Hey, watch it, I'm 5' 9 and 3/4"!
Seriously though, if you count all the other trans Neptunian objects, such
as Charon, Chaos, Deucalion, Huya, Ixion, Makemake, Orcus, Quaoar, Sedna,
Varuna and my personal favorite, Rhadamanthus, there are millions of
planets.
Phil Whitmer
Joshua Tree Earth & Space Museum
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>; "Meteorite List"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2012 1:14 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Petition For a Pluto New Horizons Stamp
Gary, List,
If it's not a planet, why do we call it a dwarf PLANET?
Do you refer to everyone you know who is less than
five-foot-ten as a "dwarf person"? So-and-so isn't a person;
he's a dwarf person? Adjectives do not negate the thing
they describe.
So, we have dwarf planets, gas planets, rocky planets,
etc, but they're ALL planets. I take the IAU at its literal
word, not its irrational intent. As far as I am concerned,
Pluto is a planet, Ceres is a planet, Eris is a planet,
Makemake and Haumea are... You get the idea. Since
Vesta (now that we've seen it) probably formed "round"
and has been chipped away at ever since, it's a planet
(and likely Pallas and Hygeia too).
There are at least 23 planets, (despite the eccentric
opinions of an Uruguayan cosmologist to whom I would
suggest in reply that Brazil is a nation and Uruguay is
only a dwarf nation).
IAU: "A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient
mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so
that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round)
shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither
a star nor a satellite of a planet." I would add the phrase
"unless distorted by dynamic equilibrium," a condition
that unless added would eliminate Jupiter and Saturn
and even the Earth as planets!
Planet quarrels. Good times...
Sterling K. Webb
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary K. Foote" <[email protected]>
To: "Meteorite List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2012 6:55 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Petition For a Pluto New Horizons Stamp
But Pluto isn't a planet anymore. Its a dwarf planet. Maybe they'll
make
really tiny stamps ;)
Gary
On Wed, February 1, 2012 11:46 pm, Sterling K. Webb wrote:
Of course, in March 2015, if all goes well, the
New Horizons mission will reach Pluto. Don't
you think it will deserve a stamp of its own to
correct that 1991 stamp when it gets there,
in 2015?
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