Message From Pluto

Discussion in 'Techforge' started by Tuckerfan, Dec 6, 2014.

  1. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  2. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    NASA's working on figuring out what New Horizon's next target will be. Here's the bit that jumped out at me
    :eek2:
    So, the target they'll be aiming for is one that's never been seen by an Earth-based telescope (or one in Earth's orbit).
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  3. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Hard to believe.
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  4. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    Lawrence Krauss recently released a new podcast where he spoke to Alan Stern, who was in charge of the New Horizons mission. He makes the case for Pluto (as well as many other bodies) being considered planets very convincingly. Worth a listen.
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  5. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    Of course Pluto is a planet. The whole "dwarf planet" kerfluffle was just silliness.
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  6. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    Be that the case or not, it isn't officially considered a planet right now.
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  7. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    The point they zinged Pluto on as not being a planet because it hadn't "cleared its orbital neighborhood " of other bodies is utterly ridiculous though.

    Other actual planets such as Venus and Mars come closer to Earth than other bodies in Pluto's orbital neighborhood come to it. By that standard Earth, Venus and Mars are not planets either.

    Stern, currently leading NASA's New Horizons mission, disagrees with the reclassification of Pluto on the basis of its inability to clear a neighbourhood. One of his arguments is that the IAU's wording is vague, and that—like Pluto—Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune have not cleared their orbital neighbourhoods either. Earth co-orbits with 10,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), and Jupiter has 100,000 trojans in its orbital path. "If Neptune had cleared its zone, Pluto wouldn't be there", he has said.[6]

    However, Stern himself co-developed one of the measurable discriminants: Stern and Levison's Λ. In that context he stated, "we define an überplanet as a planetary body in orbit about a star that is dynamically important enough to have cleared its neighboring planetesimals ..." and a few paragraphs later, "From a dynamical standpoint, our solar system clearly contains 8 überplanets"—including Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune.[3] Although he proposed this to define dynamical subcategories of planets, he still rejects it for defining what a planet essentially is, advocating the use of intrinsic attributes[7] over dynamical relationships.
  8. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    More places on Pluto just got names.
    More at the link.
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  9. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

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    Isn't the IAU the same group of fuckers that revoked Pluto's planetary status? :mad:
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  10. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  11. Minsc&Boo

    Minsc&Boo Fresh Meat

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    Tuckerfan ever played an ultima game?
  12. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    angrymob.jpg

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  13. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  14. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    I can see my house!
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  15. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    Might want to raise the thermostat.
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  16. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    Heating bill's a bitch :(
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  17. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    The dark side of Pluto.
    More at the link.
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  18. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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  19. Minsc&Boo

    Minsc&Boo Fresh Meat

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    Red wedding?
  20. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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  21. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Star-gazing from deep space.
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  22. Marso

    Marso High speed, low drag.

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    Pretty cool. We should put a big interferometry telescope out around Uranus or Neptune, preferably the latter. Neptune is 30 AU from the sun; the parallax of a permanent array there would allow us to map star positions and distances MUCH more accurately than we can now. Not only that, an interferometry telescope would allow us to look at spectragraph lines from neighboring exoplanets, revealing the existence of stuff like chlorophyll, meaning 'green, leafy things.'
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  23. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Put one 550 AU out and we could see cities on other planets!
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  24. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    New Horizons is now 1/3 the distance from the sun that Voyager 1 is.
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  25. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    In Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Kip is knocked down on the surface of Pluto when a volcano erupts. I don't know about squid headed aliens, but it looks like Pluto might have active volcanoes.
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  26. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  27. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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  28. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  29. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  30. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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