p2pnet - rss feed: Pluto ‘dwarf’ vote ‘embarrassing’
p2pnet.net OT News:- Astronomers have demoted Pluto, only discovered in 1930, to ‘dwarf planet’ status, but, “the lead scientist on Nasa’s robotic mission to Pluto has lambasted the ruling, calling it ‘embarrassing’,” says the BBC.
“And the chair of the committee set up to oversee agreement on a definition implied that the vote had effectively been ‘hijacked’.”
No big deal? Big deal. The decision will have a huge rebound effect and will also put dents in a great many bottom lines.
Planetariums everywhere, and their gift shops, will have to adjust, and so too will astronomy textbook writers and the people who manufacture those little models of the solar system, The San Francisco Chronicle points out.
By way of example, “We’ll have to do a little bit of tweaking,” it has Etta Herber, director of programs for the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, which has a wing devoted to the planets orbiting the sun, stating.
Pluto was still there Thursday afternoon, “at the back of the room and mostly ignored by kids at the center in favor of Jupiter, Mars and Saturn,” says the story, but it might not stay.
“I don’t have a definitive answer yet,” says Herber. “We’ll probably go through our own debate on how to present this to the public.”
Pluto’s demotion, “came as a result of the IAU’s (International Astronomical Union) newly minted definition of ‘planet’,” explains The Vancouver Sun, continuing, “There wasn’t really an old definition, though - the word ‘planet,’ from the Greek planetes, simply means ‘wanderer,’ as ancient astronomers noticed that certain lights move across the sky.)
“In any case, in order to qualify as a planet, the new definition requires that a celestial body orbit the Sun, have sufficient mass such that it assumes a roughly round shape, and it must have cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. Pluto fails to satisfy the last criterion, since, for about 20 years of its 248-year orbit, it crosses that of its giant neighbour Neptune.”
Pluto is the only planet not yet visited by spacecraft, says a site devoted to Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered it.
But, “While Pluto may be smallest planet in the solar system, it is certainly one of the most interesting and intriguing worlds,” it says.
Of the discovery, “Late in the afternoon of February 18, 1930, 24-year-old Clyde Tombaugh sat in a laboratory room at the Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona,” says the Kansas State Historical Society. “For hours, he had been gazing into the eyepiece of a Zeiss Blink Microscope at photographic images of a star field, taken several hours apart.
“Suddenly the monotony was broken when his attention was caught by one of the millions of minute specks of lights whose image had moved slightly between one photograph and the next. He checked and rechecked his photographs for 45 minutes before calling his supervisors, who confirmed that Clyde Tombaugh, a farm boy from Burdette, Kansas, with nothing but a high school education had indeed discovered the ninth and most removed planet in the solar system, christened Pluto for the God of Darkness. Tombaugh went from being an anonymous planet hunter to an internationally famous astronomer over night.”
And of Pluto’s alleged hi-jacking?
The vote took place at the IAU’s 10-day General Assembly in Prague, says the BBC, but, “Only 424 astronomers who remained in Prague for the last day of the meeting took part.”
Also See:
BBC - Pluto vote ‘hijacked’ in revolt, August 25, 2006
The San Francisco Chronicle - BA cosmic shakeup, August 25, 2006
The Vancouver Sun - Pluto still has its bright side, August 25, 2006
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