[Infowarrior] - Solar system to welcome three new planets

[Richard Forno]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10396493

Traditional concepts of astronomy are about to be thrown on their head.
 
Solar system to welcome three new planets
 
12.00pm Wednesday August 16, 2006
By Steve Connor
 
The nine planets of the solar system are about to be transformed into 12.
 
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is planning to add three new
members to the exclusive club of large celestial objects orbiting our Sun.
 
Astronomers are about to vote on an official proposal to extend the
definition of a planet to include at least three more objects that are known
to be big enough to warrant planetary status.
 
It will mean that astronomy textbooks will have to be rewritten with the
names Ceres, Charon and UB313 being added to the more familiar names of the
classical planets.
 
At one point it was thought that Pluto - the smallest and most distant of
the planets - would be kicked out of the club, but now it appears that it is
welcomed as the prototype of a new class of smaller planets known as
"plutons".
 
The International Astronomical Union, which has been the arbiter of
planetary nomenclature since 1919, has received a new definition of a planet
from a special committee of seven experts set up two years ago to adjudicate
on the issue.
 
Ron Ekers, the president of the IAU, said the ancient description of a
planet as an object that wanders against a backdrop of fixed stars is no
longer valid in an age of advanced telescopes.
 
"Modern science provides muchmore knowledge than the simple fact that
objects orbiting the Sun appear to move with respect to the background of
fixed stars," Dr Ekers said.
 
"Recent new discoveries have been made of objects in the outer regions of
our solar system that have sizes comparable to and larger than Pluto.
 
These discoveries have rightfully called into question whether or not they
should be considered as new planets." The three new planets are Charon, once
considered a moon of Pluto but now described as its double planet; Ceres,
formerly known as an asteroid or minor planet; and UB313, an object that has
yet to be given a formal name (although it has been nicknamed Xena), and
which was only identified last year.
 
There are now eight "classical"planets, three "plutons", those planets that
are similar in size to Pluto withextremely wide solar orbits, and
theasteroid-like Ceres.
 
Experts sitting on IAU's planet definition committee - composed of
astronomers, historians and writers - concluded that in future a planet
should be defined as a celestial body that is big enough for its gravity
field to form a near-spherical shape.
 
The object must also be in orbit around the Sun - or another star - but not
as a satellite of another planet, which rules out the Moon and the larger
moons of other planets.
 
"Our goal was to find a scientific basis for a new definition of 'planet',
and we chose gravity as the determining factor," said Professor Richard
Binzel, a planetary scientist and member of the definition committee.
 
"Nature decides whether or not an object is a planet.".
 
The new definition of a planet means that there are another dozen or two
dozen other known objects in the solar system that may one day be included
in the planetary club.
 
The seven-member definition committee convened in Paris in late June and
early July, and its recommendations will now go to the IAU's general
assembly which will vote on the resolution as its meeting in Prague this
week.
 
Professor Owen Gingrich, the committee chairman, said the deliberations were
long and hard, but in the end a consensus was reached.
 
"In July we had vigorous discussions of both the scientific and the
cultural-historical issues and on the second morning several members
admitted that they had not slept well, worrying that we would not be able to
reach a consensus," Professor Gingrich said.
 
"But by the end of a long day, the miracle had happened - we had reached a
unanimous agreement."The issue came to a head after it was discovered that
UB313 was bigger than Pluto, which was discovered in 1930 and was only
called a planet because it was originally thought to be as big as Earth.
 
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