Come on, people. Pluto is not a planet. "Xena" is not a planet. None of the rocks in the Main Asteroid Belt or the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt are planets either.
It's sad enough that it's taken this long for the scientific community to "demote" Pluto--why are you making it worse with this ridiculous protest?
I'm sorry you'll have to change your mnemonic devices and that the handcrafted models of the solar system (not to scale) from your middle school years are now obsolete. But what's more important: a happy shiny affirmation of your childhood, or the progress of science?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I can see both sides here, and really I'm just left with one real question. And bear in mind I'm asking this while sitting under my NASA calendar.
Who gives a damn?
And I mean that in non-literal terms. My problem is that while people are wasting time arguing about irrelevant semantics, they neglect their actual scientific duties while at the same time devaluing their own arguments. A rock by any other name is still just a rock. Or a spherical gas cloud. Or a complex and dynamic collection of rock, gas, molten rock, liquids and life forms.
It bugs me when people get so distracted by their ideological crap that they lose sight of the bigger picture. And I don't think in the long run reclassification of any known celestial body will ultimately affect the study of it. But if we do really need the definition of a planet, shouldn't we make sure it's vague enough to not exlude bodies that have rings of celestial debris, or orbitals? With the definition they gave us, isn't it vague enough to seem inclusive, but ultimately definitive enough to exclude almost all of the planets?
Now I'm just confused and feel like dragging the telescope outside. Maybe I will. ^_^
Well, historically classification has been a very large part of science. We tend to group things by their characteristics in order to come to a broader understanding. So I don't think it's a semantic issue, really. As we learn more about our solar system and the features of the celestial bodies within it, it's only natural to refine how we think about things and organize our information.
I don't know if the definition they came up with is the best one they could have, but I am pretty damn sure that in a game of "one of these things is not like the others", Pluto is the odd man out. We didn't know that back in the 30s when Pluto was first discovered, but we certainly know that now.
I'll take "shiny affirmation of your childhood" please..
Bah.
Believing something just because that was what you were taught, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, annoys me.
If everyone did that, we'd still all claim the world was flat, or that the Sun orbits the Earth.
I know that the status of Pluto is minor in comparison, but that doesn't make it any less questionable. The purpose of life is to learn and move forward, not to sit around festering in our own juices.
Change is scary, but it's also exciting, and ultimately it's necessary for survival. And beyond that, growth and change and expanding our knowledge are what make us better people, enrich our lives. I think it's far more exciting (not to mention fair) to teach kids everything we know now about the solar system, rather than teach them what we were taught, with no updates.
Seriously dudes, she's right.
Post a Comment