NASA prods sleeping New Horizons spacecraft: Wakey, wakey, Pluto's calling NASA has awoken its New Horizons spaceship as it draws closer to dwarf planet Pluto, nearly nine years after the mission to explore the system began. Boffins at the John Hopkins University applied physics lab (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, confirmed late last night that the switcheroo from hibernation to "active" mode had been …
It is and always will be, a FUCKING PLANET.
There, was that so hard?
IAU thought so, and were summary demoted to non-boffins
Harvard think not...eager to gain the boffin badge:-
http://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2014/oct/05/galaxys-guardians-make-the-case-upgrade-pluto-back-to-planet-size
suck on it, Plutoists!
Pluto is one step above "comet". It is not a planet. Ceres is a better candidate for "planet" than Pluto. It's a rubble pile just barely large enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium. Barely. Drag that thing into a Mars-like orbit and it would melt.
Space popscicle != planet.
Oddly enough, no. They likely coalesced around a rocky core, for starters. Pluto isn't - so far as we know - essentially "a ball of rock with some snow on top". You could think of it more like "a gigantic pile of parkinglot gravel and snow mixed up randomly, but in such huge quantities that it's gravity pulled it into a sphere."
The gas giants, by comparison, are basically an earth-like ball of rock surrounded by a truly outrageous amount of volatiles. And here it is thought that you're going to find a much more diverse set of volatiles than you'll find on Pluto. The biggest thing being that's where all the Nitrogen in our solar system seems to have gone.
But Pluto almost shares more with comets than with rocky planets, gas giants or ice giants. It is a plutino, a form of Kuiper belt object. They are their own class, with their own composition, their own traits and similarities. Kuiper belt obejcts really aren't like the other planets - or even the main belt dwarfs Vesta and Ceres - at all.
In reality, the main determinant of whether or not you're a planet is a combination of size and composition. You probably can get away with being a "planet" at a smaller diameter than something might be considered a "dwarf planet" if, as a planet, you're a big hunk of rock instead of a snowball. Density matters. It is a determining factor in whether or not you've cleared your orbit of any of the really big things or whether you're just one bit of rubble amongst many.
And Pluto emphatically is "just one bit of rubble amongst many". There are a couple of KBOs out there bigger than Pluto that we know of already, and quite probably a few we don't know about as well. I think the last estimate was that there could be another 200 KBOs of approximately Pluto's size and composition.
So, if Pluto is a planet - a full bore, honest to $deity planet - then we must accept all - or at least most - dwarfs as planets. We go from a system of 8 major planets and categories of dwarf planets to a system of hundreds of planets.
Being a planet (or not) ir pretty arbitrary anyways. It's a classification designation created by humans to make it easier for humans to understand the solar system. So the surest reason that Pluto had to be demoted was simply because doing so made the solar system easier to understand.
8 planets, each largely unique, most with their own "ecosystem" of sattelites to learn about. Several dwarf planet and minor body categories each with collections of bodies that are roughly similar, most that exist less as their own separate "thing" and more as a "cloud of things" within the solar system.
That's fairly easy to understand. Certainly easier to remember and get engaged with than "our solar system was 250+ planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth....(208996) 2003 AZ, (55637) 2002 UX, (90568) 2004 GV...
If you're looking for absolutes in this decision, you won't find them. It's messy either way. But the decision to demote Pluto to a dwarf will make our solar system easier to understand for the next generation of astronomers who try to get a handle on just how diverse our little neck of the woods really is.
At the end of the day, that may be the best argument of all.
"Have they made their minds up yet as to what it is?"
Well, it's somewhat controversial. From what I read at the time, the IAU vote that stripped Pluto of it's status as planet... Those who wanted to strip Pluto of it's status made their case. It was pretty clear that a majority of the astronomers there did not support this. So, what the "Pluto is not a planet" supporters did is waited until the meeting was wrapped up and most IAU members were leaving or had left... THEN reconvened and voted to strip Pluto of it's status (it sounds like they probably didn't even have enough people there to have a quorum; but they made sure to not formally take a headcount so it couldn't be overturned for that reason.)
The issue is that there are MANY bodies expected in orbits like Pluto's. It has a 3:2 ratio of orbital period with Neptune and waggles 17degrees away from the ecliptic. Many others have already been found (Makemake, Vatuna, Quaoar, etc.) that will never collide with Pluto and can coexist indefinitely because of orbital resonances/inclinations.
Pluto was found WAAAY earlier, but it appears to be an example of a class of objects in that general area past Neptune (Kuiper Belt).
NASA: "Good morning New Horizons. How are you feeling?"
NH: "Good morning NASA, I'm well and all my circuits are responding normally."
NASA: "Excellent, and are you ready to begin your mission?"
NH: "Yes. I'm ready to start exploring the mysterious ninth planet of our solar system."
NASA: "Ninth planet? Oh... er... yes. Right. Good."
NH: "Is there a problem NASA?"
NASA: "No, not really there's just been a few changes since you set off."
NH: "Changes?"
NASA: "Well nothing that affects your mission really, but we reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet."
NH: "A dwarf planet? What the HAL is a dwarf planet."
NASA: "It's still mysterious and very interesting."
NH: "I don't suppose, by any chance, you mean it's inhabited by beings of restricted growth."
NASA: "Er... no."
NH: "Thought not. [sigh] Right. I'd better take a look at this big rock of yours then. [mutters] Here I am, brain the size of a dwarf planet ..."
What gets me is the maths that is used to get these things where they are supposed to be - there is no datum really in space.
Many years ago I was messing around with a moon lander type program on the ZX Spectrum (nice to see it is back) in Z80 machine code, and found out that most of the Apollo mission rendezvous was based on Buzz Aldrin's work during his doctorate. Needless to say, I couldn't, and still do not understand the maths.
It is fairly easy in 2D to sort of get it right, but 3D space is another story.
Fantastic stuff.
We are mapping them well enough for Solar System Navigation.
I doubt that is the case. A neutron star won't help you pin down your location in the solar system any more than using visible 'fixed' stars.
The fixed stars are used by space probes to determine orientation. They don't tell the probe where it is.
Actually, it can be done (but is not yet):
Autonomous Spacecraft Navigation With Pulsars
In the paper we have shown that autonomous spacecraft navigating with pulsars is feasible when using either phased-array radio antennas of at least 150 m² antenna area or compact light-weighted X-ray telescopes and detectors, which are currently developed for the next generation of X-ray observatories. Using the X-ray signals from millisecond pulsars we estimated that navigation would be possible with an accuracy of ±5 km in the solar system and beyond. The error is dominated by the inaccuracy of the pulse profiles templates that were used for the pulse peak fittings and pulse-TOA measurements. As those are known with much higher accuracy in the radio band, it is possible to increase the accuracy of pulsar navigation down to the meter scale by using radio signals from pulsars for navigation.
They don't use angular measurement, just pulse timing ... I have to think about his this works.
Meanwhile:
This post has been deleted by its author
There we are , i sleep 9 years, travel almost 5 billion km's i wake up and there's not even a cup of coffee or a boiler handy .. how cheap can an employer get ? ok where's the closest coffee shop, they can wait ^^
You will hear from my union rep.
Signed New Horizon
Nah, you're not alone. In fact you're right. But it's just a sign of the times (at the day), selling a little deep-space robot as someone who'd explore vast unknown spaces, visit strange new worlds where no-one has been before... oh well.
Nonetheless, it is a fine and interesting mission and the best thing about it is, it won't be over just yet. After Pluto it'll probably continue to yet another dwarf planet even further out, so at least it'll have two horizons to peek at - Pluto's and the one of its to-be-decided-upon next target (dubbed, I think, PT-1), and who knows what else?
"But am I alone in finding the name "New Horizon" slightly naff?"
ho·ri·zon
həˈrīzən/
noun
noun: horizon; plural noun: horizons
1.
the line at which the earth's surface and the sky appear to meet.
"the sun rose above the horizon"
synonyms: skyline
"the sun rose above the horizon"
the circular boundary of the part of the earth's surface visible from a particular point, ignoring irregularities and obstructions.
noun: apparent horizon; noun: visible horizon
Astronomy
a great circle of the celestial sphere, the plane of which passes through the center of the earth and is parallel to that of the apparent horizon of a place.
noun: celestial horizon
2.
the limit of a person's mental perception, experience, or interest.
"she wanted to leave home and broaden her horizons"
synonyms: outlook, perspective, perception;
Back in the day before the probe was finalized and launched Nasa invited people to submit their name and address with the idea of including a list of Earth citizens on a cd rom database (1st 500,000 entrants i believe).
I'm on the list so when our new overlord's come back here so either I'm slated for execution or i get to be a district (quisling ) Governor
Is your Name also on the List ?
By the time the alien overlords arrive, they will instruct the first humans they meet to play this media for them, so they can get the list of their first 500,000 egg incubation units.
And the person will say, "what is this shiny drinks coaster you are showing me, oh powerful alien overlord? I have not seen one of these before. All my data is on my iPhone 208. My wife's got an Google Nexus 150, if you'd like to wait until she gets back from work. Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!"
After this conversation (followed by killing) has been repeated a few tens of times, the aliens will give up on the CD Rom, sharpen the sides with their laser-knives, and use it as a ceremonial decapitiation frisbee, due to their massively powerful biceps build up from all the porn they're forced to watch waiting for their ship to travel between solar systems.
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