I just went to http://www.livescience.com/blogs/200...and-kill-xena/ which is linked from there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Samuraid
That was a great read. I particularly like the comments made by smeyers, wolvsden and Dave Brody, who made the following thoughts:
- Minor Planets? Dwarf Planets? Seems like we’d be virtually guaranteeing the discovery of a really big KPO. Then where would we be? Giant Dwarf Planet? Major Minor? Argh. ~smeyer, pointing out that we could end up finding more planets larger than Earth in the Kuiper Belt, so no matter what we say we could well end up with a large amount of planets anyway, so there's no need to be picky purely out of a desire to want to keep it to a simple memorable number.
- Now, I agree with the point raised by Britt (and others) about quantity — it wouldn’t be sensible to mandate schoolchildren commit a tedious list of bodies to memory. However, couldn’t we just add a line of demarcation somewhere in the solar system (a “local group” on a micro level)? What about an informal “nine historical planets” reflecting the current list, balanced with a proper classification scheme (when devised)? ~wolvsden, pointing out that we have no trouble saying that our galaxy is part of the cluster which is known as the Local Group (over 30 galaxies) which is in turn part of the supercluster Virgo Supercluster (a body full of clusters). We will eventually have to concede that there are inner planets and outer planets and that the outer planets are a lot further than Jupiter, Neptune and the like - they're in the belt. Those are the real outer planets.
- The taxonomy of stuff in the universe has been about where stuff was and where it’s going. That we see this stuff in the snapshot of time that is a human life is our handicap. The Universe doesn’t see it that way. And it doesn’t care. If short-lived human scientists waste time concocting arbitrary definitions THAT ARE SURE TO CHANGE, they risk losing the tenuous connection that non-scientists (most of us) have to the most important work humans can do: the pursuit of understanding what that universe is all about (“science”). Because that is what binds us together in a way that has allowed us to prosper exceptionally well. ~Dave Brody making the excellent point that we are so young in our understanding of our own solar system, let alone our galaxy or universe, that we have yet to reach the point of mind where we can know just what we're dealing with - hence we will have to accept that no matter what we decide, we'll have to respect that we're basing it only on what we know, and what we know is little - we might end up saying that Pluto is a planet and then find out that there are 500 other planets. We might end up taking Pluto out of the picture but still finding out there are 500 other planets, and then we'd all look really dumb. :p
