Astroblog: They are probably voting about Pluto as you read this

Thursday, August 24, 2006

They are probably voting about Pluto as you read this

Today (Thursday) the IAU will be voting on one of 4 proposals to define what a planet is (at 11:30 pm local time). As Stuart reports, there has been a lot of ahh.. vigorous debate about what constitues a planet. The two key proposals are 5a, which will demote Pluto, and leave us with 8 planets, and 5b, which keeps Pluto as a planet, but promotes Ceres, UB313 and Charon to planets. You can watch the live video here (starting at 11:30 pm CST). As a biologist, I find this somewhat amusing, planetary formation is a continium, at one end we have dust, at the other bodies that just miss out on sustainable fusion. Naturally any attempt to place a lower boundary on what a planet is will be a bit arbitary. Personally, I can't see any reason why we shouldn't have 12 planets (it makes the menomics harder is all). If Mercury, a rock ball a bit bigger than our Moon, is a planet, why not Pluto, and if Pluto, why not UB313. Frankly, I expect it will end in an impasse, as I can't see enough people wanting to demote Pluto, and enough people wanting to promote Ceres.

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:35 pm

Comments:

The winner is.....
- The traditional eight are just plain planets (not "classical")
- Pluto is now a dwarf planet
- Ceres is now a dwarf planet
- 2003 UB313 is probably a dwarf planet (didn't catch it)
- a new class of dwarf planets has been created for all those beyond the orbit of Neptune. It wasn't given a name as the proposed name was not accepted.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:10 am

Ian, if you missed the session we have the edited highlights (cut down to only 22 minutes from a good hour and a half) on the Jodcast. Although we chopped out quite a bit, we hope most of the interesting questions and answers are left in.

Editing seems to take forever and I think I now need a good drink.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:30 am

Thanks for that Stuart, I must say I'm a little peeved, I was looking forward to twelve planets.

I've just put up a link to the Jodcast, and emailed as many astrofolks as I can about this, so you might have a bit of traffic in a while. Thanks for all the effort in editing, I chose to go to bed instead. I hope you got tha good drink.

# posted by