[meteorite-list] Astronomers Lean Toward Eight Planets

From: Larry Lebofsky <lebofsky_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Aug 25 15:26:45 2006
Message-ID: <1156533998.44ef4eee499af_at_hindmost.LPL.Arizona.EDU>

Hi Sterling:

I am so far behind in reading emails that I am now reading the most recent and
going backwards. Hence my response to your email from Wednesday.

First, with only about 425 scientists voting on the porposal Thursday, there is
now a petition for the planetary (and astronomy?) community in support of
somthing closer to the original proposal (properties of the object, not where
it is located). A more general one may follow (I will let you all know).

I agree with you (almost) completely. Except with the composition of Ceres.
With a density of just over 2.0, there is a lot of water in Ceres. It is
assumed to be all below the surface (as water ice is not stable on its
surface), but it is a good match to CI and CM meteorites and so has a good deal
of water in it. So, it is most likely a very wet rock.

>From the HST images, which show white spots, it may even have some water ice on
its surface. I would be thrilled with that since I "predicted" ice on Ceres and
then showed that it could not have any since it is too warm. More recent work
has show that my observational analysis may not have been too far off (Dawn
will give us the answer).

Larry

Quoting "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb_at_sbcglobal.net>:

> 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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>
>
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Received on Fri 25 Aug 2006 03:26:38 PM PDT