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Samppa wrote:I'd love to see astronomers trying to cure cancer

I would like to see the people trying to cure cancer actually cure cancer.

vickyke wrote:I think it's just strange, we know pluto as a planet for so many years and now suddenly they decide it's no longer a planet... What will they do next year? Say the moon is a planet??

I doubt this decision was "sudden." Research sometimes takes a really long time when your dealing with measuring the movement of objects as far away as pluto.
Pluto is maligned and doesn't orbit the sun as a planet should by definition. Also its path for its orbit has not been cleared. Whatever they decide next, however outrageous it seems to you, will just make for a more accurate description of our solar system.
Theres nothing wrong about learning the right thing. At one time everyone was outraged to learn that the world was round, then probably asked "What next?"

lets just refer to pluto from now on as

"the suns smallest moon"

then no one calls it a planet and school kids still have to memorize it.

*nods confidently

I think one of the largest issues the the conflict between discovery and classification.

I think its worthwhile when someone disproves a long-lasting belief about our solar system...we used to believe earth was the center of the universe ffs!

Sure, we used to believe that our solar system... the universe even... was geocentric. But when that was disproved, it was actually disproved: shown that that wasn't the case. Whereas with the pluto problem, nobody's actually proving or showing anything, they're simply agreeing on a common, updated version of a definition for how to look at or read something. In my opinion, this is a necessary move, but shouldn't be applied to something that's already been widely called a planet. I mean, we've updated the English language in the past few centuries, but we don't update the grammar in Shakespeare. Why not? Because that's part of history, and that's how it is in our culture. I think it was a rash decision to go back and take pluto out of the position it's been established in for a little under a century--it should have just been an exception to the new rule (which was suggested at the IAU conference, but laughed at).

And just for random entertainment, I found this sign somewhere online that I liked. I'd cite it, but I don't know where it's from, so random credit goes to someone somewhere for this:

Shakespeare isn't science though.

I would have liked for Pluto to have been called a planet even though it's not (for now anyway), but the aim of science isn't to please the current culture but be scientific. While I like to think of Pluto as a planet, I'd hate to think scientists would stoop so low as to conform to the comman layabout who says Pluto should be a planet cos it has been for the last 70 years.

There's a number of ways of looking at it, but in the end a few generations down the line no one will care (unless it's reinstated as a planet ). And why should they?

matthew.daniels wrote:this is a necessary move, but shouldn't be applied to something that's already been widely called a planet. I mean, we've updated the English language in the past few centuries, but we don't update the grammar in Shakespeare.

If its a necessary move as you say, then why shouldn't it be applied? Wide belief is no grounds for being exempt to more accurate updates. And how are updates(or lack of) in the english language grounds for not taking these "necessary" moves in astronomy?

I can go either way with Pluto being a planet or not. It does of course follow the naming scheme of Roman gods and should be granfathered into our definition of a planet. Technically it is not a planet but it should still be called one since that is what most people consider it to be. Everthing else after pluto should just be a cold, dead rock.

Sanjuro wrote:I can go either way with Pluto being a planet or not. It does of course follow the naming scheme of Roman gods and should be granfathered into our definition of a planet. Technically it is not a planet but it should still be called one since that is what most people consider it to be. Everthing else after pluto should just be a cold, dead rock.

LOL the Romans would be realy angry at those sientests for calling one of their gods planet a moon

Sanjuro wrote:Technically it is not a planet but it should still be called one since that is what most people consider it to be.

Since the people still beliveing pluto is a planet are wrong, pluto should be included as a planet to make them right? Interesting logic.

DjDarkman wrote:LOL the Romans would be realy angry at those sientests for calling one of their gods planet a moon

They are not calling it a moon.