Re: OT: Pluto Not A Planet!
Seems to me like this is one big beaurocratic screw up.
The IAU put together a special committee to define the word "planet" two and a half years ago!
Several days ago they release what they finally came up with, after two and a half years of painstaking (yeah right) debate and research...and what happens? A few astronomers get together, slap a different definition together and that's the one they go with!
I just find it so utterly stupid that a committee could debate this on and off for so long, and have their careful definition fall victim to a quickly slapped together definition. Oh how horrible beaurocracy can be!
On a slightly more serious note, I think the definition they've gone with is utterly senseless. From what I've heard, the new definition relies on some vague terminology to work. For example, for a planet to be a planet it has to be the dominant body in its "neighborhood"...OK, so what is a planet's neighbourhood? What do they mean by has to be the "dominant body"? Does this mean that, if we discover two planets the size of Jupiter sharing the same orbit (could easily happen around some other star), does that mean that neither one fits the definition of "planet" since neither one really dominates it's neighborhood? After all, two objects can't "dominate" the same neighborhood, can they?
Personally, I highly favor a definition based upon gravity or mass. Either one, it sets a definite limit.
Heh, and they still haven't defined the upper limit on planetary size...wonder how they'll screw that one up??
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