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I don't know if anyone's aware of this, but right now astronomers are convening to reclassify several of the celestial bodies. The most popular proposal is graow the traditional 9 planets by 3.

Here's a link to the site:
http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0601/iau0601_release.html

And if you're wondering which heavenly bodies received the upgrade to planet status, they are:

Ceres: the largest of the asteriods
Charon: a moon of Pluto. Pluto-Charon will be classified as something of a dual planetary system
2003 UB313: a recently discovered planet that is larger than Pluto, and had originally been called "Xena" by the astonomers who discovered it

There are also apparently several other candidate planets that may be under review if the Astronomical Union adopts the new standards.

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This is an interesting compromise. Anything that's round because of its own gravity (like pluto, ceres, etc) is called a planet, yet pluto and everything else past neptune is also called a "plutoid", kinda like a sub-class of planet, so if they find too many of those things to memorize we can just fall back on an easy-to-remember 10: mercury, venus, earth, mars, ceres, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, and plutoids

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I read about this somewheres. It's pretty nifty, to be around when something like this happens.

If I remember correctly, Ceres was actually classified as a planet in the 19th century, but I guess they changed their minds...

I don't really understand why they're making Charon a planet.

There was Qaosar or somehting like that, and Sedna, too, I guess those don't count as planets. I haven't heard much about them since their discovery.

But it's cool that they've decided on which bodies are planets and which aren't. Hopefully we'll see more of this soon.

We were talking about this in Astronomy today, I personally want to get rid of Pluto. But I remember a Magic Schoolbus episode where they went to Pluto, and Arnold got a cold from taking off his helmet. But in reality he would have exploded, but they can't show that to kids, it might mess with theire brains.

Interesting. I still like the idea that Jupiter is really a brown dwarf star, though, putting us in a bi-star solar system.

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It's because Charon is not really a moon. It doesn't orbit around Pluto, they orbit around each other. Charon is no more Plutos moon than Pluto is Charons. It was just identified as the moon because it is a bit smaller.

Personally, I see no need to change the definition of a planet. Just keep it how it is, and bump Pluto down to a Kupyier belt object.

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Well, I suppose we should welcome them then. If they're offical.

Yay. I like new planets. I don't know why, I just get excited when major stuff like this happens.

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I renember that magic school bus episode. Darn Arnolds cousin, almost stranded them on Pluto. Anyway, it's going to be hard for me to think there are 12 planets.

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In a way, though, the discoveries of Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus (which lies on a path opposite to Pluto), and other heavenly bodies is what directly led to the meeting of the Astronomer's Union. I guess they wanted the definitions straight before they immediately classified any new discoveries as planets.

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I thought "Xena" was already consider a planet and it just had not spread yet.

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It's not official yet. If the proposal goes through next week, "Xena" will finally reach planet status.

Though probably not with that name. It will go in as UB313 until a "real" name is chosen. Though I find it hilarious that the name they gave the moon orbiting "Xena" was "Gabrielle." Those crazy astonomers!

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So much for My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.

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Seriously man. I was just thinking that. How are we going to identify them now?

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Served us Nine Pizzas? Never heard that one before.

But yeah, I was thinking the same. And you can't even make a new one, how do you fit 2003 U-whatever in there?

I've heard that all the time. Sometimes it's pie, but it's something like that. But each person has their own little way of remembering things.

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My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas 2 Cousin Cody.
It is not perfect, but it works.

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It'll give something for teachers to dream up of, that's for sure.

And who knows? Maybe with enough pressure from the teachers, the Astronomer's Union will pressure the discoverers to give 2003 UB313 an actual name.

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Well, if Pluto gets dumped, just change "nine pizzas" to "nachos."
I personally think we should change Pluto's status. We can say it goes inside and outside Neptune's orbit, or that it has a kind-of moon, but I see it as too conditional to leave Pluto as a planet.

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Or maybe Pluto was the tip of a whole new classification of planets that are smaller and fly around in eccentric orbits.

I'm going to guess that, in the future, planets are going to be classified into groups: the inner planets, the asteroid belt planets, the gas giants, and the plutoids.

And who knows? Maybe we've only scraped the surface on planetary discoveries. For all we know, there might actually be a hundred planets in our solar system. We just haven't discovered them all yet.

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Heh. I saw this on the Colbert report last night.

While it makes me sad my former knowledge of the universe is going out the window, I guess it's no big deal.

Anyway, "2003 UB313" is the best name. It'll be the robot planet.

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The problem is that if these three get access, it'll open the door for dozens more planets to join the solar system when they're undoubtedly discovered deeper and deeper.

Ready to memorize 50 planets?

I think I'd prefer having Pluto dumped. And who wants a planet if it's too far out to learn anything about it other than it's there? I want aliens!

Maybe in the future, though, we won't have to memorize all the planets.

Think of it this way. There are thousands of bodies of water in the US that are classified as lakes. No kid is ever expected to memorize all of them, but they are at least asked to memorize the Great Lakes (under the fine memorization tool "HOMES" for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior).

Then again, maybe I'm the only one who had to do that, since I did live in Michigan.

This might end up being the same with planets. There might be 50 planets, but in 10 to 20 years, maybe kids will only be asked to memorize the "major" or "classical" planets (being our traditional 9 planets).

EDIT: Now that I think of it, 50 wouldn't be such a pain to memorize, since I'm pretty sure I had to memorize the names of all 50 states when I was a kid.

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Pffff.

There's an article on CNN right now with a really sensational headline: "Earth's Moon could become a planet."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/08/18/moon.planet/index.html

The writer makes a big deal about how controversial this idea is.

However, if you read the article, it states that the moon would be reclassified a planet if, in a billion years, the moon escapes Earth's orbit and orbits around the sun on its own.

That doesn't sound so controversial at all.

Ah, these wonderful misleading headliners. I guess they did succeed in getting me to click on it, though.

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One of those planets should be called Yuggoth.

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I was waiting on this to happen.

Last semester, I went to a seminar given by one of the local NASA guys (Bill Cook, if you want to know). He was talking about "planets" and other celestial bodies. Someone asked him about the "new planet" that was in the news, and the discussion turned to "why are planets classified as planets?".

He presented the "rules" and essentially showed that there was no logical way to have 9 planets. He said that cases could be (and have been) argued correctly that there should only be 8 planets. He said that cases have also been correctly argued that there should be something like 12-15 planets. I guess that, rather than say "bye bye" to Pluto, they opted for the "open the rules up, so that Pluto fits and let in the other guys, too" plan.

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Heh heh, potential new planets are always fun to talk about. And "Xena" is an awesome pop-culture planet name! Maybe that'll open the door for planet names such as "Pac-World", or perhaps "StrongBadia" ?

But I hope that Pluto isn't reclassified as a non-planet, 'cause it was discovered by someone from New Mexico.

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I will get them to change 2003 UB313's name to "Rupert" if it effing kills me.

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I also watched Colbert Report too. It was hilarious.

Anyway, I heard about these three planets, but I didn't realize that Ceres was in the asteroid belt. That was kind of a shocker. I thought it was meaning the Kuiper (or summat) Belt. I really would enjoy Mars, Ceres, Jupiter. Ancient gods rock. But wouldn't Ceres be destroyed if it collided with another asteroid?

And the bi-planetary system sounds really cosmic and awesome. Pluto-Charon. Like they were made the same way the Earth and moon were, but are so much the same in mass that they orbit themselves. Maybe that's why their sun orbit's so strange.

Xena. I really don't know. It's larger than Pluto, and farther out, but I'm not ready to accept it as a planet yet. Give me a couple of weeks.

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