Backyard astronomers and astrologers alike are bound to welcome the announcement of three new planets in our solar system!
By next month our Solar System is expected to officially contain twelve planets, meaning astronomy texts and astrological charts will have to be republished. The new lineup in order from the sun will now be Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto/Charon and 2003 UB313 (nicknamed Xena).…
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— go to most recent comments26 - Jet in Columbus
Thanks Victor. I'd still wager that theres a few frozen "Jupiter"s out beyond 2003 UB313
27 - duane
Another sort of arbitrariness that is being introduced according to the proposal by the IAU is that size alone does not earn a "planet" the name "planet." The Earth's moon is larger that both Ceres and Charon, but the Moon will remain a moon, while the other two will become planets. The Earth-Moon system is not a double planet (like Pluto-Charon) simply because the mass ratio is large enough to put the orbital barycenter inside the Earth.
Of course, this hasn't caused any real problems with Ganymede and Callisto, which I think are both larger than Earth's moon. Not to mention Titan. These will remain moons because of the proximity of their gravitational hosts.
28 - gonzo marx
ok duane...Question for you..
howabout the Hypothesis that the actual 10th planet needed to "prove" Bode's Law concerning solar system composition is actually "Lucifer", the hypothetical planet that was somehow destroyed and whose mass now makes up what is commonly called the "asteroid belt"
this one also has the added benefit of possibly explaining Pluto/Charon (as well as Xena/Gabrielle) as moons that were knocked from their orbits to their current positions...
i'm truly Interested in your take on that one
Excelsior?
29 - Richard Brodie
Boy, anything to try and turn conventional, traditional notions upside down. Next thing you know there will be a planet-denial movement! Xena I can see as #10. But their other bullshit is nothing else than ridiculous celestial multiculturalism - calling a moon and a fucking asteroid planets!
30 - Bryan
Yeah, man, Richard is right. Why do we have to get all politically correct and recognize what are obviously just big dumb rocks as actual planets? In fact, let's send all the moons and asteroids to another solar system and keep them out of ours! Planets only! No rocks allowed!
31 - duane
Ah, gonzo, of the far-flung knowledge -- the Titius-Bode Law -- that's a tough one. I will look into it and get back to you. I have to go away for awhile to earn my pay.
Victor Plenty and others here might be able to shed some light on this.
32 - Victor Plenty
From what I've read, it's extremely unlikely the asteroids in the main belt used to be a planet. It's far more likely they simply never congealed into a single object because of the orbital resonance resulting from the gravity of Jupiter. With all due respect to Gonzo, it's also extremely unlikely for the largest chunks of debris from a destroyed planet to have ended up in orbits like those of Pluto/Charon or Xena.
Now to move on from the merely unlikely ideas to the actively stupid ones. If we make "tradition" the standard for defining what is and isn't a planet, we'd have to include not only the moon, but also the sun as planets, because that's what the ancients did. And of course they didn't even know about anything past Jupiter, so we'd have to exclude not only Ceres, Charon, and Xena from the planet category, but also exclude Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto.
In brief, it's just yet another in the very long list of Richard Brodie's ideas that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
But of course that's easy for any sane person to see. On the tougher subject of the Titius-Bode law, I'll have to defer to Duane.
33 - gonzo marx
thanks duane and Victor... most interesting indeed..
i'm just hunting around onthe topic and trying to get some of the Insights and theorems straight in my head..
somewhere, back in the dim past, the hypothesis i expressed was tied up in the Idea that the two gas giants, (Jupiter/Saturn) are of a sufficient combined mass to have possibly been a binary comanion to our Sun... but that something broke that mass into the two stable gas giants they are now
this same hypothesis had it being "Lucifer's" destruction playing some role in those events, or vice versa
the math was facinating.. but damned if i can remember/find who/where/when i read the damn thing, it's just one of the dust bunnies floating around in my Memory Mansion...
so, i did what i tend to like to do... ask folks that are smarter/more knowledgeable than me on the topic...
much Appreciation for both of the replies, i look forward to hearing duane's Thoughts on it, especially in light of the "bode's law" bit and how it al ties together much more neatly than current thinking on the subject (imo)
Excelsior?
34 - Victor Plenty
Gonzo, the hypothesis you've mentioned didn't happen to come from somebody named Velikovsky, did it? (I hope I'm recalling that name correctly, although current planetary astronomers don't consider his ideas likely to be accurate).
And to correct a hasty mistake in my earlier comment, the ancients didn't know about any planets past Saturn (that is, Saturn, and not Jupiter, was at the limit of their knowledge about planets).
35 - Richard Brodie
The word "planet" actually has a definition: "any of the celestial bodies (other than comets or satellites) that revolve around the sun in the solar system" - dictionary.com. Satellites of course are "moons".
Another definition of planet is: "a nonluminous celestial body larger than an asteroid or comet, illuminated by light from a star, such as the sun, around which it revolves." Since this does not exlcude moons (though it does specifically exclude asteroids), one could try and stretch the definition by arguing that a moon does "revolve" (though not in an elliptical orbit) around the sun. But this would be as silly as trying to get away with classifying a planet such as Jupiter as a star, because stars can be defined as "gaseous celestial bodies that revolve around the galactic center."
Some body of elite "recognized" academic "authorities" trying to put the very definition of the earth itself onto a shifting sand kind of a basis, fits right in with the language-corrupting thrust of the whole liberal PC, European Civilization destroying agenda, that seeks to redefine (or substitute with euphemisms - or epithets) other important terms like "marriage", "race", "illegal", "parenting", "vigilance", "freedom of speech", "rights", etc. and impose its own regime of thought, attitude, and even emotional preference control.
36 - gonzo marx
blast if i remember Victor... i'll try and wrack my senile and squishy grey matter to find it...
but for some reason i think it was a student/admirer of Dirac , but agani.. i'm not certain.. i just remember it being the only Hypothesis i'd ever read that mathematically reconciled all the known facts into a single theorem that fit the projections of Bode's law
from what i recall, it was postulated that these occurences are what allowed our solar system to develop in the way that supported the development of the conditions here on Earth
i do remember it was the first time i had read that binary star systems were much more common than our little yellow dwarf sitting by itself, and that the splitting of the mass into saturn and jupiter kept them from achieving the critical mass needed to ignite into a solar body
now, that kind of math is way beyond me, and would take some astrophysicist to work out
but i do like elegant Soloutions
Excelsior?
37 - pleasexcusetheinterruption12
lol @ 25
38 - Jet in Columbus
Okay, let's see what silliness I've got going over here...
39 - Jet in Columbus
Deano 23, thanks I must've missed that when I left today. Much appreciated info. I sortof elluded to it later on.
40 - Jet in Columbus
Duane 27-Had you bothered to read the article it says...
IAU Resolution 5 for GA-XXVI: "A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet."
41 - Jet in Columbus
Duane in additon Earths moon is 1/6th the size of the planet it orbits. Charon is over half the size of Pluto
42 - Jet in Columbus
Gonzo 28 here we disagree, as I'm more disposed to believe in the captured satelite theory for both Pluto and Xena
43 - Jet in Columbus
Richard Please!!! your critisizing God's creations!
44 - Jet in Columbus
Bryan 30-and exactly how would you accomplish that?
45 - Jet in Columbus
Victor 32 I agree. After all I learned from all of you there's simply not enough mass for it to have been a planet, even taking into account matter being flung out into space that wasn't captured by the outer planets, or matter that would've fallen into the sun over billions of years.
46 - Jet in Columbus
Gonzo 33 "so, i did what i tend to like to do... ask folks that are smarter/more knowledgeable than me on the topic..."
Exactly what I'm doing here...
Excelsior back atcha
Jet
47 - Jet in Columbus
PETI-shirley you could come up with a better contribution to this fray than that!?!
48 - gonzo marx
heh, Jet...
that's why the whole "Lucifer" theorem is fascinating... it Postulates that the missing mass reqired of Bode's law resides in the remains of said planet and it's moons...
hence the asteroid belt, possibly the rings of Saturn... and a bunch of incongruous moons around the solar system, possibly even Pluto/Charon and Xena/Garielle...
the orbits of said bodies is put forward in the Bode's law calculations... in simple terms : with stars of a certain mass, you can mathematically determine the orbits of satellites and estimate the total mass of a solar system
now, from what i understand, this axiom has been going in and out of dispute for various reasons... and the damned Theory that i can't remember where i found it tried to tie it all up based on available data, and got it all to work out mathematically, at least...
so... i'm just conversing here, and waiting for the real Experts in astrophysics to chime in, pure Curiosity on my part
Excelsior?
49 - Jet in Columbus
DAMN IT GONZO-I repeat-What kind of discussion can we have here if you won't stop posting facts here?
What are you trying to do...
comfuse me?
My sincere gratitude my friend!
Jet
50 - Victor Plenty
And once again Brodie shoots his own argument in the foot, railing against arbitrary authority in the very same comment that relies upon the arbitrary authority of a dictionary definition (of all things) in its feeble attempt to make some sort of nebulous point about science and society.
It's especially revealing that he claims the existence of an organized effort toward "European Civilization destroying," a claim which parallels Hitler's theory that some races are "culture-creating" (mainly the so-called "Aryan race," of course) while some races are "culture-destroying" (mainly the so-called "Jewish race," naturally).
Leaving aside these self-defeating elements of his comment, Richard Brodie has said nothing worth mentioning about a scientifically coherent definition for the term "planet."
51 - Richard Brodie
Dictionaries codify the common sense of a linguistic community accumulated through the ages. They are a legitimate, non-arbitrary authority. Groups pursuing narrow special interests, seeking to instantly redefine a language's long established terms to serve their own agendas, are illegitimate, arbitrary authority.
52 - Richard Brodie
The definitions I quoted, which have served mankind quite well for a very long time, are perfectly adequate. There's no reason to fuck with them at this point, other than to try and come up with something new, just for the sake of coming up with something new! I mean, can anyone point to any valid, useful purpose in the kind of re-definition that is being toyed around with by these jerks, other than to make a name for themselves.
53 - gonzo marx
in the Article , and in comment 340, Jet sez...
*IAU Resolution 5 for GA-XXVI: "A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet."*
that's the standard definition of a "planet" as far as astrophysics is concerned here...
not the bit about "round" as well as the description of the orbit required... there are scientific Reasons for those...
just clarifying
Excelsior?
54 - Jet in Columbus
Victor #50 Thanks for your insight. Planet is from a greek word meaning wanderer across the sky, which means that at one point in time both the sun and the moon were also known as planets.
The definitions of words change Richard and don't always mean the same thing.
Fag in England is a perfectly usable and acceptable word. If some one came up to me on a street corner and asked "Fag?" I'd smile and respond that I don't smoke.
The fact that the scientific community has to redefine a word from time to time shouldn't be an issue, societies do it all the time. When I was a teenager if something was "bad" or "though" it was really "cool"
There is a new scientific definition of the word Planet and stop acting like a Pluton..
Live with it.
55 - Jet in Columbus
Richard #51 I don't think you'll find more than two thirds of the words you used in your comment in a dictionary between the years say 1700-1800.
The English and scientific language is changing constantly.
Stop acting like a Pluton and pull yourself into the 21st century
56 - Jet in Columbus
Then again between now and the 25th they could change their minds and leave it at 9 planets and you can all laugh and call me a fool for writing this article.
Though I'd have a lot of company
Tantum meus sententia
Jet
57 - Jet in Columbus
Richard 52. It was either arbitrarily change the definition of the word Planet or
A. Downgrade Pluto to a rock status giving us 8 planets
B. Make Xena a planet because it's bigger and has a moon
C. Not recognize either as a planet or pluton
Either way astronomy texts would have to be rewritten
Either way you wouldn't like it.
Arbitrarily
58 - Jet in Columbus
The bit about being round ahd to do with qualifying to be a Pluton not a planet.
Ahhhhh the frustration of people only reading the comments instead of the article.
Arbitrarily speaking of course
Jet
59 - Victor Plenty
Wikipedia's article on the solar system actually gives a pretty good overview of the currently known information about our little neighborhood of the galaxy. The descriptions of the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud may be particularly interesting to those many people who still think of the solar system as something that ends after Pluto.
Anyway, I went to Wikipedia looking for some numbers to answer another idea Gonzo brought up, about Jupiter and/or Saturn being big enough to form a star. Low estimates for the minimum mass needed to form a star range around something like 75 times the mass of Jupiter.
Even if you somehow managed to mash together Jupiter and Saturn, and threw in all the other known planets for good measure, you'd still need almost 74 more Jupiters to get nuclear fusion started in the core of your new... thing. Without nuclear fusion inside, an object isn't a star.
Getting back to the question of planets, my understanding of the new definition is that all planets have to be round, although not all round objects are planets. In addition, all plutons are also planets, although not all planets are plutons.
I'm not sure whether that way of phrasing it makes it more clear, or more confusing.
60 - Jet in Columbus
Yes Victor, and thank you. Just like a Chrysler Sebring Convertible and a Sebring Coupe are both Sebrings a Planet and a Pluton are both planets.
... now I'm confused.
Arthur C. Clark came up with a interesting theory on if Jupiter could be somehow compressed, it would combust into a star in 2010.
Unfortunately I haven't kept up the payments on my monolith.
Can you spare one?
Thanks again
Jet
61 - Phillip Winn
Put me in the eight-planets camp, but I'm at least glad to see an attempt at consistency. Counting Pluto but not "Planet X" aka "Xena" aka 2004 UB313, that was just weird.
Great article, Jet.
62 - Jet in Columbus
Thank you Phillip...
63 - gonzo marx
and thanks Victor for digging that up about critical mass...
interesting tidbit... i wasn't certain of the formulae, so even dwarf stars hold a certain minimum...makes sense...
much appreciated
Excelsior?
64 - Victor Plenty
If the IAU adopts the standard of roundness for induction into the planetary club, the list definitely won't stop at 12. That number includes only the ones we might add in right away. Here are a few more objects that may eventually be counted as planets under the new definition:
Sedna
Quaoar
Orcus
Ixion
2004 XR190 (nicknamed "Buffy")
2002 TC302
Yes, that last one doesn't even have a nickname yet.
Jet, if I recall correctly, Arthur C. Clarke's aliens in 2010 managed to get Jupiter to ignite into a star by adding a whole lot of extra mass to it. Apparently the monoliths were some kind of gateway for interstellar travel, and they "beamed in" extra mass until there was enough to make its gravity initiate fusion at its core.
Either that, or he left the explanation vague enough to allow future readers to reason away the inconsistencies, like I just did. Good science fiction authors develop that skill early if they want to support themselves by writing full time.
65 - duane
Jet (#41), are you trying to scold me? Easy there, big guy. Your response simply reinforces my comment #27. Are you sure you read my comment?
66 - duane
Bode's Law
A fascinating discovery in the late 1700s made by Johann Titius, which was co-opted by Johann Bode led to the discovery of Uranus and Ceres. The so-called Bode's Law says that R=0.3 * n + 0.4, where R is the mean distance of a planet in astronomical units (150,000,000 km), and n=0,1,2,4,8,16, ...
The usual table of Bode's Law vs. actual distance goes like this (sorry about the sloppy table)
BL actual
--- ---------
0.4 0.39 Mercury
0.7 0.72 Venus
1.0 1.00 Earth
1.6 1.52 Mars
2.8 ---- asteroid belt
5.2 5.20 Jupiter
10.0 9.54 Saturn
19.6 19.2 Uranus
38.8 30.1 Neptune
77.2 39.4 Pluto
The discovery of Uranus at very close to the prediction seemed to validate Bode's Law, and prompted a major push to discover the missing planet at 2.8 AU, which led to the discovery of the biggest, brightest asteroid Ceres. Astonishing!
The later discoveries of Neptune (1781) and Pluto (1930) have cast doubt on the Law, however.
Besides that, from what I hear (I'm no expert on planet searches), the discovery of other solar systems seems to show that anything is possible when it comes to planetary formation and their relative distances from their host star.
My overall impression of Bode' Law is that it's an amazing coincidence. Truly amazing. It's maybe important to point out that the "Law" is not a law of nature, like, say, Newton's three laws. It would be better to call it Bode's mnemonic. There is no underlying physics theory that can be distilled into Bode's simple algebraic formulation. At least, that's the way things stand today. Who knows? In any case it breaks down at large distances.
67 - duane
Planet V (Lucifer, thanks to Heinlein?)
As Victor points out, it was only recently determined that the asteroid belt lacks the mass required to constitute the remnants of a planet. However, a few years ago, the idea of a Planet V whose orbit was between Mars and Jupiter (as the Bode's Law predicts) was resurrected in an attempt to explain a 200 million year phase of the Moon's cratering history that occurred about 3.9 billion years ago. The idea is that the orbit was unstable on a 600 million year timescale (i.e., that the orbit would change significantly over that period of time). The instability results from the influence of Jupiter primarily. As the orbit started to change, asteroids were perturbed from their orbits and flung into the inner solar system. Once Planet V left the belt, presumably outward bound, the pummeling stopped, thus nicely explaining the episode of lunar bombardment.
However, this hypothesis has met some resistance by others using a sophisticated celestial mechanics computer model. The opposing group claims that such an orbit would in fact be stable. Given that, there never could have been a Planet V, cuz it ain't there. More investigations are underway.
68 - gonzo marx
w00t! thanks you duane fer the Info dump!
much appreciated, and helps explain somethings, not the least of which is that the source material i'm cudgeling from the dim recesses of my brain is woefully dated...
oh yes... it was Heinlein that i got "Lucifer" from...
silly sub-referential gonzo that i am
thanks again... i do so enjoy learning
Excelsior?
69 - Jet in Columbus
Me too Duane, sorry I doubted you
70 - Victor Plenty
Yep, Duane definitely rocks the house.
Oddly enough, according to the Wikipedia entry on the Titius-Bode law, the fifth slot is nicely filled by Ceres.
Incidentally, Ceres is named after the same goddess whose name also gave us the word cereal. It is also in the class known as the carbonaceous asteroids, due to being high in carbon, which was initially recognized because they are somewhat darker in color.
What I'm getting at here is, if Ceres is once again promoted to the status of a planet, we can each celebrate by enjoying a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.
71 - Jet in Columbus
New for 1212 The Pontiac Ceres and the Chrysler Charon
72 - duane
Here's another fun problem with the proposed definitions. If new double planets are discovered similar to the Pluto-Charon system, and if the orbits are fairly eccentric (a big oval), then the barycenter moves in and out of the larger of the two, dependng on the orbital phase. Part of the time the little one is a planet (when it's far away), and part of the time it's a moon (when it's near). I didn't dream this up myself. I saw a report from the IAU meeting over at space.com. What a mess.
Cocoa puffs? Mmm ... Cocoa Puffs.
Chrysler Charon. Isn't she that actress who played the cereal ... ooops ... serial killer?
73 - Deano
It's a damn shame the universe keeps on refusing to be neat and tidy and expected...
74 - Jet in Columbus
Deano 73-it's a damn shame my apartment keeps on refusing to be neat and tidy, but that's life too.
75 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
'What I'm getting at here is, if Ceres is once again promoted to the status of a planet, we can each celebrate by enjoying a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.'
Victor, if you want to have Cocoa Puffs, go ahead and knock yourself out. But when mommy sends you to your room for behaving like a brat with a sugar high - or when the crash inevitably hits you when the sugar runs out - you'll wish you had joined me in eating a bowl or two of Kellogg's Cornflakes.
At NIS 22 ($4.90) for a 750 gram box it is sure a bargain - not!
Next question:
If someone can design a planet blaster, would it be called a cereal killer?