Happy New Years!

[obscurus]

As for things drifting through space, they certainly would not be called planets, and the chances of a planet from one star floating off and being captured by another star are so mindbogglingly remote, it's laughable even thinking about it, and as far as we know, planets do not form by themselves in deep space.

 

Shows how little you know about astronomy. In fact there is a very high chance of a planet, especially large planets like Jupiter, being thrown out of orbit from their parent star, especially in densely populated regions of the galaxy where stars frequently collide and fling off bodies orbiting them in the process. There probably a very large number of such planets wandering the univers, but they would be inherently very difficult to detect, as they are too far from any stars to have any significant gravitational lensing effect to be infered, and they recieve too little light to be detected optically. There are also large nebulae where stars and planets are born as gas and dust clouds form accretion discs. Many of these planets formed here will be too small to become stars - they are lone planets, and astronomers refer to them as such.

 

Planets don't need to form in deep space for them to wind up there as a result of large gravitational disturbances. Planets can be ripped from orbit due to the shockwave of a nearby exploding star, colliding stars, collisions with other planets. We have evidence of interplanetary collisions in our own solar system:

 

The planet Uranus is tipped on its side - its axis of rotation is at roughly 90 degrees to the eccliptic, which could only have happend if another planet knocked it over during a near collision. The planet Venus has a very slow, retrograde rotation - again, a likely result of a wandering planet (maybe the same one that tipped Uranus over).

 

 

I think you'd find - if you weren't being obtusely unfair - that it's perfectly clear. It's obvious straight away using the system that there are 8 planets in our solar system. And of course we should base the numbers on the properties of our own solar system. At this point there is no reason to assume that all solar systems dont' form in the same way, and will have very similar properties.

 

All of the star systems so far discovered are vastly different from the Solar system (by the way there is only one Solar system - star systems are named after the parent star, which in the case of our sun, is named Sol by astronomers). Most star systems so far discovered have massive gas giants orbiting very close to the parent star, some with very eccentric orbits that would make Pluto look positively orderly. By your definition, they aren't planets. Now of course, this may be an artifact of the way extrasolar planets are currently detected (it is biased against finding smaller terrestrial planets), but it is the only data we have so far, and on that basis, the Solar system is quite wierd.

 

With that soluiton only one object currently has to be redefined, with your solution a dozen objects will have to be redefined., and we'll end up with hundreds of planets.

You're basically defining planets the way you might define eggs - have a little plastic sheet with various sized holes in it, and see which one the planet fits through.

What if a comet happens to come in that's just big enough to be spherical? It has all the properties of a comet, behaves like a comet, but suddenly it has to be popped through the egg gauge and called a planet.

WHat about ex-stars that have cooled down and become dwarfs, they can be the size of planets, and spherical, and are no longer generating their own heat - are they now planets?

 

A planet should be a non-exclusive term, as far as I am concerned. An object can be both a planet AND a commet.

A moon is a planet that orbits a larger planet. A star is a planet that is so large that it has formed a spontaneous nuclear reaction. A brown dwarf is a planet, and oh by the way, they still generate their own heat, as does Jupiter, which is also a borderline brown dwarf - Jupiter was almost a star, and it currently puts out more heat than it receives from the Sun.

 

Simple, hierarchical definitions.

 

 

i prefer hierarchical classification systems (I am biased towards them - being a biologist I am used to them). For example, the way living organisms are classified: A human is a type of ape, which is a type of mammal, which is a type of vertebrate, which is a type of animal.

 

Similarly, I would classify celestial bodies according to whether or not they are spherical or not,and proceed from there.

 

Hierarchical classification systems allow for much simpler definitions of terminology, while you are trying to categorise things in a needlessly complex manner for no other apparent reason than that you dislike Pluto being refered to as a planet.

Edited January 4, 2006 by obscurus

[Darkness_Falls]

I just want Pluto to be grandfathered into our planetary classification, whether it's truly a planet or not. And if we have an agreed-upon definition/classification for what a "planet" is, then all other post-Pluto discovered objects should be put to this test. If it meets the criteria, then it's a planet. If it doesn't, then it's not. I don't see much harm in having Pluto be granted planetary rights Pluto is an exception, and I'm okay with it being part of our planet family... as long as there's an asterisk next to its entry in the astronomy books saying it's technically not a planet (if it isn't).

[oDDity]

Shows how little you know about astronomy. In fact there is a very high chance of a planet, especially large planets like Jupiter, being thrown out of orbit from their parent star, especially in densely populated regions of the galaxy where stars frequently collide and fling off bodies orbiting them in the process. There probably a very large number of such planets wandering the univers, but they would be inherently very difficult to detect, as they are too far from any stars to have any significant gravitational lensing effect to be infered, and they recieve too little light to be detected optically. There are also large nebulae where stars and planets are born as gas and dust clouds form accretion discs. Many of these planets formed here will be too small to become stars - they are lone planets, and astronomers refer to them as such.

I can't see the point in starting a paragraph by saying I don't know much about astronomy, when you proceed to show with your post that you get all your information from the 'Boys Big Book of Space'

They are called brown dwarves, not planets - you should write to the editor and tell him to change it.

 

 

Planets don't need to form in deep space for them to wind up there as a result of large gravitational disturbances. Planets can be ripped from orbit due to the shockwave of a nearby exploding star, colliding stars, collisions with other planets. We have evidence of interplanetary collisions in our own solar system:

What are you twaddling on about? I didn't say planets couldn't be dislodged from their star and float aimlessly in space, I said the chances of them getting to, and being captured by, another star system are too miniscule to be inlcuded as an exception in the definition of a planet.

 

The planet Uranus is tipped on its side - its axis of rotation is at roughly 90 degrees to the eccliptic, which could only have happend if another planet knocked it over during a near collision. The planet Venus has a very slow, retrograde rotation - again, a likely result of a wandering planet (maybe the same one that tipped Uranus over).

Don't be ridiculous.

There is no way of telling how early in their formation uranus and jupiter were affected, and the early solar system was packed full of huge objects wizzing around and crashing into each other.

THere is no evidence for a 'wandering planet' (except of course with your naive definition of 'anything that's big enough to be round' in which case there were millions of them) and defintiely none for one that came in from deep space after breaking away from another star sustem.

What happened to your motto of keeping explanations simple? That all disappears when you start grasping at straws and need to think of some ridiculously unlikely explaination to try and prove an erroneous point.

All of the star systems so far discovered are vastly different from the Solar system (by the way there is only one Solar system - star systems are named after the parent star, which in the case of our sun, is named Sol by astronomers). Most star systems so far discovered have massive gas giants orbiting very close to the parent star, some with very eccentric orbits that would make Pluto look positively orderly. By your definition, they aren't planets. Now of course, this may be an artifact of the way extrasolar planets are currently detected (it is biased against finding smaller terrestrial planets), but it is the only data we have so far, and on that basis, the Solar system is quite wierd.

'may be a result of'?? Of course it's down to the way they're currently detected. They can only detect systems where there is a massive planet having huge effects on the star, and are very close to the star so they have a fast orbit.

They could never detect something like our solar system yet, because the orbital cycle of the biggest planet is 12 years, and certainly never detect earth like planets because the effect is so tiny.

THey're weeding out all the strange ones now, like systems which are more or less failed binary star systems with a brown dwarf orbting a star very closely and very quickly, because they're the only ones they're able to detect.

A planet should be a non-exclusive term, as far as I am concerned. An object can be both a planet AND a commet.

A moon is a planet that orbits a larger planet. A star is a planet that is so large that it has formed a spontaneous nuclear reaction. A brown dwarf is a planet, and oh by the way, they still generate their own heat, as does Jupiter, which is also a borderline brown dwarf - Jupiter was almost a star, and it currently puts out more heat than it receives from the Sun.

Ok, well that's the end of the argument then.

Obscurus' definition of a planet = 'everything in the universe big enough to be round'

[Maximius]

Thought this would be of interest to the discussion:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060104/sc_...GZ1BHNlYwMxNzAw

 

and

 

http://www.livescience.com/bestimg/?url=05...pg&cat=best2005

 

and finally, a triumph of reason over religion:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060104/ap_on_...TdmBHNlYwM3NTM-

[Vadrosaul]

Your first Yahoo link expired.

 

I actually like Intelligent Design, not the actual theory, but how it will determine for me whether a person is a complete idiot by believing in it one iota. Good 'judge of character' topic

[oDDity]

The only thing intelligent design has going for it, like religion, is that it can't be completely and 100% ruled out, because it can't be proven to be wrong.

Then again, you could come up with endless outrageous theories which are so ridiculous they couldn't be proven wrong.

That's no basis for a belief system.

[Maximius]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0601...haron_moon.html

 

Here's another one to the same article.

 

I.D. is a good judge of whether I want to waste any time talking with an individual. Its similar to when someone asks if you've read any good books lately, then recommends the Chicken Soup for the Souls of Sad Ass Motherfuckers series or something. Satan save us from American self help culture as well as I.D.

 

Its true that I.D. cannot be disproven, which is precisely the reason it is not science at all. Scientific theories need to be falisifiable, there not only has to be evidence but there must be some sort of test that could conceivably prove that evidence wrong. I.D., which relies on the Fairy GodMonster as the source of biological complexity, cannot be disproven because no one has yet been able to point the way to Heaven to see if Bog actually exists.

[obscurus]

They are called brown dwarves, not planets - you should write to the editor and tell him to change it.

 

Brown dwarves are planets that didn't quite become stars. Jupiter is a brown dwarf (a brown dwarf is a gas giant planet that puts out more energy than it receives - a net energy emmiter - , which is exactly what Jupiter is), and Saturn is not far off it either. Perhaps we should modify oDDitys planetary inventory down to 6 planets, to exclude the two almost-stars...

 

What are you twaddling on about? I didn't say planets couldn't be dislodged from their star and float aimlessly in space, I said the chances of them getting to, and being captured by, another star system are too miniscule to be inlcuded as an exception in the definition of a planet.

 

Perhaps you misunderstood me, but I was pointing out that by your definition, a planet wandering around deep space was not a planet, which is just silly. I didn't say anything about it having to be captured by another star, merely that it could be flung off it's parent star and drif though interstellar space, though you are wrong on that count too, the chances of any individual planet being flung from one star to another might be small, but the sample space is huge, so you can still expect quite a lot of them to be flung off one star and captured by another star. I don't think you understand probability too well.

Anyway, the point is not how common or rare that event is, the point is that you shouldn't change the definition of a planet just because it happens to no longer be orbiting the star it originated from. A planet is a planet, whether it has a regular orbit, or an irregular one, or no discernable orbit at all.

 

I prefer to define things by what they are, not where they are or how they happen to move. A planet should be definable without needing to put it in the context of particular orbital patterns, or particular stars, or its point of origin, which is what you are doing. Would the Earth cease to be a planet if it was knocked out of orbit from the Sun and flung far off out of the Galaxy? If so, what would you then propose we call it? If Mercury can be considered a planet, why exclude pluto? Sorry, defining something by its current orbit is just stupid. If Pluto was knocked into a regular orbit closer to the Sun would it suddenly become a planet in your view?

 

 

Don't be ridiculous.

There is no way of telling how early in their formation uranus and jupiter were affected, and the early solar system was packed full of huge objects wizzing around and crashing into each other.

THere is no evidence for a 'wandering planet' (except of course with your naive definition of 'anything that's big enough to be round' in which case there were millions of them) and defintiely none for one that came in from deep space after breaking away from another star sustem.

 

That's not what most experts at NASA seem to think - the most probable explanation for the current state of Venus' and Uranus'

rotational axes is that a planet roughly the size of Mars wandered very close too them at great speed at some point in the past and kept going, eventually being flung out of the solar system and into intestallar space beyond the heliopause. Whether or not this happened early in the formation of the Solar system or late is utterly irrelevant. The key is the huge objects whizing around - some of them will have no doubt been flung from the solar system, and there is no reason to think that some may have arrived from other sources. And with sufficient super-computing power you should be able to model what happend and when by analysing the current orbital patterns of the planets, which has been done already to a limited extent.

 

What happened to your motto of keeping explanations simple? That all disappears when you start grasping at straws and need to think of some ridiculously unlikely explaination to try and prove an erroneous point.

 

My point is not erroneous, and you are the one clutching at straws by coming up with some convoluted, abstruse definition that is obviously tailored to specifically exclude Pluto as a planet, and serves no other purpose, and cannot be applied in a general way to any object regardless of its position, habit or origin.

 

EDIT: I see from Max's post that Pluto does indeed pass your atmosphere test for planethood, certainly to the extent that Mercury does, so now you are really clutching at straws to scratch Pluto off the list of planets....

Edited January 5, 2006 by obscurus

[obscurus]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0601...haron_moon.html

 

Here's another one to the same article.

 

I.D. is a good judge of whether I want to waste any time talking with an individual. Its similar to when someone asks if you've read any good books lately, then recommends the Chicken Soup for the Souls of Sad Ass Motherfuckers series or something. Satan save us from American self help culture as well as I.D.

 

Its true that I.D. cannot be disproven, which is precisely the reason it is not science at all. Scientific theories need to be falisifiable, there not only has to be evidence but there must be some sort of test that could conceivably prove that evidence wrong. I.D., which relies on the Fairy GodMonster as the source of biological complexity, cannot be disproven because no one has yet been able to point the way to Heaven to see if Bog actually exists.

 

As a biologist, I get endless amusemtn from ID people trying to claim that structures like the human eye are proof of an intelligent designer. These people have obviously never dissected a vertebrate eye, because if they had, they would be aware of how unintelligently and defectively designed the vertebrate eye is. To show how badly it is constructed, I will use an analogy: Imagine a digital web camera, with a USB cord connecting it to the computer. Now imagine that the USB cord sits between the lens and the CCD of the camera, passing through the middle of the CCD. That is how the eye is structured - the rods and cones face back towards the retina, with the nerve fibres passing in front of them, and joining up in roughly the middle of the retina at the optic nerve. This creates a blind spot and succeptibility to a host of optical illusions, and is an example of very shoddy engineering indeed. Sure, it is good enough to give us decent vision (and is what you would expect from evolution and natural selection slowly altering things over generations) but it could have been designed a hell of a lot more intelligently. In contrast, the cephalopod eye is built much more logically, and is a much better light sensing organ as a result. So if the ID people are correct, then the intelligent designer must have been an octopus...

 

 

The problem is, many people are under the mistaken impression that natural selection is a random process. It is not, it is in fact highly ordered, even intelligent in a sense, but has no intention, no purpose or direction. It works on random events, but is not itself random. The laws of the universe do not prohibit order, contrary to the beliefs of the ID posse.

 

Similarly, many people misunderstand the laws of thermodynamics and think that order must only be possible as an act of divine creation. They fail to realise that entropy does not refer to physical disorder, but energy disorder. Living organism actually increase entropy by converting orderly energy in the form of sunlight or chemicals into disorderly random heat, ie entropy. Life is actually a predictable consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because it leads to more entropy.

 

But the ID people either don't understand basic sience, or don't want anyopne else to, as they keep perpetuating bogus 'science' to support their idiotic mumbo-jumbo.

Edited January 5, 2006 by obscurus

[sparhawk]

Imagine a digital web camera, with a USB cord connecting it to the computer. Now imagine that the USB cord sits between the lens and the CCD of the camera, passing through the middle of the CCD. That is how the eye is structured - the rods and cones face back towards the retina, with the nerve fibres passing in front of them, and joining up in roughly the middle of the retina at the optic nerve. This creates a blind spot and succeptibility to a host of optical illusions, and is an example of very shoddy engineering indeed.

 

You also should mention that the human eye design is not the only eye design. I think there are several different versions of eyes in nature. Well, we can assume that god designed the human eye first, and screwed it up, so he designed some others to see which ones are better. WAIT! That wouldn't work, because god is infallible, so it means he intentionaly designed the eye this way. And tehre is a REASON for it.

 

For the non-german speakers. The text in the buble says "That will occupy the stupid bastards for some time".

 

The headline below the image says "When god created the banana".

 

[oDDity]

Eyes have developed independantly about 40 times in nature.

link

[sparhawk]

Dawkins is really good at explaining such things to mere humans. Many scientst may know their field of expertise very well, but are not good at explaining it to others which know not as much about it. Dawkins is really good at it. I read several of his books, and it always made a very good reading. Anybody trying to understand how evolution works, should read him. Books like The Selfish Gene for example.

[oDDity]

Brown dwarves are planets that didn't quite become stars. Jupiter is a brown dwarf (a brown dwarf is a gas giant planet that puts out more energy than it receives - a net energy emmiter - , which is exactly what Jupiter is), and Saturn is not far off it either. Perhaps we should modify oDDitys planetary inventory down to 6 planets, to exclude the two almost-stars...

No, because they still fufill all the criteria in my list to be planets.

I don't think you understand probability too well.

I do, and considering the amount of empty space in the galaxy compared to the miniscule space taken up by all the stars combined, added to the fact that the incoming planet has to be at a certain trajectory to be captured, makes the chances extremely small.

Anyway, the point is not how common or rare that event is, the point is that you shouldn't change the definition of a planet just because it happens to no longer be orbiting the star it originated from. A planet is a planet, whether it has a regular orbit, or an irregular one, or no discernable orbit at all.

 

I prefer to define things by what they are, not where they are or how they happen to move. A planet should be definable without needing to put it in the context of particular orbital patterns, or particular stars, or its point of origin, which is what you are doing. Would the Earth cease to be a planet if it was knocked out of orbit from the Sun and flung far off out of the Galaxy? If so, what would you then propose we call it? If Mercury can be considered a planet, why exclude pluto? Sorry, defining something by its current orbit is just stupid. If Pluto was knocked into a regular orbit closer to the Sun would it suddenly become a planet in your view?

I've already said that filling one or two criteria is not enough the majority have to be filled.

Earth floating throuh space would be no better than an asteroid, regardless of its shape.

Of course it wouldn't keep its water, life or atmosphere long while floating through deep space and would literally just be a bare lump of rock.

One definite definiton of a planet should be that it currently orbits a star. If Earth somehow broke away and started to orbit Jupiter, then it would be come a moon.

All Objects in space have life cycles, they change, and their definitions should change with them.

That's not what most experts at NASA seem to think - the most probable explanation for the current state of Venus' and Uranus' rotational axes is that a planet roughly the size of Mars wandered very close too them at great speed at some point in the past and kept going.

'seem to think' and 'probable' doesn't mean much. They'll never be able to show that a planet came in from space after breaking away from another system. They'll never even be able to determine what size the object was, since they don't know how massive Uranus was when it was titled over.

All they can say is that some big object whacked into it at some point, which doesn't mean anything, since its well known that there were millions of such objects wizzing around back then.

 

 

My point is not erroneous, and you are the one clutching at straws by coming up with some convoluted, abstruse definition that is obviously tailored to specifically exclude Pluto as a planet, and serves no other purpose, and cannot be applied in a general way to any object regardless of its position, habit or origin.

IT excludes pluto, becasue pluto isn't a planet. It's quite clearly just a bigger version of what amounts to millions of objects in the Kupier belt, whereas real planets to not share their orbits.

I see from Max's post that Pluto does indeed pass your atmosphere test for planethood, certainly to the extent that Mercury does, so now you are really clutching at straws to scratch Pluto off the list of planets

Passing one of the tests doesn't make it a planet, if it fails the others. It has to pass the majority of them. You have to leave a little leeway I think, instead of having an your Absolute Delaration of Planethood, especially when that declaration is so simple, it holds no meaning whatsoever.

Anyway, I never stated what my mass, atmosphere density or gravitaional thresholds would be for a planet.

[oDDity]

Dawkins is really good at explaining such things to mere humans. Many scientst may know their field of expertise very well, but are not good at explaining it to others which know not as much about it. Dawkins is really good at it. I read several of his books, and it always made a very good reading. Anybody trying to understand how evolution works, should read him. Books like The Selfish Gene for example.

 

HE has a new TV series starting in the UK next week which I will be watching for sure. He's an anti-theist, and he'll be stating a case for how the world would be better of with no religions at all.

[sparhawk]

I hope somebody will capture it and put it on P2P, because somehow I doubt it will come to german TV any time soon.

[oDDity]

I'm sure it will be on bittorrent.

[sparhawk]

Is this a promise? *WINK*

[oDDity]

No, I don't have a DVD recorder, I virtually never watch TV or movies these days, but I'm sure someone will do it, since an atheism series Jonathan Miller did on BBC 4 recently was on bittorrent and emule.

[Maximius]

Ill be keeping my eyes open for that series as well, we need some informed debate on the meaning of religion in the modern world. I agree that it should go away, at least the faith part, but the ethical knowledge, the historical and cultural and social aspects of it need to be studied and can be of value I believe.

 

BTW does anyone here know how to crack DVD security? Ive tried to download some programs but I think they interfere with my DvD RW when I have them installed. I want to start stealing movies from the video rental place.

[sparhawk]

Only thing you need is a DeCSS plugin, but depending on your local law this might be illegal to even obtain.

[OrbWeaver]

Technically I think it is illegal just about everywhere, but nobody has ever been successfully convicted because of it.

[oDDity]

It's like when we used to tape songs off the radio, it's copyright infringment, everyone did it, but no one was ever taken to court for it.

However, recording full DVDs is going too far if you're intending to sell them, which a lot of people do, especially porn movies.

Also, there's no way you can pretend you're going to buy it, obviously if you've rented it, watched it, and now have recorded a copy, you haven't the slightest intention of buying it.

[OrbWeaver]

However, recording full DVDs is going too far if you're intending to sell them, which a lot of people do, especially porn movies.

 

Commercial infringement tends to be slapped down hard, and so it should be.

 

Also, there's no way you can pretend you're going to buy it, obviously if you've rented it, watched it, and now have recorded a copy, you haven't the slightest intention of buying it.

 

True, but renting is not free. I don't feel bad about ripping rented movies (for personal use, I never share anything) because I have already paid for the rental which I think is an appropriate price for a personal copy of a movie, rather than the retail price which is artificially inflated.

[obscurus]

I do, and considering the amount of empty space in the galaxy compared to the miniscule space taken up by all the stars combined, added to the fact that the incoming planet has to be at a certain trajectory to be captured, makes the chances extremely small.

 

The chance might be incredibly small on the outer rim of the galaxy, but not in the centre of the Galaxy, where collisions, expulsions etc are going to be very common as a result of the sheer number of stars that any object will eventually intersect. Consider a six sided die: it has a one in six chance of turning up a six if thrown. Throw a six-million six-sided dice and you should predictably get about 1 million sixes. Now consider a billion sided die. Throw it 1000 billion times. How many times would you expect 1 billion to turn face up?

 

This is the question of sample space. Exceedingly rare events can still happen a lot of times if there is sufficient sample space for them to happen in, and the sample space for planets being flung from one star to another is still big enough for it to happen often enough. Especially in near the Galactic core, where modelling shows that such events would be exceedingly regular (one of the reasons you wouldn't bother looking for life in the cetre of the Galaxy - too violent to sustain much more than bacteria).

 

Galaxies are even more sparesly dispersed than stars, yet there are numerous Galaxys colliding, or about to collide - collisions, intersections, captures happen a lot more than you seem to think.

 

Earth floating throuh space would be no better than an asteroid, regardless of its shape.

That is just ridiculous. You are defining things by where they are, not what they are. That is like saying a dolphin found in a tree due to a freak cyclone was now a monkey. A dolphin is still a dolphin, even when out of water, just as a planet is still a planet even when out of a regular orbit and drifting through interstellar space.

 

Of course it wouldn't keep its water, life or atmosphere long while floating through deep space and would literally just be a bare lump of rock.

So now a planet is only a planet if it has oceans and life as well? Oh dear, now there is only one planet in the Solar system...

 

One definite definiton of a planet should be that it currently orbits a star. If Earth somehow broke away and started to orbit Jupiter, then it would be come a moon.

 

Why? That is totally illogical, again, you might as well call an alligator a lizard when it is on land and a fish when it is in water with that kind of reasoning.

Even if it is orbiting Jupiter, it is still also orbiting a star, so it is both a planet and a moon.

 

All Objects in space have life cycles, they change, and their definitions should change with them.

If the earth was broken up into asteroid size fragments, then you change its definition from planet to asteroid, not just because it changes its orbital pattern.

 

'seem to think' and 'probable' doesn't mean much. They'll never be able to show that a planet came in from space after breaking away from another system. They'll never even be able to determine what size the object was, since they don't know how massive Uranus was when it was titled over.

All they can say is that some big object whacked into it at some point, which doesn't mean anything, since its well known that there were millions of such objects wizzing around back then.

Actually, you can get a pretty good idea of all of that with sufficiently deep modelling, all you need is a computer with enough grunt.

 

IT excludes pluto, becasue pluto isn't a planet. It's quite clearly just a bigger version of what amounts to millions of objects in the Kupier belt, whereas real planets to not share their orbits.

 

You have arbitrarily decided that Pluto isn't a planet, and then you have fabricated a convoluted definiton of what a planet is in an attempt to reinforce your assertion. Again, changing the definition of a planet on the basis of its orbit is just silly. The solar system clearly has hundreds of planets, some with regular orbits, some without.

 

Passing one of the tests doesn't make it a planet, if it fails the others. It has to pass the majority of them. You have to leave a little leeway I think, instead of having an your Absolute Delaration of Planethood, especially when that declaration is so simple, it holds no meaning whatsoever.

Anyway, I never stated what my mass, atmosphere density or gravitaional thresholds would be for a planet.

 

You didn't really have to - Mercury and the numerous larger planets recently discovered in the Kupier belt are so similar that if you scrap Pluto, you need to scrap Mercury and conversely, keeping Mercury dictates that you include all of the other objects, as they do pass the Majority of your tests. I am not even considering your orbit thing as a valid point, it is just ludicrous to have such a classification system where objects are primarily categorised on their current location.

Edited January 5, 2006 by obscurus

[obscurus]

You also should mention that the human eye design is not the only eye design. I think there are several different versions of eyes in nature..

 

 

 

I did mention the Cephalopod eye as an example of a superior eye design to the human eye. And yes, as oDDiys link points out, eyes have evolved independently so many times in so many different forms that it would seem that the intelligent designer was having a real battle getting one right. And still failed with humans....