The celestial fraud

National Post ^ | 2006-08-18 | (editorial page)

[The Sons of Liberty]

When you wake up tomorrow, is it really going to make a difference whether some group of geeks say we have eight "planets", nine planets or twelve planets?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Ceres made the cut as a planet when it was first found on the first day of the Nineteenth Century by a Sicilian Monk. It was named for Ceres, the goddess of grain and the harvest and the patroness of Sicily.

Ceres plays an interesting role in the history of astronomy and mathematics. Determination of her orbit by Gauss was one the first and most spectacular applications of the method of least squares, vaulting the young German mathematician to forefront of the applied mathematics and popularizing least squares.

When hundreds of other main belt asteroids were discovered in similar orbits, it was decided that they all couldn't be planets and so Ceres and all the other main belt asteroids were demoted to the status of "asteriod".

It is doubtful (to me, someone else can do the math) whether or not Ceres would survive in that orbit if she were made of water. Most of the main belt asteroids depend on tensile strength to survive, they are tidally disrupted by Jupiter, which is why they have not merged to form a real planet, gravity is insufficient to hold them together.

[Verginius Rufus]

A "pluton" was a unit of money in Robert Heinlein's science fiction novel Tunnel in the Sky (1955). The Heinlein estate should sue for royalties.

I'm a big admirer of Clyde W. Tombaugh (whom I once heard lecture in person) but it's nuts to loosen the definition of planets just to make sure Pluto still qualifies. What if they find a dozen Kuiper Belt Objects that are Pluto's size or larger? Will they all be regarded as planets?

[Verginius Rufus]

Maybe they should call these objects "goofies."

[ahayes]

This is interesting. Is there some sort of Platonic form of a planet floating around to which all of our planets must conform?

This is a matter of semantics. With the discovery of new objects in our solar system the utility of our previous definition of "planet" is called into question. Saying that it is "wrong" to have called Pluto a planet implies that there is some absolute definition of "planet" that we must adhere to. There is not. Language is invented by humans and modified as the need arises.

[Verginius Rufus]

Giuseppe Piazzi (1746-1826) had an observatory in Palermo, Sicily, where he made his discovery of Ceres, but he was actually not a Sicilian but a Lombard. According to the Blue Guide volume Northern Italy from the Alps to Bologna (10th ed., 1997, p. 121), there's a monument in the town of Ponte in Valtellina, east of Sondrio in northern Lombardy, which commemorates Giuseppe Piazzi because he was a native of the town.

[aruanan]

Pluto doesn't even have a normal orbit! It is heavily tilted

And Venus rotates retrograde and one of the gas giants has an axis that is pointing almost directly at the sun. So they're all different for one reason or another. The writer of the opinion piece seems almost oblivious to the fact that "planet" is, indeed, an arbitrary distinction. It's a name given to a class of bodies that orbit the sun. If they're toward the big end, they're planets. If they're toward the smaller end, they're planetoids. If they revolve around another body that revolves around the sun, they're moons. Tiny Pluto was declared to be a planet because it was discovered in the course of a search for even farther out planets. So it's a planet because historically it was declared so from the beginning. So now we have the prospect of some rationalists going back over everything and trying to impose their own arbitrary definitions and thinking that they're talking about intrinsic properties.

[Verginius Rufus]

I'm reminded of Abraham Lincoln's question: "How many legs does a dog have, if you call the tail a leg?" His answer: "Four...calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one."

[GMMAC]

"As usual, Pluto calls the shots at the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Why even convene IAU meetings at all? Why not just let it be resolved that Pluto gets whatever it wants and everyone goes home? "

H'mmmm ... just me or does this sound pretty much like Hezbollah or any other terrorists & the UN ???

[Verginius Rufus]

Uranus' axis is tilted 98 degrees...at times during its orbit one of its poles is pointed almost directly at the sun, but not continuously throughout its orbit.

[Squawk 8888]

I think you failed to notice the tongue jammed firmly in cheek.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Interesting, thanks! He may have been a native of Lombardy, but he lived in Sicily and was by that definition a Sicilian as well. Sort of like Lagrange, who was baptized Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia in Turin. (No I am not Eye-tal-yan.)

Always been an ambition of mine to visit Weil am Stadt and Hven, before they are part of Eurabia. Maybe add a trip to Lombardy along the way.

[Pyro7480]

It's also like Cassini, who is often as known as Giovanni Dominico as Jean Dominique.

[LibLieSlayer]

I think his daddy founded it!

LLS

[Verginius Rufus]

Don't forget Sir William Herschel...English or German?

[ahayes]

There's no sensible reason to reconsider the definition of "leg" since the current definition pretty well covers all of the bases. The word "planet" is an entirely different thing. Since the original nine planets were named we discovered many other objects and now need to clarify what a planet is. We are not being currently confounded with new appendages that we need to classify.

[Kirkwood]

"We once named planets after Gods. Now, we're naming them after sleazy TV characters. "

Those mythological "gods" were the equivalent of modern-day mythological tv characters.

[Erik Latranyi]

Language is invented by humans and modified as the need arises.

Yes, that is why words such as "racist" have been demeaned into nothing.

[Sensei Ern]

SOmeone should look into the financial dealings of these pro-Pluto terrorists. I'll wager they are being sponsored by Disney.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Also interesting, Copernick, Polish or German?

I notice that he made the list of the fifty most important Germans in a recent opinion poll in that country, although the grandparents of modern Germans considered his descendants to be Untermenschen. (Though he was a Canon of the Cathedral at Fraumberg (Frauenberg) he did have descendants with his housekeeper, a practice his bishop tried hard to discourage.)

All Copernicus writings not in Latin are in German, but that proves little.