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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
 Posted - 08/17/2006 : 11:32:53 [Permalink]
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| Love your sig, Randy. Laughed out loud at that one. |
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2006 : 15:50:11 [Permalink]
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| The name of this thread and the fact that the article was obviously from a New Zealand website first scared the shit out of me. The property market over here has BOOMED the last 6-7 years and I now got visions of rich americans buying up all of our precious land, increasing prices even further. New Zealand would be so expensive that I would have to move to Ceres. Aaaaaahhhhh!!! Quick, give me the valium. [breathing slowing]. That's better. Don't scare me like that again, PLEASE!!! |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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Michael Mozina
SFN Regular
1647 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2006 : 21:06:36 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by pleco
I can see it now ---
Year 2050: "back in my day, there was only nine planets in our solar system AND WE LIKED IT!"
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Paulos23
Skeptic Friend
USA
446 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2006 : 09:27:00 [Permalink]
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Astronomers are now fighting with Geoligists over who gets to use the term pluton.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060821/full/060821-4.html |
You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -- Aldous Huxley |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2006 : 12:31:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Paulos23
Astronomers are now fighting with Geoligists over who gets to use the term pluton.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060821/full/060821-4.html
I agree with the geologist. Much of California is made up of plutons, and these granite formations did not come from the Kuiper Belt. I like the geologist's analogy of botantsts finding intermediaries between bushes and trees, and naming them "animals."
I hereby recommend to the astronomers the use of the term, "percion," (pur'-see-on) in honor of the discoverer of Pluto, Percival Lowell.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 08/22/2006 12:42:16 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2006 : 18:48:32 [Permalink]
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Well, the Times has an article out now. They're saying: quote:
Pluto was looking more and more like a goner yesterday as astronomers meeting in Prague continued to debate the definition of a planet. “I think that today can go down as the ‘day we lost Pluto,' ” said Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., in an e-mail message from Prague.
Under fire from other astronomers and the public, a committee appointed by the International Astronomical Union revised and then revised again a definition proposed last week that would have expanded the number of official planets to 12, locking in Pluto as well as the newly discovered Xena in the outer solar system, as well as the asteroid Ceres and Pluto's moon Charon.
The new definition offered yesterday would set up a three-tiered classification scheme with eight “planets”; a group of “dwarf planets” that would include Pluto, Ceres, Xena and many other icy balls in the outer solar system; and thousands of “smaller solar system bodies,” like comets and asteroids.
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2006 : 14:13:03 [Permalink]
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Oops, I'd written that Percival Lowell was the discoverer of Pluto. I was wrong.
It was Clyde Tombaugh (who worked at the Lowell Observatory himself) who discovered the dwarf planet in 1930, 14 years after Lowell's death. But Lowell and William Pickering had done the calculations that eventually led Tombaugh to the discovery. In fact the symbol for Pluto is made up of the letters P and L, Lowell's initials.
So maybe "percion," my rejected name for dwarf planets, should be "clydeon"?
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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