Pluto demotion draws protest

Pluto demotion draws protest

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (AP) -- Size doesn't matter.

POSTED: 9:09 a.m. EDT, September 2, 2006

That was the message as friends and colleagues of the late Clyde Tombaugh,
the astronomer who discovered Pluto, gathered on the New Mexico State
University campus to protest the International Astronomical Union's recent
decision to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

About 50 students and staff members turned out Friday for the good-natured
challenge. Some were wearing T-shirts and carrying signs that read "Protest
for Pluto" and "Size Doesn't Matter."

Tombaugh's widow, Patricia, and their son, Al Tombaugh, also participated.

NMSU astronomer Bernie McNamara told the crowd that textbooks shouldn't be
rewritten.

"Why not? Because the debate is not over," McNamara said.

The IAU determined last week that a planet must orbit the sun and be large
enough to assume a nearly round shape as well as "clear the neighborhood
around its orbit." Pluto's oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, which led the
IAU to downsize the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine.
(Full story)

McNamara argued that only about 400 of the union's thousands of members were
present when the August 24 vote was taken.

"This was not a statement by the astronomical community at large," he said,
adding that a petition opposing the IAU definition of a planet is
circulating among the world's planetary scientists and astronomers.

Tombaugh was 24 when he discovered Pluto while working at Lowell Observatory
in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1930. He came to NMSU in 1955 and founded the
school's research astronomy department.

His legacy is visible across the city, where an observatory, a campus street
and an elementary school bear his name.

Some say Tombaugh's discovery was significant because it took 60 years for
stronger telescopes to locate another object with an unusual orbit like
Pluto's, and 73 years before scientists discovered a bigger object in the
area.

"Clyde Tombaugh was an American hero," said Herb Beebe, a longtime
colleague. "For that reason alone, Pluto's status as a full-fledged planet
should be kept."

Sco:

The conflict that surounds the demotion of Pluto
to non-planetary status is wider than just that.

Fundamental rational methods regarding the
way in which science obtains and classifies
facts have been rejected.




----- Original Message -----
From: "Sco"
Newsgroups: alt.astronomy
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2006 1:16 PM
Subject: Pluto demotion draws protest


Pluto demotion draws protest


[...]

The IAU determined last week that a planet must orbit the sun and be large
enough to assume a nearly round shape as well as "clear the neighborhood
around its orbit." Pluto's oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, which led the
IAU to downsize the solar system to eight planets from the traditional
nine. (Full story)

[...]



An exceptionally important component of the scientific
method has been rejected. The IAU has replaced scientific
definitions with Pragmatist social adaptation and social
acceptance niceties. The implication is that no matter how
many persons voted, or how many credentials were presented,
or how many concepts or papers were presented, social
agreement was deemed by the IAU to be more important
for the declaration of the identification of facts
than the scientific method.

What they rejected was the method of identifying and classifying
certain facts of existence that is the genus and differentia definition.
Formal logic is used in the classification of facts via genus and
differentia definitions, and by implication and default that was
also rejected.

Regarding GDDs, all things and ideas fall within a greater class,
that also must be defined, and a specific defining characteristic
of the thing or idea is selected that isolates the existent and
distinquishes it from all other existents in its class. All things
within a class have certain defining characteristics in common,
and that defining characteristic distinguishes all things within
one class from those of another. All things within a class are
distinguished from one another by their own unique defining
characteristic.

The method of GDDs is the foundation of the hierarchy of all
scientific knowledge. GDDs are the basis of classifying objects
in biology, chemistry, physics, mechanics, mathematics, geometry,
and library science, for example.

Additionally, the method of evaluating and understanding
the full or selected context of facts, called the frame of reference,
or FOR, was not included in the decisions, nor in the description
of the methods used to define and classify objects.

A background of facts should have been provided, rather
than a PR statement.

Included in the full context should have been the following:

1 Dimensional Size: a list of objects within a delimited range, e.g.,
from the sizes of all the planets, the moons of all the planets, and
of all other objects orbiting the sun that are greater in size than
the smallest of the above mentioned objects.

2 Mass Size: a list of objects within a delimited range, e.g.,
from the masses of all the planets, the moons of all the planets, and
of all other objects orbiting the sun that are greater in mass than
the smallest of the above mentioned objects.

3 Definitions of concepts: e.g., star, Sun, planet, moon, comet,
asteroid, minor planet.

4 Material of object: e.g., solid rock or metal, gas, chemistry, rubble.

5 Form of object: e.g., spherical, irregular, cloud, disk, cometary
assemblage.

6 History of formation: e.g., aggregation, condensation, gravitational
assembly, collisions, near misses, proximity, natural, man-made.

7 Orbital paths: of the above objects.

8 Orbit: e.g., shape, location, type, plane, period, eccentricity,
perturbations, precession, effects upon other objects.

9 Orbited object: planets that have moons, frame of reference of
Sun, frame of reference of planet, frame of reference of other
objects.

10 Shape of orbit: circular, elliptical, n-gon, looped, cusped, convex,
concave sections of orbits.

11 Reflection/absorption/re-radiation characteristics: e.g., for EMR,
light.

12 And what else?

I won't evaluate the huge amount of relevant technical information
here, however, to me it appears that once the criteria have been set
forth and properly evaluated Pluto will have found its way back into
the classification of planets.

Also, by the same methods, the Earths' moon will likely be
identified as a planet, and classified as part of the Earth/Moon
binary planet from a Sun-centered FOR, and also classified as
a moon of the Earth when evaluated from an Earth-centered
FOR. The convexity of the Moon's orbit speaks for its being
a planet, or co-planet, from a Sun FOR, and in that sense
no revolution about the Earth can be discerned in its Sun orbit.
If the Earth FOR is instead used without specifying the objects
to be considered in the context of facts it is apparent that the
Moon revolves around the Earth, and also that the Sun also
revolves around the Earth. Regarding the Earth FOR the fact
that the Moon is in convex orbit around the Sun cannot be
easily discerned without precision mesurements and
calculations. But, if the Sun is ignored in the Earth FOR the
complete facts in the context will have been ignored. If the
counter argument is that the Sun does not orbit the Earth, for
that is impossible, the FOR advocate will have had to change
the context of facts and understanding, and that is a fallacy of
logic. All in all, the failure to include the information produced
by the discovering mathematical and evaluative astronomers
regarding the discovery of the convexity of the Moon's orbit
around the Sun, in the context of facts, leads to the other
fallacies. The failure to use the convexity arguement is a major
faux pas in science.

Once that argument has been properly applied to all the
Solar System objects, Pluto may have to be re-instated
within the class of planets.

If the IAU sticks to its Earth-centered FOR it has left open
the possiblility that they are allowing that the Sun will be seen
to be orbiting the Earth and that they are allowing that the
concept of a delimited context shall not be used, that all the
facts shall not be included within the complete context, or that
the fallacy of context switching shall be used. They have
contradictions to set right.

The major failure of the IAU is its willingness to falsely substitute
human agreement for objective valid criterion and facts. Also,
it failed in its willingness to employ the fallacies of logic, for
example: ad populam, ad vericundiam, non-sequitur,
ommission of facts, context switching, post hoc ergo propter
hoc, and others that I haven't thought of yet.

The IAU failed in its refusal to use deductive logic in evaluating
the facts, failed to employ genus and differentia definitions, and
it failed to establish a coherent and consisent hierarchy of
knowledge, that is also comprehensible, provable, and
demonstrable in logic and actuality.

Pluto is a Planet. By the same methods the Moon is a primarily a
co-planet, which agrees with scientific evaluations about the
origins of the Moon, and secondarily that the Moon is a moon in
a narrower but similarly specifically delimited context.

The IAU should re-evaluate their methods and facts and generate
corrected results. They should formally re-open for discussion
the issues of the Moon and of Pluto.

The IAU should affirm the use of facts, context, logic, genus and
differentia definitions, the logical hierarchy of knowledge, and
the Scientific Method.

Nothing less than that is acceptable.

Ralph Hertle




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