Re: Justice For Pluto

On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 15:41:59 +0000 (UTC), stephen@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

*** T. Winter <***.Winter@xxxxxx> wrote:
In article <rrnof2d9btsnvs8k7pm9p7qf01tjg0apjn@xxxxxxx> Lester Zick <dontbother@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
...
> No but I rather expect the astronomers who sought to explain
> gravitational perturbations in the orbits of what they considered
> planets did. I'll go with them. For that matter why call trans jovian
> planets planets? They're obviously just gas balls more akin to proto
> stellar masses than the actual planets.

And so is Jupiter.

> Sauce for the goose. If we had
> to draft the definition for planets today our definition might look a
> good deal different than those drafted thousands of years ago.

They were already a good deal different. Thousands of years ago we had
the following seven planets: Sun, Moon, Mercurius, Venus, Mars, Jupiter
and Saturnus. The Sun lost planet status about 450 years ago (when the
Earth became a planet), and the Moon lost planet status some 50 years
later.

"Planet" is a word whose meaning has truly wandered from its
etymology, pun intended. "Asteroid", which literally means "star like"
is another one. The word was coined to describe Ceres. Ceres
appeared as a point and did not show a disk like the other planets,
but appeared pointlike as stars do. This definition of "star like"
excludes the Sun, which actually is a star, and Jupiter which
is the most like a star of the planets. Ceres and the other
asteroids are some of the least "star like" objects in the
solar system. Natural language is an amusing thing.

And modern mathspeak is not.

Your lack of knowledge is showing.

As always.

Another Plutocrat.

~v~~
.

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