Word: planetful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...attitudes toward environmental pollution are like our attitudes toward food: we keep shoving pollutants into the atmosphere with the same abandon that we shove junk food into our mouths, even though we know the results will probably be serious. Why are we not proactive when it comes to the planet? Our negligence could have a fatal impact not only on ourselves, but also on billions of innocents. Matthew Hutchison West Hollywood, California, U.S. Testifying before a U.S. senate sub-committee, Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said, "The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural...
...doesn't stop there. What do you call all the other planetlike objects that have lately been discovered orbiting around our sun, tiny worlds with names like Sedna, Quaoar and 2004 DW? Part of the problem is that there is no precise scientific definition of the word planet. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is trying to hammer one out, but the decision is proving more difficult than anyone thought. An apparent consensus, reached just weeks ago, seems to have fallen apart. "The current state," admits Brian Marsden, director of the IAU's Minor Planet Center at Harvard, "is rather confusing...
Most people don't worry much about such distinctions. With planets, however, it's different--as Tyson discovered. How do you resolve the problem he created? One idea would be to arbitrarily set the lower limit for a planet at about 2,000 km (1,250 miles) in diameter, which would let Pluto remain a planet and make 2003 UB313 one as well, but keep the rest of the riffraff out. "Pluto," says Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a member of the IAU working group, "has historically been considered a planet...
...another idea, favored by Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., would open the door even wider. By his definition, any object massive enough for gravity to squeeze into a spherical shape is a planet--unless the object orbits a bigger planet, of course. Otherwise, dozens of moons would have to be reclassified as planets. "Defining planets by size is purely arbitrary," agrees Marsden, who likes Stern's idea. "The Pluto-crats want to cut things off there, but it's absurd to say that an object 2,000 km across is a planet...
Tyson, ever the iconoclast, thinks the word planet should be retired entirely, not just stripped from Pluto. "You tell me something's a planet," he says, "then I have to ask you 20 more questions to figure out what it actually is." As an educator as well as a scientist, though, he is thrilled that the question of planethood has been opened for freewheeling public discussion. "The point," says Tyson, who is working on a book about the Pluto debacle, "is that the solar system is a lot more interesting than just a list of nine planets." And thanks...