Burnem Wizfyre
Log Wizard
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Pluto is just a huge fucking comet more then anything, that's sure as fuck what it would look like if something came along and forced it into a much closer orbit with the sun.
The Astronomy Thread
- Thread starter Araxen
- Start date
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
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At the end of the day, Michael Brown made a pretty good point: there's no official definition of what a continent is either. Would people freak out if Greenland was upgraded or those filthy Aussies get knocked down a peg? Probably. With astronomical objects as we discover more and more about our galactic neighborhood there's bound to be ones that don't fall neatly in to categories. From planets without stars, to borderline brown dwarfs orbiting stars, to moons with their own moons, we're going to find some weird shit out there.
It was either restrict the definition of what a planet is somewhat so that Pluto wouldn't count, or include it and come to terms with the fact that we'll have dozens if not hundreds of "planets" in short order. They tried to find a middle ground. That left a lot of people on either side unhappy.
I don't really give a shit, personally.
It was either restrict the definition of what a planet is somewhat so that Pluto wouldn't count, or include it and come to terms with the fact that we'll have dozens if not hundreds of "planets" in short order. They tried to find a middle ground. That left a lot of people on either side unhappy.
I don't really give a shit, personally.
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here you can find a good explaination about why Pluto was demoted, done by your local sexiest astrophysicist
gogusrl
Molten Core Raider
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A very interesting read regarding Drake's equation and why we haven't seen shit so far.http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html
Eomer
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On what justification though? Eris is the same size as Pluto and likely significantly heavier. It does orbit out much further, and has a more inclined and eccentric orbit. Haumea and Makemake are smaller than Pluto, but orbit about the same distance and have less eccentric orbits (albeit with more inclination). They all have equally strong cases for being a planet as compared to Pluto based on their sizes and orbits.
The only reason Pluto was recognized as a planet is plain dumb luck. The others weren't visible or at least weren't in the area that Tombaugh was searching. I don't think that Pluto should be "grandfathered" just because of dumb luck. And again, if you argue it should be simply because it was found before the others, than Ceres should be grandfathered as a planet too.
Xeldar
Silver Squire
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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At the end of the day all it comes down to is arguing over semantics and definitions. We made definitions based only on what we see when the reality is in the future we are going to probably find some extremely bizarre things when it comes to stellar formations(hot jupiters for example).
If anything I think the idea of our solar system having dozens and dozens of planets instead of only a couple unique snow flakes really ruslted the jimmies of the IAU. Though I can only imagine in the future we will find systems with dozens and dozens objects(Mercury size or so or bigger) in them. I mean who is to say a star can only have a handful of planets? Look at Jupiter for example, it has dozens and dozens of moons. Smallest being only a mile and a half in diameter yet its considered a moon.
If anything I think the idea of our solar system having dozens and dozens of planets instead of only a couple unique snow flakes really ruslted the jimmies of the IAU. Though I can only imagine in the future we will find systems with dozens and dozens objects(Mercury size or so or bigger) in them. I mean who is to say a star can only have a handful of planets? Look at Jupiter for example, it has dozens and dozens of moons. Smallest being only a mile and a half in diameter yet its considered a moon.
Eomer
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http://bostonglobe.com/news/science/...rKM/story.html
Nothing new really, but further confirmation that there's probably around 17 billion Earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone. However the vast majority of those are way inside or way outside the habitable zone. Flip side to that, though, is that we have no idea how many Earth sized moons there may be as well. There could be a lot of gas giants in the habitable zone, with Earth sized moons (not that they'd necessarily be good candidates for life, though) Further, only now is it possible for Kepler to start confirming planets that orbit similar to Earth around a star similar to ours, since it needs to see three transits. So we might all of the sudden see a flood of planets in habitable zones, whether they be Earth-like or gas giants or whatever.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...=feeds-newsxml
That one IS new. Basically the first Earth analogue, if confirmed.
Nothing new really, but further confirmation that there's probably around 17 billion Earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone. However the vast majority of those are way inside or way outside the habitable zone. Flip side to that, though, is that we have no idea how many Earth sized moons there may be as well. There could be a lot of gas giants in the habitable zone, with Earth sized moons (not that they'd necessarily be good candidates for life, though) Further, only now is it possible for Kepler to start confirming planets that orbit similar to Earth around a star similar to ours, since it needs to see three transits. So we might all of the sudden see a flood of planets in habitable zones, whether they be Earth-like or gas giants or whatever.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...=feeds-newsxml
That one IS new. Basically the first Earth analogue, if confirmed.
They sarcastically throw around the 19,400 miles figure without taking note that that's well within the distance needed to destroy a fuck-ton of satellites.
Burnem Wizfyre
Log Wizard
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Could you imagine the shit storm it would set off if Apophis destroyed the vast majority of our satellites? Fuckers laugh at me for having a land line but I won't be stuck out if that comes to pass, I can totally call and talk to my grandmother or my aunt.