Re: Pluto vote 'hijacked' in revolt

In article <ecsnoe$2qb$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Brian Tung <brian@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Paul Schlyter wrote:

Bretagnon developed the VSOP analytical theories for the motions
of the major planets some time in the 1980's (that's too old to be
in arxiv.org). These theories replaced the century-old theories by
Newcomb. Perhaps you never saw Bretagnon's papers?

No, I know of the papers, and have read the VSOP theories. However,
each planet has its own theory. What I meant, in case it was unclear,
was that few if any papers deal with the major planets as a group.

You can't make an accurate theory for one planet and ignore all the
other planets - they affect one another mutually. So when making a theory
for one of the planets, you have to account for several others of them,
sometimes all of them depending on what accuracy you want.

Bretagnon did present his VSOP theories for all the planets in one
single paper more than once. I also listed another paper dealing
with the planets as a group. So you can remove the "if any" above.
There is few such papers, true, but their number do exceed zero!

Dunno about that. Perhaps you're right in the short term, but in the long
term, public education will catch up. Nobody misses Ceres, Pallas, Juno,
Vesta among the planets today. Likewise, I'm convinced nobody will miss
Pluto among the planets in 150 years.

I didn't say that public usage wouldn't change. I said that the
difference between the two does not materially affect public education
about astronomy--by which I mean the quality of that education.

Indeed, the quality of education goes deeper than how one labels
stuff.

Also, what's out there to see is not at all affected by how we define
"planet"..... :-)

--
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Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
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