HOLY SOLAR SYSTEM BATMAN!

[NikiH]

They want to add three planets to our solar system. And before you ask, yes it's a slow day at work today.


For some reason this makes me feel old. My child is going to come home and ask me the planets in our solar system and I'm going to have to say, when I went to school they told us their were only 9! Wow for some reason this is just too disturbing to me.

If the resolution is approved, the 12 planets in our solar system listed in order of their proximity to the sun would be Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon, and the provisionally named 2003 UB313. Its discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, nicknamed it Xena after the warrior princess of TV fame, but it likely would be rechristened something else later, the panel said.

The galactic shift would force publishers to update encyclopedias and school textbooks, and elementary school teachers to rejigger the planet mobiles hanging from classroom ceilings. Far outside the realm of science, astrologers accustomed to making predictions based on the classic nine might have to tweak their formulas.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/ ... TE=DEFAULT

[REDEEMEDSKIN]

MIcheal Brown = #1 Xena Warrior Princess Fan

[JansenFan]

I heard on the news somewhere that they actually wanted to drop Pluto from the list.

[Deadskins]

I heard on the news somewhere that they actually wanted to drop Pluto from the list.

Yes Pluto, like Charon, Xena, and the other new one, are really too small to be officially classified as planets. But, since they consider Pluto a planet right now, it's either add three more, or take away one. Pick your poison.
I guess Michael Brown discovered Xena, while trying to find New Orleans.
You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie! - W.

[NikiH]

No I want it just like it was when I learned it in the second grade!!!

[REDEEMEDSKIN]

No I want it just like it was when I learned it in the second grade!!!

R.I.P. "My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets"

[NikiH]

Ok now you're just mocking me. It really is sad!

[REDEEMEDSKIN]

Ok now you're just mocking me. It really is sad!

No, not mocking at all. The violin is playing the funeral song. As a matter of fact, I'm wondering, how do we ever replace that time-tested sentence. That was the only way I could remember the planets.

[UK Skins Fan]

Yep, a collection of the world's best scientists in this field all got together, and decided (after much deliberation) that the definition of a planet is that the object is round and orbits the sun. Genius.

[Deadskins]

Yep, a collection of the world's best scientists in this field all got together, and decided (after much deliberation) that the definition of a planet is that the object is round and orbits the sun. Genius.

So planetesimals, asteroids, meteors, and comets are all planets now, too? Less than genius!

[UK Skins Fan]

Yep, a collection of the world's best scientists in this field all got together, and decided (after much deliberation) that the definition of a planet is that the object is round and orbits the sun. Genius.

So planetesimals, asteroids, meteors, and comets are all planets now, too? Less than genius!

Don't ask me - I just hear this stuff on the radio and frown a lot.

Does this mean that Bill Parcells is a planet too - I hear that he's still orbiting the sun after the Redskins kicked his sorry behind into outer space last season. And he's certainly round.

[Fios]

Don't ask me - I just hear this stuff on the radio and frown a lot.

I'm stealing that line man, good stuff

[yupchagee]

Yep, a collection of the world's best scientists in this field all got together, and decided (after much deliberation) that the definition of a planet is that the object is round and orbits the sun. Genius.

So planetesimals, asteroids, meteors, and comets are all planets now, too? Less than genius!

Don't ask me - I just hear this stuff on the radio and frown a lot.

Does this mean that Bill Parcells is a planet too - I hear that he's still orbiting the sun after the Redskins kicked his sorry behind into outer space last season. And he's certainly round.

The object has to become round because of its own mass.....



.... Oh, never mind.

[TincoSkin]

pluto is actually two rocks. one is pluto and the other its moon but they are about the same size so to call one of them a planet and the other its moon isnt right.. its actually a two body system who orbit eachother.

[joebagadonuts]

MIcheal Brown = #1 Xena Warrior Princess Fan

Wow, now there's a surprise.

[UK Skins Fan]

The object has to become round because of its own mass.....



.... Oh, never mind.

Well, Parcells is round because of his own mass, and he does orbit the sun, so he must be a planet.

Really, this science stuff is easy. I'm going to go back to that UN thread and come up with a plan for world peace now. I'm on a roll, I can feel it.

[Countertrey]

The galactic shift would force publishers to update encyclopedias and school textbooks, and elementary school teachers to rejigger the planet mobiles hanging from classroom ceilings.

Millions of new solar system mobiles... This could be a boon for the wire clotheshangar industry. I'm calling my broker right now. "BUY ACME WIRE HANGER INDUSTRIES!!!!!!! BUY, I say... BUY!!!"

Xena... it's nowhere near hot enough out there to call it Xena. Hillary, maybe...

[tazlah]

Apparently, it was either include the others that were like Pluto or oust Pluto from "the group"... Poor, poor Pluto...

Pluto gets the boot
Pluto no longer a planet, say astronomers

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is -- and isn't -- a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.

Although astronomers applauded after the vote, Jocelyn Bell Burnell -- a specialist in neutron stars from Northern Ireland who oversaw the proceedings -- urged those who might be "quite disappointed" to look on the bright side.

"It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called 'planet' under which the dwarf planets exist," she said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella.

The decision by the prestigious international group spells out the basic tests that celestial objects will have to meet before they can be considered for admission to the elite cosmic club.

For now, membership will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun -- "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites. (How do they come up with these stunning names??)

Click here for the rest of the article.

Pluto... once a hero for the little guy on the playground who always got picked last for the team... officially booted for being too small, obscure and spinning in his own slightly off-kilter orbit... it's a sad, sad day.

[Irn-Bru]

RIP Pluto

[Chris Luva Luva]

My entire childhood was a lie...

[yupchagee]

The galactic shift would force publishers to update encyclopedias and school textbooks, and elementary school teachers to rejigger the planet mobiles hanging from classroom ceilings.

Millions of new solar system mobiles... This could be a boon for the wire clotheshangar industry. I'm calling my broker right now. "BUY ACME WIRE HANGER INDUSTRIES!!!!!!! BUY, I say... BUY!!!"

Xena... it's nowhere near hot enough out there to call it Xena. Hillary, maybe...

[EA7649]

Pluto the dwarf planets.

If we compared people to planets then a midget would be pluto but a midget is still a person. lol. I just find it funny that its called a dwarf.

[REDEEMEDSKIN]

If they'd named it "Mickey", it would have had more lasting power, IMO.



R.I.P.

[yupchagee]

If they'd named it "Mickey", it would have had more lasting power, IMO.



R.I.P.

It's still Pluto, just not a planet. Only a name change, remember Shakespeare said: "That which we call a rose, by any other name, has thorns."

[Deadskins]

Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Wouldn't the definition's last part automatically disqualify Neptune as well?