and not as smart/intelligent as we, the humans..

[Green Tea 0]

WOAH. So wouldn't that mean every single textbook we've ever read in school is wrong? I just did a presentation on Pluto for my school's science class. It feels sort of weird now though because I could have done nothing.

[Demonhawk 0]

I think it is a very strange thing to argue, I mean now theres talk of having 12 planets and then they say Pluto is not a planet and its all very confusing. Honestly I think does it really matter whether its called a planet or not, just as long as we can see what it looks like and still plan missions to these strange objects in outer space and find out if theres life or not on them, who cares if theyre called planets or not!

[Quatrux 4]

There is a similar topic about this announcement, here is the link: http://forums.xisto.com/topic/90930-topic/?findpost=1064353360

I am really "happy" that they made Pluto a drawf planet, it is more logical and I think it is the "right" way to call it.

[Pharoah 0]

Yeah, same deal I talked about only a few days ago on the 12 planet thread. Their wasting their time on semantics defining what is a planet, and not finding out anything new!

[KDEWolf 0]

Did anyone try the "It isn't a planet it's Mickey's dog" joke already? If not here it is. =pI completely agree with you, Pharoah. We should just call them all flying spheres and go find some more, or at least explore the ones we know right now.Sure it's not as nice as before finding new space flying spheres... Now they find them based only on calculations... bah.And Green Tea, school books aren't or weren't 'wrong'. You can just say they just used some old nomenclature, that's all. Calling it X or Y won't change any of it's properties. So your project is now as good as it was before all this superfluous discussion.

[qwijibow 0]

i bet, In 9 years, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reaches pluto, and finds a giant snow man, it will be redesignated a planet !but seriously, I wonder how much time, money and effort was wasted on this.Even in school exams, for the next decade or so, exam markers will be forced to accept pluto as a correct answer to "name a plannet" just to be fair to kids who have been taught otherwise in primary school.wether Pluto is a plannet, or random rock is an argument better suited to drunken scientists, on a night out in the pub.

[mitchellmckain 0]

What do you guys think about this?

Its about time! I was getting really annoyed by all these claims for a tenth planet by people who really did not know the score. Many astronomers had already stopped thinking about Pluto as a planet for quite a while, realizing that it was just one of a whole belt of similar objects. It is just a formal definition that was lacking to make a definitive ruling on many different objects. Ruling the other way was unlikely for it would likely lead to an endlessly increasing list of planets as well as reversing an earlier decision to demote Ceres from the status of planet.

This "rule" from the article defines a planet:"a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

The part that classifies Pluto as, IMO, a useless hunk of ice floating in outer space is "has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." Since Pluto's orbit overlaps Neptune's, it isn't classified as a planet.

Ahhh.. So that's how they rule out Ceres as well, since the presence of the belt of asteroids of which it is a part disqualifies Ceres for the same reason, although most of the mass of the asteroid belt is in this one body.

The definition of dwarf planet does not have this qualification meaning that Pluto and Ceres share the classification as dwarf planets. Although I suppose Pluto and Charon will now be classified as a double dwarf planet.

I am in favor of making the first criterion, "has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape", a requirement for something to be a moon, which would disqualify the two so called moons of Mars, and reduce the numbers of moons for the large planets to more reasonable numbers.

[sparx 0]

Not to nitpick - but you've got a repeated typo in two of your messages - xboxrulz: CORRECT = dwarf INCORRECT=drawf.There's an old dwarf joke about the seven dwarfs all having a bath. They were feeling happy. But happy got out. So they were all feeling grumpy.

[abartar 0]

A week after we are left with 8 planets. Pluto is no more called as a planet. I have all my sympathies with pluto. :DAre we still looking on how to define the planets. Since ages we have been teaching that there exists 9 planets. - A discovery is understandable but removing a planet from the list is not very understandable.

[yordan 10]

Also have a look here, a very important side effect : http://forums.xisto.com/topic/13137-topic/

[pyost 0]

I guess this is the best solution. It was either 8 or 12 planets - and to be honest, Pluto never was a planet. It's only the scientists' fault it wasn't handled earlier. For the last 15 years we new it were smaller, but number 9 wasn't to be changed.Sure, I am sorry this is changed after so many years, but anything for science

[Pharoah 0]

I don't have a problem with 9 planets. They could say there were 36 of them if they wanted (as long as I didn't have to memorize all 36), but I DO have a problem with them not coming to a final conclusion. 4 years ago in science we learned that there were 5 kingdoms of life, then they decided to change that to 3 domains, and 4 kingdoms in the Eukeria one. Now my brother says that they've done away with the domains and they just have 7 kingdoms! How is anyone supposed to learn anything when they're just trying to keep track of all this classification terminology?

[vhortex 1]

I don't have a problem with 9 planets. They could say there were 36 of them if they wanted (as long as I didn't have to memorize all 36), but I DO have a problem with them not coming to a final conclusion. 4 years ago in science we learned that there were 5 kingdoms of life, then they decided to change that to 3 domains, and 4 kingdoms in the Eukeria one. Now my brother says that they've done away with the domains and they just have 7 kingdoms! How is anyone supposed to learn anything when they're just trying to keep track of all this classification terminology?

pain and suffering.. i wanted to be a a doctor once or a bilogist with skills on taxonomy.. i have memories man.. all the kingdoms, phylums and others together with the scientific names.. only to find out that they have replace a lot of scientific names and reorganize the orders and kingdoms...

some of the changes reasons was pure lame.. IMO.. lame.. now about the planets.. i dont care how many then name and how many planets they will add.. just make sure that it wont give conflicts on other studies.. imagine teaching a child that pluto is not a planet and that same child read and was told that it was indeed a planet..

imagine arguing something like this with some folks that do not have direct access to internet and cable media..

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[yordan 10]

I would say this fact is not a real problem.Some tens of years ago, Pluto was discovered and stated being a planet.Now, theres is a slight rectification. Pluto is not simply a planet, it's part of a group of several astronomic objects gravitating around the Sun. More complicated, but very few different from being a planet.Remember the asteroïd group between Mars and Jupiter. They behave as small planets, but are considered being a whole set insteat of being independant objects. This is simply the case now with Pluto.And, be happy. The children will have to learn the name of only eight planets, instead of twelve if all the new objects were considered as Pluto-like planetoïds.