scientists discover a 10th planet

[Guest]

News Story: http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050729200409990008

This should be interetsing, if it is for real. How many times have we 'discoreved' a tenth planet, only to ignore them?

[Prophet Tenebrae]

They don't classify Pluto as a planet anymore. So really, we're just back up to 9 at best. Although these are somewhat tentative definitions I suppose.

Anyway - that's awful far away.

[hr]

IMAGE:www.btinternet.com/~brother.war/white10-2.gif

[Duggeh]

this already happened with planet Quaoar.

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~chad/quaoar/

[hr]

IMAGE:www.macintyre42.plus.com/images/tubular100.jpg
[hr]Duggeh: Master Of Ceremonies
[s]http://www.maxeh.co.uk [The Music Community][/s]
[s]http://www.macintyre42.plus.com [Projects Home][/s]

[Melkor]

It also happened with Sedna last year or the year before, but in this case things are different. For once, the minimum size of the object is larger than pluto. So unless they have made a mistake, it does look like it could be a 10th 'planet'. (unless there is some mistake of course)

Prophet Tenebrae: as far as I am concerned, there is no official rule saying that pluto is not a planet anymore (if I'm wrong correct me).

It's very difficult to specify a 'limit' below which an object is not a planet. It works the same way for very large planets, where there is no clear limit as to when we should call an object a planet or a brown dwarf...

Pluto is not unique, that is for sure. I vote for not calling pluto and the new object planets, and we can return to the pre-1930 8 planet solar system...

Quoting Duggeh from 22:10, 31st Jul 2005
this already happened with planet Quaoar.

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~chad/quaoar/

[hr]

IMAGE:www.macintyre42.plus.com/images/tubular100.jpg
[hr]Duggeh: Master Of Ceremonies
[s]http://www.maxeh.co.uk [The Music Community][/s]
[s]http://www.macintyre42.plus.com [Projects Home][/s]

[Prophet Tenebrae]

Stephen Fry said on QI it wasn't - that's enough for me!

But yes, as I said - it's not exactly a clear limit. Maybe someone ought to just draw up arbitary rules as to the size of a planet.

[hr]

IMAGE:www.btinternet.com/~brother.war/white10-2.gif

[Colin]

Firstly, I work in planetary science, so the following rant is reasonably well informed and representative of the opinions of my colleagues.

This 'planet' has been announced by the same people who found Sedna, and yet again it has appeared as a press release with an attention grabbing title, before they know the details. With Sedna they circumvented the usual naming process by putting 'Sedna' all over the press and forcing the IAU's hand. They also claimed Sedna to be the 'first Oort cloud object discovered' - which is not certain. Here they do not know the size; granted, it is clearly a big object and a good discovery, but to say it is a new planet when there is still a debate on what is classified as a planet is premature at best. Their webpage saying 'we have proposed a name and will announce it when accepted' is also very presumptious. Discoverers have the right to propose names for asteroids, but if they want to have this designated a planet, then the name will have to be chosen by the astronomical community as a whole.

But most annoying is the fact that this is typical of the increasingly common habit of publication by press release, which is affecting all areas of science, and completely disregards the idea of peer review. If you have the TV news report that you have discovered a 10th planet, but it then turns out that you are in error, will the TV report a less interesting result once it is published? No. And despite the fact that they shouldn't be, funding bodies are influenced by the media interest in results, and so people play this game. It has become very common, especially among American scientists, and is spreading as everyone else realises the only way to keep up is to play the game.


Oh, and as I said, the debate on what counts as a planet is ongoing, but I think that the conclusion most people came to was that Pluto still counts, for purely historical reasons; why demote it and cause the textbooks to be wrong? But as we are finding more and more objects in the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, to which Pluto and this new object belong, the idea was that the rest of them are unlikely to be classified as planets. Of course, this new one is big, so it will no doubt re-ignite the debate. There happens to be a meeting of the planetary science community next week, for one of its biggest international conferences, so we shall see what the consensus of opinion is.

[Pender Native]

Daddy......what's an Oort cloud?

[hr]

"I have seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces,
And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,
So I trust, too."

[Haunted]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Oort ... _orbit.jpg

[Colin]

Good link, Chippy. Demonstrates very well why it was a bit of a leap to call Sedna an Oort cloud object - it is distant, but not that distant.

The Oort cloud is a shell of little bits of ice and rock that surrounds the solar system at really stupidly large distance. It is where comets like Hale-Bopp (the most recent great comet) come from.

[Pan]

What are they calling this new planet? I heard a rumour it was gonna be Xena.....

[hr]

"Last time you gave me a pie, I cut into it, and birds flew out of it, hitting me in the face and chin. I was confused. It was a trick pie"

[Gubbins]

Quoting Pan from 16:37, 1st Aug 2005
What are they calling this new planet? I heard a rumour it was gonna be Xena.....

They ARE calling it 2003 UB313, as it was discovered towards the end (can't remember which month U corresponds to) of 2003.

What they will call it will be decided by the International Astronomical Union. The discovers can propose a name, which by-and-large usually gets accepted for asteroids these days... so long as it isn't "Georgebushisanarse" or something like that. They tend to be mythological, but they've rather run out of mythological names after 40000-odd of them.

[hr]

...but then again, that is only my opinion.

[Colin]

Quoting Gubbins from 16:42, 1st Aug 2005

Quoting Pan from 16:37, 1st Aug 2005
What are they calling this new planet? I heard a rumour it was gonna be Xena.....

They ARE calling it 2003 UB313, as it was discovered towards the end (can't remember which month U corresponds to) of 2003.

What they will call it will be decided by the International Astronomical Union. The discovers can propose a name, which by-and-large usually gets accepted for asteroids these days... so long as it isn't "Georgebushisanarse" or something like that. They tend to be mythological, but they've rather run out of mythological names after 40000-odd of them.

The issue being that if they want to call it a planet, the asteroid naming rules probably shouldn't apply. Otherwise they can, in theory, name it after themselves, which is OK for asteroids but probably not appropriate for a planet.

Memo to self - discover an asteroid to call Georgebushisanarse.

[Prophet Tenebrae]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4737647.stm

[hr]

IMAGE:www.btinternet.com/~brother.war/white10-2.gif