Planetoid
From
Trolidan7@21:1/5 to
All on Fri Dec 17 15:15:43 2021
Recently I saw a post in sci.physics where someone claimed
that 'neutronium' (or neutron star material) was a valid
scientific term and as a point that Carl Sagan used it.
At that point I did not surf through all of Carl Sagan's
'Cosmos' series to try to find where he used the word
'neutronium' but it seems feasible to me that he might
have.
When looking at the term 'Moon' on Wikipedia it put
forth the idea that the Earth's Moon has a greater
diameter in comparison with the planet it is revolving
around than any other one in the solar system.
The Earth's moon is about a quarter of the diameter
of the Earth.
Then I started thinking of the question. Is the
phrase 'a dwarf planet is not a planet' actually
using improper English? Now some adjectives or
prefixes of a word generally mean that something
is not part of a category of action or object.
Like 'an untree is not a tree'.
How about however the word 'dwarf'? Like 'a dwarf
tree is not a tree'. In essence you have to force
a definition of two words in sequence to make a
phrase intentionally illogical to make the sequence
true. The word 'dwarf' in general does not mean
that something is not in a specific category, only
that it is a type within it.
In 2006, the IAU, which is headquartered in Paris,
France but is not part of SI, adopted the term 'dwarf
planet' but it was lazy, and did not come up with
a new word, or even adopt some which were used
often mostly in science fiction and were known of
and available.
Now to me the term 'orbital dominance' is very
nebulous. In reality, the Earth does get impacted
by meteorites all of the time.
Being rounded by its own gravity or hydrostatic
equilibrium however might generally be more coherent.
This would be in general objects that would tend to
have a diameter greater than Ceres and not less than
Mimas, with Mimas to Ceres diameters being an
iffy diameter range.
There are a lot of moons in the solar system that
are really substantial worlds. Two of them,
Ganymede and Titan, are greater in diameter than
Mercury.
Probably none of you will, but would you consider
using the term 'planetoid' for any object in
hydrostatic equilibrium or being rounded by its
own gravity, regardless of what object it revolving
around or if it is in interstellar space?
Sooner or later ignoring Charon might very well
be disparaging Clyde Tombaugh, who had to compare
and click between a lot of different photos in his
day.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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