[meteorite-list] Astronomers Lean Toward Eight Planets

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Aug 23 18:38:12 2006
Message-ID: <007d01c6c704$ccc336a0$4341e146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, Doug and All,


    1. Since it seems only right to declare your personal biases
first, I am a 12+ proponent and a firm believer (on the basis
of faith and a few numerical approximations) that an object
beyond Pluto and bigger than the planet Mercury exists and
will be discovered. (Then, the Clasical Eight become the Big
Seven and Mercury is a solar "asteroid"!)

    2. I firmly agree with Ron Baalke (who's a Pro-Eight) that
the cultural component of this dispute is a major, maybe THE
major, consideration. This a great "opportunity" to make science
look silly to the populace, something we really don't need
right now. Once formed, public perception is hard to change.
What we have to decide is what makes science look sillier,
or less silly.

    3. While I may have made snide remarks about the IAU as
preferring to dally and postpone, this may well be a time when
that is the best idea. Declare a cooling off period; send it to another
committee. The whole vote issue popped up too quickly, and it
may well be that there just hasn't been time (or calm) enough for
everybody to think it through.

    4. While you are undoubtedly correct, Doug, about Latinate
terms being appropriate, the Latinate term for "cold" has unfortunate
associations in American-English slang, where "frig" is used as
a not-too-polite euphemism for an old Anglo-Saxon verb with a
similar sound. It would be the source of as much (more) classroom
giggling as the pronunciation of "Uranus." But "cryo-" and
"cryonic" have widespread usage, popularly and scientifically
(for that very reason, I suspect).

    5. Even the guy who declared his love of Pluto in the New
York Times (Susan's post) says of Pluto: "It's mostly ice."
Everybody calls the "Plutonians" ICEBALLS when this is
obviously and unequivocally WRONG. People on this List
do it all the time; scientists who don't like Pluonians as planets
do it (and they should know better).

    The density of Pluto is 2.08. Ice has a density of 0.92.
Because water-ice is compressible and then converts to a
number of polymorphic crystalline structures of higher density,
depending on the size of the body. (IceIII is the most likely,
with a density of 1.14.) But the pressures required are very
great.
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html

    But basically, a body with a density of 2.08 (Pluto) is best
explained as containing 70% to 75% rock of density 2.7 and
a mantle of mixed ices that is only the outer 10% to 13% of
the planetary radius deep. (A shallow ice mantle limits the
density of the ice.) That's a "mantle" if it's differentiated, but
if it's just mixed, the compositional averages are the same.

    The density of Ceres (2.03) is the same as Pluto. Lots of
the Plutonians have similar densities. 2003EL61's shape sets
a density range limited to 2.6 to 3.3 (like the Earth's Moon,
a well-known rockball). It's 100% rockball -- no ice at all
(except for the surface dusting). Pluto's a rockball. Ceres
is a rockball. Can you say ROCKBALL, boys and girls?

    If a body is 70%+ rock, why keep calling it an "iceball"?
Wassup with that? Because it's cold? Calling Pluto an iceball
is like calling the Earth a dirtball. I look at Earth's surface and
it's mostly dirt, so the planet Earth is mostly made of dirt, right?

    Please, enough with the "iceball"!


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "MexicoDoug" <MexicoDoug_at_aim.com>
To: <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>; "Sterling_K_Webb"
<sterling_k_webb_at_sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Astronomers Lean Toward Eight Planets


> Hello Sterling, why not throw Pluto a bone like they are trying to do?
>
> On the other hand, nice word - but we've seen that nothing is "most
> correct"
> in this business. Cryo- is Greek, by the way. What ever happened to
> TNOs
> (Trans-Neptunian Objects).
>
> My "correct" latinized preference, with nice alliterations for poetic use,
> would be:
> FRIGOPHILE
>
> Scientifically, this world captures the accepted hypotheses that these
> planets thrive like rabbits out there and if brought in closer to the Sun
> would croak.
>
> Other possibilities are:
> Frigoliths
> Frigolithospheres
>
> Best wishes, Doug
>
>> The most correct technical term would be the
>> jawbreaker
>> CRYOSILICATE object.
>
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Received on Wed 23 Aug 2006 06:38:05 PM PDT