MVEMJSUN(P)

[vakkotaur]

There is a mnemonic for remembering the order of nine planets. Going outward from the sun, it is: My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. With the current contested definition of a planet excluding Pluto, that would no longer apply and so a new mnemonic is needed.

In an editorial in the November 2006 Sky & Telescope, Richard Tresch Fienberg has a suggestion:

Many Very Egotistical Malcontents Just Screwed Up Nomenclature.

It's not about whether or not Pluto is a planet, but that the adopted definition of planet isn't very good. As he put it, "...we got a definition that reads like it came from bureaucrats, not scientists."

With Earth-grazing asteroids, is Earth a planet? What's the difference, if any, between a large planet and a small Brown Dwarf? Why does this definition of a planet only apply to our own solar system? With discoveries of planets around other stars... can they be called planets? Overall, it's a bad definition. The good news is that the definition will almost certainly be changed at the next IAU conference in 2009. Meanwhile Sky & Telescope won't be using the new definition without qualifiers. Thus Pluto might get called a "dwarf planet" but not a dwarf planet. The quotation marks will be there. Seems reasonable to me.

Comments

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

My Very Evil Mother Just Served Us Nothing.

[haystack.livejournal.com]

I believe Mr. Fienberg has hit it brilliantly. That put a big smile on my face! Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

pluto isnt a planet

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

You would do better to read the entire post, or at least all of the first paragraph. And also use proper capitalization and punctuation.

I really don't care if Pluto is considered a (major) planet or not. I do care about the definition. The current definition IAU definition of planet isn't very good and was not arrived at through entirely honest means. Thus it will come up again in 2009 at the next IAU conference.