He's flipped at least on his opinion of orbital dominance.
He apparently is very bitter with the IAU ruling, but check out this
hypocrisy...
In the Space.com article noted elsewhere on this forum, Stern complains
about the "clearing the neighboorhood" criteria with the following
comments:
"I'm embarrassed for astronomy"
"It's a farce. It won't stand"
"This definition stinks, for technical reasons,"
and this zinger...
"It's patently clear that Earth's zone is not cleared, Jupiter has
50,000 trojan asteroids,"
which orbit in lockstep with the planet.
So clearly Stern has an issue with the various small bodies that are
locked into submissive
orbits around the 8 major planets (as moons, trojans, or resonant
bodies)
However, in a 2002 paper (referenced in a subsequent paper linked from
this forum)
entitled "Regarding the criteria for planethood and proposed planetary
classification
schemes", Stern and a colleague studied the "dynamical dominance" of
bodies in the solar system and found a "gap of five orders of magnitude
between the smallest terrestrial planets
and the largest asteroids and KBOs".
Think about that. FIVE ORDERS of magnitude. That is freaking huge.
And yet now Stern wants to assert that the glorified rocks in the
various Lagrange zones of
the 8 planets somehow disqualifies them from planethood, despite the
fact that he is
perfectly aware of the huge, qualitative difference involved.
Some of Alan Stern's contradictions:
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1st contradiction:
(originally Alan Stern writes that there is clear distinction
between "uberplanets" and "unterplanets", now 6 years later
he says there is no clear dividing line between them)
Stern, S.A., & Levison, H.F. 2002.
Regarding the criteria for planethood and
proposed planetary classification schemes.
Status: To appear in IAU Proceedings 2000.
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/planet_def.html
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/PDF/planet_def.pdf
"From a dynamical standpoint, our solar system
clearly contains 8 uberplanets and a far larger number
of unterplanets, the largest of which are Pluto and Ceres."
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 25 August 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5283956.stm
Dr Alan Stern told BBC News:
"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line
between dwarf planets and planets.
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2nd contradiction:
(originally Stern claims that "uberplanets" (planets) have cleared its
orbits,
but now he claims that the same planets did not clear its orbits)
Stern, S.A., & Levison, H.F. 2002.
Regarding the criteria for planethood and
proposed planetary classification schemes.
Status: To appear in IAU Proceedings 2000.
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/planet_def.html
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/PDF/planet_def.pdf
"Hence, we define and uberplanet as a planetary body
in orbit about a star that is dynamically important enough
to have cleared its neighboring planetesimals in a Hubble time.
And we define an unterplanet as one that has not been able to do so."
--------------------------------------------------------
25 August 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5283956.stm
"Dr Stern pointed out that Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune
have also not fully cleared their orbital zones."
24 August 2006
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...efinition.html
"It's patently clear that Earth's zone is not cleared," Stern told
SPACE.com.
"Jupiter has 50,000 trojan asteroids," which orbit in lockstep with the
planet.
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