Re: Pluto is a planet again! (in Illinois)

On Mar 8, 9:44 pm, Davoud <s...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

1) There was no problem to start with. Those who voted to demote Pluto
would do well to devote a little time to reading Shakespeare.

2) If there had been a problem it could have and should have been
solved in a positive way. "The IAU voted today to add n bodies to the
list of nine planets, so that from this day forward the Solar System
will be considered to have (9+n) planets."

Here, I disagree.

It seems perfectly clear to me that astronomers using telescope time
to search for Kuiper Belt Objects on the basis of being hailed as the
next Herschel would be a skewing of research priorities, and so
preventing such a "gold rush" was valid...

and in any case, as with the asteroids - Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and
Vesta having been considered planets in the beginning - the public
would rebel against there being a horde of bodies admitted to the
status of planet... and they expect the planets to be bigger than the
non-planets.

This time, they decided not to wait - not to let Eris and a few other
KBOs be planets, and then change their minds later.

For reasons of sentiment, I dislike the decision emotionally. But it
was a reasonable choice. However, it also was a social and political
decision, orbital clearance being a scientific veneer to justify what
is a reasonable _social_ definition of a (major) planet.

John Savard
.

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