MELBOURNE, FLA.—The next presentation of Florida Institute of
Technology’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Lecture Series, “Why I Helped
Kill Pluto and Why it Had it Coming,” will be given by Terry Oswalt,
professor and department head, Florida Tech Department
of Physics and Space Sciences. The free lecture will be Sept. 28 from 8
to 9 p.m. in the F.W. Olin Engineering Complex, Room EC118, on campus.
There will be a rooftop public star viewing following the presentation
if weather permits.
Oswalt calls his presentation “a take-off on Michael Brown’s book by
the same name.” Brown found most of the first dozen or so “Pluto-like”
objects that prompted the debate about what is a planet.
This year is the sixth anniversary of Pluto’s “death” as a planet.
Oswalt was one of the members who voted Pluto out at the International
Astronomical Union meeting in Prague in August 2006.
Pluto is predicted to occult (cover up) a faint star on Sept. 8, an
event that will be observed (conditions permitting) by astronomers using
the university’s Ortega 0.8-meter reflecting telescope, the largest
research telescope in Florida. The measurements
obtained are expected to confirm the small size of this so-called
“dwarf planet” and to determine whether it has an atmosphere. Oswalt’s
lecture may include preliminary results of these observations.
The F.W. Olin Engineering Complex is located on West University Boulevard. For more information, call (321) 674-7207or visit
www.fit.edu/aapls.
5 comments:
Planet Pluto is NOT dead, and it is disingenuous for astronomers to use such a sensational title to promote their lectures. Mike Brown did not "kill" Pluto. Only four percent of the IAU voted on the controversial demotion, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed by hundreds of professional astronomers in a formal petition led by New Horizons Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern. Stern is the person who first coined the term "dwarf planet," but he intended for it to refer to a third class of planets, small planets large enough to be rounded by their own gravity but not large enough to gravitationally dominate their orbits. He never intended for dwarf planets to not be considered planets at all, and the IAU misappropriated his term in their controversial decision.
Mike Brown is not an IAU member and did not take part in the 2006 vote. However, he has used this notion of having "killed" Pluto as a way to peddle his book and seek fame and fortune.
Terry Oswalt may have voted in 2006, but he is not a planetary scientist either. According to his web site, he studies stellar evolution, systems of binary and multiple stars, and collapsed stars known as white dwarfs.
For the sake of fairness and balance, so audiences are given both sides of this issue, I urge you to host a second speaker in the near future who supports the geophysical planet definition and therefore the planet status of Pluto and all dwarf planets. I would be happy to put you in touch with several such people. If you don't host a speaker representing the other side, you are unfairly portraying one viewpoint in an ongoing debate s fact rather than as the interpretation it is in a continuing controversy.
Why would someone associate oneself with another person's book, especially such a poorly-written book as the one by Mike Brown that is really a self-indulgent auto-biography more than a scientific work. If you are going to be a lackey, why would you want to be a lackey for someone with such an immature and inaccurate nickname as "Pluto-killer?" That is Mr. Brown's Twitter handle. For the record, Pluto is 7.4 miles wider in diameter than Eris, thus it is larger. Eris may have more mass, but Pluto is larger. So calling Pluto small in this little article is deceptive. It is Eris that should be called small, not Pluto, the largest-known KBO.
Pluto is approximately 7,375,927,931 kilometers from the Sun. It is held in orbit by graviton particles emmitted by the Sun, but there are other objects not captured by this gravity, traveling in a straight line towards the Sun driven by the Sun's gravity at an acceleration of 274 meters per second squared. By the time these objects approach the Sun, they are going at fraction of the speed of light velocities and are not visible in human eye telescopes.
When they impact the Sun, they create visible cold spots on its surface that melt and spread. Al Schrader
Looks like David Rabinowitz and Chad Trujillo, Eris's other two co-discoverers, are handling this mistake in Pluto and Eris' classification in a much more mature manner than Mike Brown. His reaction to being (hopefully temporarily) denied the glory of discovering a major planet reeks of sour grapes.
Except Pluto IS a major planet. Dwarf planets are one of three (or four, if you separate gas giants and ice giants) categories of major planets.
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