[meteorite-list] 'Plutons' Push Planet Total Up To 12

Wed Aug 16 18:15:34 EDT 2006

Chris:

So what are these things that are being discovered around other stars? Clearly 
not planets! As someone else has said, do you go back to the 5 original 
planets? Earth does not "wander" through the sky, so is it a planet based on 
the "original" difinition of a planet? Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are visible 
to the naked eye. When it was determined that the Earth went around the Sun, 
then we redefined a planet from its ancient meaning of wandering star (which 
they are not).

There is nothing wrong with having a scientific definition for an otherwise 
common word. 

Closer to home, who gave the authority for the METSOC to classify meteorites,to 
name them, or to create new classes of meteorites? You need some sort of 
control. You need some authority in a position to make a scientific decision as 
to how something is classified (how it formed, where it came from) based on 
existing and new information. At one point, it was thought that all meteorites 
came from asteroids (that was a definition if you want look at it that way), 
but with new information, scientists determined that there were meteorites from 
the Moon and Mars - they changed the definition of meteorite.

The above may seem silly to you, but one does not have to create new scientific 
words just because a word has a narrow meaning in general use. 

You could also create your own star charts, give stars and constellations their 
own names, sell the names of stars, but it would not be recognized by the 
authority that is recognized to do this: the IAU. You could do the same for 
meteorites.

Quoting Chris Peterson <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>:

> No, they don't have the authority to redefine words that are in common 
> usage and found in ordinary dictionaries. That is quite different from 
> defining the proper name of bodies, craters, etc. Their definitions are 
> more akin to recommendations than anything binding; I can quite legally 
> call any astronomical object anything I want; of course, it probably 
> won't be accepted by many!
> 
> In this case, what they are actually doing is overloading the word 
> "planet". That is, they are creating a new definition in addition to 
> those already in use. As a rule, I think overloading words in this way 
> is a bad idea since it is likely to lead to confusion. IMO the wise 
> thing to do would be to worry about the subcategories, which are what 
> really matter (e.g. terrestrial body, icy body, gas giant, etc). The 
> parent category of all these probably doesn't need a rigorously defined 
> name at all, but if given one should be something other than "planet". 
> In any case such bodies lie along a continuum of spherocity, barycenter 
> location, etc; attempting a rigorous definition of something that is 
> probably not definable is just asking for trouble.
> 
> One of the goals of creating nomenclature should be to avoid breaking 
> things to the greatest extent possible. If this proposal is adopted, it 
> breaks countless books and publications. On the other hand, adopting a 
> new word to describe the sort of bodies we think of as "planets" would 
> break very little; new publications would simply be a little more 
> precise than older ones. Definitions should be backwards compatible!
> 
> Chris
> 
> *****************************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
> To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>; 
> "Chris Peterson" <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>
> Cc: "Larry Lebofsky" <lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 3:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] 'Plutons' Push Planet Total Up To 12
> 
> 
> Hi, Chris, List,
> 
>     Actually, the IAU does have the authority, beyond the support of
> every working scientist in the field. The IAU was founded in 1918/9 to
> clear up a horrific mess of everybody naming the SAME Lunar and
> Martian features with their own choice of names, so that you had to
> refer to "the crater Prof. X calls Backscat and Prof. Y calls Gribniz
> but Prof. Z calls Tinkerbelle" for anyone to know what feature you're
> talking about.
> 
>     Under a whole array of International Treaties, most of which
> the US is signatory to, they are designated to be the official arbiter
> of this and that, so many times and in so many treaties, that their
> authority is virtually statutory.  For example, the GPS  timing would
> be impossible with the geodetic-celestial coordinate transfer, which
> they defined and implemented. Would you like to be flying around
> the world and have the GPS system change at every national border?
> No thanks. The list of things they do that are essential and absolutely
> necessary is very long.
> 
>     They're not the Académie Française; they're a lot more
> authoritative! All the Académie Française does is try to bully
> the French into talking like it's the eighteenth century. Prithee,
> what harm in that, sirrah? And while I like to tease them,
> like any European French Model bureaucracy, they do a
> huge service and this nomenclature debate is actually quite
> a unique and rare return to their roots in the midst of all the
> snazzy things they do. (Did I just call them "snazzy"?)
> 
>     And the ordinary users of English are common-sense
> people; they're not going use names for things that are not
> common to all listeners and other talkers. If most people
> call Ceres a planet, after a while everybody will. I predict
> that in 2015, when the highly detailed images flow back from
> the Dawn Mission and a new and strange and fascinating
> world unfolds, everybody will be talking about the "planet"
> Ceres.
> 
>     I think of it as "Dangerfield's World." It don't get no
> respect. But that'll change.
> 
> 
> Sterling K. Webb
> 
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> 

-- 
Dr. Larry A. Lebofsky
Senior Research Scientist
Co-editor, Meteorite                      "If you give a man a fish,   
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory               you feed him for a day.
1541 East University                       If you teach a man to fish,
University of Arizona                        you feed him for a lifetime."
Tucson, AZ 85721-0063                                     ~Chinese Proverb
Phone:  520-621-6947
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e-mail: lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu