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New planet discovered

Wolverine said:
I envy the thought of a time when we would actually have to worry about crashing into something that's 97 AU away (over nine billion miles distant).

oh, we can do it now. we just strap interesting ian and riddick to the back of the spaceship and direct thier hot air until we build up to a nice fraction of c.
 
F-You Maussan

This is going to get annoying.

Yesterday Maussan was on a weekly popular mexican tv show and he's doing his routine of showing incredibly poor UFO videos, and mixing science with pseudoscience, when all of a sudden he exclaims that they had just discovered a 10th planet JUST AS BILLY MEIER HAD PROPHECISED MORE THAN TEN YEARS AGO ON AN INTERVIEW WITH HIM. I'm sure he'll try tu use this as part of his running gag.
 
Well, Pluto is a bit off, too.

Basically, the planets (except Pluto) go around the sun with orbits being pretty close to being in the same plane (like marbles on a flat table, as some say). That's why most planets appear to us as pretty close to the ecliptic. But Pluto is not on this plane. And neither is this newly discovered body.

It seems to me that the definition of a "planet" should include its orbit being on the ecliptic; any planetoid not on the ecliptic should not be called a planet, thus ending any controversy on whether Pluto or this newly found object are planets.

I'd like to name it Asimov, or Sagan, or maybe even Randi!
 
I was just about to post this in a new thread, but your comment stopped me:
Pluto no longer a planet

Yeah. And it's not just because it's cooler to be known for discovering a planet that it is to find a small lump of rock. Of course not.

And it's not just "planet" either. Who do scientists think they are, demanding that we use their definitions of words like "proof" and "medicine" and "reality"?

In the spirit of your post, I suggest we name it "Brontosaurus".
 
It seems to me that the definition of a "planet" should include its orbit being on the ecliptic; any planetoid not on the ecliptic should not be called a planet, thus ending any controversy on whether Pluto or this newly found object are planets.

Mmm - yes and no. The ecliptic is merely the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun; all of the other planets deviate from it to a moderate or lesser degree (no pun intended).

I do agree that Pluto is WAAAAY off the line. But other than size, it does seem to meet the accepted definition of a planet. Either that, or Pluto's the biggest damn asteroid we know of.
:cool:
 
Personally I prefer the definition of 'planet' should come from the way in which it was formed... pluto and this other new 'planet' were not formed in the same way as earth, mars, venus, mercury, saturn, pluto, uranus, neptune were formed..
 
pluto and this other new 'planet' were not formed in the same way as earth, mars, venus, mercury, saturn, pluto, uranus, neptune were formed..

Either you know something I don't (which isn't all THAT hard), or in the immortal words of Baron von Munchausen: "Vas you dere, Charlie?"

;)
 

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