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Thursday, August 24, 2006

 

They are probably voting about Pluto as you read this

Today (Thursday) the IAU will be voting on one of 4 proposals to define what a planet is (at 11:30 pm local time). As Stuart reports, there has been a lot of ahh.. vigorous debate about what constitues a planet. The two key proposals are 5a, which will demote Pluto, and leave us with 8 planets, and 5b, which keeps Pluto as a planet, but promotes Ceres, UB313 and Charon to planets. You can watch the live video here (starting at 11:30 pm CST). As a biologist, I find this somewhat amusing, planetary formation is a continium, at one end we have dust, at the other bodies that just miss out on sustainable fusion. Naturally any attempt to place a lower boundary on what a planet is will be a bit arbitary. Personally, I can't see any reason why we shouldn't have 12 planets (it makes the menomics harder is all). If Mercury, a rock ball a bit bigger than our Moon, is a planet, why not Pluto, and if Pluto, why not UB313. Frankly, I expect it will end in an impasse, as I can't see enough people wanting to demote Pluto, and enough people wanting to promote Ceres.

Comments:
The winner is.....
- The traditional eight are just plain planets (not "classical")
- Pluto is now a dwarf planet
- Ceres is now a dwarf planet
- 2003 UB313 is probably a dwarf planet (didn't catch it)
- a new class of dwarf planets has been created for all those beyond the orbit of Neptune. It wasn't given a name as the proposed name was not accepted.
 
Ian, if you missed the session we have the edited highlights (cut down to only 22 minutes from a good hour and a half) on the Jodcast. Although we chopped out quite a bit, we hope most of the interesting questions and answers are left in.

Editing seems to take forever and I think I now need a good drink.
 
Thanks for that Stuart, I must say I'm a little peeved, I was looking forward to twelve planets.

I've just put up a link to the Jodcast, and emailed as many astrofolks as I can about this, so you might have a bit of traffic in a while. Thanks for all the effort in editing, I chose to go to bed instead. I hope you got tha good drink.
 
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