Read Online The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet by Neil deGrasse Tyson - Free Book Online
Authors: Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Division of Planetary Systems Sciences is conducting a technical debate on a possible numbering system for TNOs.
Ways to classify planets by physical characteristics are also under consideration. These discussions are continuing and will take some time.
The Small Bodies Names Committee of the Division has, however, decided against assigning any Minor Planet number to Pluto.
3: From time to time, the IAU takes decisions and makes recommendations on issues concerning astronomical matters affecting other sciences or the public. Such decisions and recommendations are not enforceable by national or international law, but are accepted because they are rational and effective when applied in practice. It is therefore the policy of the IAU that its recommendations should rest on well-established scientific facts and be backed by a broad consensus in the community concerned. A decision on the status of Pluto that did not conform to this policy would have been ineffective and therefore meaningless. Suggestions that this was about to happen are based on [an] incomplete understanding of the above.
The mission of the IAU is to promote scientific progress in astronomy. An important part of this mission is to provide a forum for debate of scientific issues with an international dimension. This should not be interpreted to imply that the outcome of such discussions may become official IAU policy without due verification that the above criteria are met: The policy and decisions of the IAU are formulated by its responsible bodies after full deliberation in the international scientific community.
Johannes Andersen
General Secretary, IAU
If Anderson’s point was simply to dispel misinformation, the task required many fewer words than what appeared. The release reads as if written by a lawyer instead of scientist. And from its tone and blatantly defensive posture, methinks the gentleman did protest too much, implying self-awareness of a rising storm.
Given how much money we had spent (and were about to spend) on exhibit design and content, it was incumbent on us not to make hasty decisions about anything astrophysical. We needed to assess, to the best of our abilities, the trends in cosmic discovery, so that long after opening day our exhibits would remain as fresh as possible. So I organized and hosted a panel debate on Pluto’s status, inviting the world’s leading thinkers on the subject to duke it out, on stage, for our benefit and for the benefit of the interested public.
Eight hundred people descended on the main auditorium (which doubles as an IMAX theater) of the American Museum of Natural History on Monday evening, May 24, 1999, to hear “Pluto’s Last Stand: A Panel of Experts Discuss and Debate the Classification of the Solar System’s Smallest Planet.” You couldn’t get more expert experts than the five scientists who joined me onstage:
Michael A’Hearn, a comet and asteroid specialist at the University of Maryland in College Park, president of IAU’s Planetary Systems Sciences Division, and chair of IAU’s Committee for Small Body Nomenclature
David H. Levy, patron saint of amateur astronomers worldwide, discoverer or codiscoverer of dozens of comets and asteroids, and biographer of Clyde Tombaugh
Jane Luu, professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and codiscoverer not only of the first actual Kuiper belt object but of many others that followed
Brian Marsden, a comet and asteroid specialist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and director of IAU’s Minor Planet Center and the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, a clearinghouse for discoveries and transitory astronomical phenomena
Alan Stern (see Figure 3.9), of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder (later to become associate administrator for science at NASA), specialist in everything small in our solar system, author of the wonderfully titled Pluto and Charon: Ice Worlds on the Ragged Edge of the Solar System , and the
Ways to classify planets by physical characteristics are also under consideration. These discussions are continuing and will take some time.
The Small Bodies Names Committee of the Division has, however, decided against assigning any Minor Planet number to Pluto.
3: From time to time, the IAU takes decisions and makes recommendations on issues concerning astronomical matters affecting other sciences or the public. Such decisions and recommendations are not enforceable by national or international law, but are accepted because they are rational and effective when applied in practice. It is therefore the policy of the IAU that its recommendations should rest on well-established scientific facts and be backed by a broad consensus in the community concerned. A decision on the status of Pluto that did not conform to this policy would have been ineffective and therefore meaningless. Suggestions that this was about to happen are based on [an] incomplete understanding of the above.
The mission of the IAU is to promote scientific progress in astronomy. An important part of this mission is to provide a forum for debate of scientific issues with an international dimension. This should not be interpreted to imply that the outcome of such discussions may become official IAU policy without due verification that the above criteria are met: The policy and decisions of the IAU are formulated by its responsible bodies after full deliberation in the international scientific community.
Johannes Andersen
General Secretary, IAU
If Anderson’s point was simply to dispel misinformation, the task required many fewer words than what appeared. The release reads as if written by a lawyer instead of scientist. And from its tone and blatantly defensive posture, methinks the gentleman did protest too much, implying self-awareness of a rising storm.
Given how much money we had spent (and were about to spend) on exhibit design and content, it was incumbent on us not to make hasty decisions about anything astrophysical. We needed to assess, to the best of our abilities, the trends in cosmic discovery, so that long after opening day our exhibits would remain as fresh as possible. So I organized and hosted a panel debate on Pluto’s status, inviting the world’s leading thinkers on the subject to duke it out, on stage, for our benefit and for the benefit of the interested public.
Eight hundred people descended on the main auditorium (which doubles as an IMAX theater) of the American Museum of Natural History on Monday evening, May 24, 1999, to hear “Pluto’s Last Stand: A Panel of Experts Discuss and Debate the Classification of the Solar System’s Smallest Planet.” You couldn’t get more expert experts than the five scientists who joined me onstage:
Michael A’Hearn, a comet and asteroid specialist at the University of Maryland in College Park, president of IAU’s Planetary Systems Sciences Division, and chair of IAU’s Committee for Small Body Nomenclature
David H. Levy, patron saint of amateur astronomers worldwide, discoverer or codiscoverer of dozens of comets and asteroids, and biographer of Clyde Tombaugh
Jane Luu, professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and codiscoverer not only of the first actual Kuiper belt object but of many others that followed
Brian Marsden, a comet and asteroid specialist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and director of IAU’s Minor Planet Center and the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, a clearinghouse for discoveries and transitory astronomical phenomena
Alan Stern (see Figure 3.9), of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder (later to become associate administrator for science at NASA), specialist in everything small in our solar system, author of the wonderfully titled Pluto and Charon: Ice Worlds on the Ragged Edge of the Solar System , and the
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