Comments on: Thirteen Planets Orbit the Sun http://www.sciscoop.com/2008-8-18-125547-031.html Scooping up science news and dropping it on your desk Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:31:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: xtifr http://www.sciscoop.com/2008-8-18-125547-031.html/comment-page-1#comment-1720 xtifr Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:58:21 +0000 http://localhost/~arielschwartz/wordpress/sciscoop/?p=3102#comment-1720 While this is better, in my opinion, than not classifying Ceres and Eris as planets, it still has at least one major flaw.<p> The problem with this definition is that it leaves us with no name for "rogue" spherical objects (those not orbiting any body at all, or those orbiting a cluster or galaxy rather than a particular star or planet).<p> The real problem is that we're trying to merge two completely unrelated concepts (size and orbital properties) into a single word.  This is silly.  As far as I'm concerned, any definition which suggests that Mercury is more like Jupiter than it is like Ceres <em>or</em> Ganymede is a dumb definition.  :) While this is better, in my opinion, than not classifying Ceres and Eris as planets, it still has at least one major flaw.

The problem with this definition is that it leaves us with no name for “rogue” spherical objects (those not orbiting any body at all, or those orbiting a cluster or galaxy rather than a particular star or planet).

The real problem is that we’re trying to merge two completely unrelated concepts (size and orbital properties) into a single word.  This is silly.  As far as I’m concerned, any definition which suggests that Mercury is more like Jupiter than it is like Ceres or Ganymede is a dumb definition.  :)

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