YUGGOTH (VIŠE) NIJE PLANETA!

[Ghoul]

Dinky Pluto loses its status as planet By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer



PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Pluto, beloved by some as a cosmic underdog but scorned by astronomers who considered it too dinky and distant, was unceremoniously stripped of its status as a planet Thursday.

The International Astronomical Union, dramatically reversing course just a week after floating the idea of reaffirming Pluto's planethood and adding three new planets to Earth's neighborhood, downgraded the ninth rock from the sun in historic new galactic guidelines.

The shift will have the world's teachers scrambling to alter lesson plans just as schools open for the fall term.

"It will all take some explanation, but it is really just a reclassification and I can't see that it will cause any problems," said Neil Crumpton, who teaches science at a high school north of London. "Science is an evolving subject and always will be."

Powerful new telescopes, experts said, are changing the way they size up the mysteries of the solar system and beyond. But the scientists at the conference showed a soft side, waving plush toys of the Walt Disney character Pluto the dog — and insisting that Pluto's spirit will live on in the exciting discoveries yet to come.

"The word 'planet' and the idea of planets can be emotional because they're something we learn as children," said Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped hammer out the new definition.

"This is really all about science, which is all about getting new facts," he said. "Science has marched on. ... Many more Plutos wait to be discovered."

Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn't meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit." That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine.

Astronomers have labored without a universal definition of a planet since well before the time of Copernicus, who proved that the Earth revolves around the sun, and the experts gathered in Prague burst into applause when the guidelines were passed.

Predictably, Pluto's demotion provoked plenty of wistful nostalgia.

"It's disappointing in a way, and confusing," said Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh.

"I don't know just how you handle it. It kind of sounds like I just lost my job," she said from Las Cruces, N.M. "But I understand science is not something that just sits there. It goes on. Clyde finally said before he died, 'It's there. Whatever it is. It is there.'"

The decision by the IAU, the official arbiter of heavenly objects, restricts membership in the elite cosmic club to the eight classical planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Pluto and objects like it will be known as "dwarf planets," which raised some thorny questions about semantics: If a raincoat is still a coat, and a cell phone is still a phone, why isn't a dwarf planet still a planet?

      NASA said Pluto's downgrade would not affect its $700 million New Horizons spacecraft mission, which this year began a 9 1/2-year journey to the oddball object to unearth more of its secrets.

But mission head Alan Stern said he was "embarrassed" by Pluto's undoing and predicted that Thursday's vote would not end the debate. Although 2,500 astronomers from 75 nations attended the conference, only about 300 showed up to vote.

"It's a sloppy definition. It's bad science," he said. "It ain't over."

Under the new rules, two of the three objects that came tantalizingly close to planethood will join Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto whose discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, has nicknamed "Xena." The third object, Pluto's largest moon, Charon, isn't in line for any special designation.

Brown, whose Xena find rekindled calls for Pluto's demise because it showed it isn't nearly as unique as it once seemed, waxed philosophical.

"Eight is enough," he said, jokingly adding: "I may go down in history as the guy who killed Pluto."

Demoting the icy orb named for the Roman god of the underworld isn't personal — it's just business — said Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and host of the PBS show "Star Gazer."

"It's like an amicable divorce," he said. "The legal status has changed but the person really hasn't. It's just single again."

___

AP Science Writers Alicia Chang in Los Angeles and Seth Borenstein in Washington, and correspondents Sue Leeman in London and Mike Schneider in Cape Canaveral, Fla., contributed to this story.

[K.K. Queen]

To nije fer, ja sam bas volela Pluton . Za mene će on još uvek biti planeta bez obzira šta su astrolozi rekli.

[Dreamlord]

Pa ako ti cekas da ti ASTROLOZI kuku tebi!    

Astronomi sa druge strane.

Meni svejedno. Ja bi obrisao i jebeni Merkur. Koja je to kurceva planeta

[Loengrin]

Ja se zaista trudim da nikada u životu ne budem gadna, ali lepo piše ... Astronomija, astrologija, kosmologija, futurologija ...
... Ema, Ena, Ela ...


Eto, iako Pluton više nije planeta, barem je sigurno da će i dalje biti u Diznilendu  

[Bab Jaga]

Ovdje

http://forum.sci.hr/viewtopic.php?t=316

jedan dobar prikaz

[Bab Jaga]

I dalje je sve to skupa izvor zabave:
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Bush_administration:_Earth_only_Planet_that_Really_Matters
.

[S.]

Bre, to kad u'vati, ne pusca! Prilog za, sta ja znam, kuvar kako se ozbiljno razresavaju problematicne odluke tamo kojekakvih...

California Legislature

Moj izvor uporno tvrdi da je ovo zaistinski, pa da verujem...

[mac]

Kad imaš ludake za glasače moraš i ti da se praviš lud...

[Gwydion]

To da li cemo mi Plutno dozivljavati kao planetu, ili necemo, mislim da ni najmanje ne utice na orbitu Plutona  

[Oroluin]

Glupost!
Ko da nije moglo da se kaže:
Pluton ne ispunjava uslove da bude planeta, ali ostaje mu taj status iz razloga tradicije. Druga nebeska tela sličnih osobina ne mogu dobiti taj status.  

[S.]

Pa da, ali prvo treba znati koji su to uslovi koji moraju biti ispunjeni da nesto bude planeta, jel' da? Rezolucija 5 je zapravo prva formalna definicija planete jos od antickih vremena. Da li ce se menjati, videcemo. Vidim da nema nigde originalnog teksta pa evo:

"Definition of a Planet in the Solar System

Contemporary observations are changing our understanding of planetary systems, and it is important that our nomenclature for objects reflect our current understanding. This applies, in particular, to the designation "planets". The word "planet" originally described "wanderers" that were known only as moving lights in the sky. Recent discoveries lead us to create a new definition, which we can make using currently available scientific information.


RESOLUTION 5

The IAU therefore resolves that "planets" and other bodies in our Solar System, except satellites, be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A "planet"^1 is a celestial body that
   (a) is in orbit around the Sun,
   (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and
   (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that
   (a) is in orbit around the Sun,
   (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape^2 ,
   (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and       (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects^3 except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar-System Bodies".


^1 The eight "planets" are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
^2 An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.
^3 These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.


RESOLUTION 6

The IAU further resolves:

Pluto is a "dwarf planet" by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects.