[meteorite-list] Planet Vote To Draw From Rival Definitions

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Aug 21 14:16:23 2006
Message-ID: <200608211813.LAA25457_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9811-planet-vote-to-draw-from-rival-definitions.html

Planet vote to draw from rival definitions
Stephen Battersby, Prague
New Scientist
21 August 2006

The planet plot thickens. Over the past few days, two rival definitions
of the term "planet" have been put forward by astronomers gathered in
Prague at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union.

The first definition would potentially give our solar system hundreds of
planets
<http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9761-three-new-planets-may-join-solar-system.html>.
The second would require a planet to dominate its neighbourhood and
would throw out all the distant iceballs beyond Neptune, including
little Pluto, and leave only eight planets (see Pluto may yet lose
planet status
<http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9797-pluto-may-yet-lose-planet-status.html>).

Since an international group of astronomers proposed it unexpectedly on
Friday, the second proposal has received a lot of support. In fact,
Caltech's Mike Brown, who has discovered many objects that would be
upgraded to planets under the first scheme, actually prefers the second.

"I just read the new proposal and I liked it enough to ask them to sign
my name to it, too," Brown told New Scientist. "It's really the only
reasonable scientific definition around."

Broken down

Originally, it looked like the two proposals might go head to head in a
vote on Thursday. But the IAU's executive committee decided otherwise on
Monday.

In an attempt to offer a compromise between the two options, the
definition will instead be broken down into components drawn from both
definitions. The vote's actual wording will not be released until
Tuesday, says Owen Gingerich of Harvard University in Massachusetts, US.

"We think we've done something for both camps, so this has a chance of
being less contentious," Gingerich, head of the group that devised the
first definition, told New Scientist.

But the vote is still likely to be controversial, since it will decide
the fate of Pluto.
Received on Mon 21 Aug 2006 02:13:38 PM PDT