Posts by bdeclerc

Re: Idiots Astronomical Union

Intepreting "has cleared its orbit" as "there's nothing, zip, nada sharing its orbit" is incorrect and specious, since that would mean nothing can ever be a planet.

Earth's mass is about 1.7 million times all the other matter "sharing" its orbit (excluding the moon, since it orbits the earth)

Neptune is about 50,000 times the mass of all the other matter "sharing" its orbit (and that includes Pluto) and is the least "planety" planet in the 3rd criterion.

Ceres is about 1/3rd of the mass of all the other matter "sharing" its orbit, so it isn't even close to "having cleared its orbit"

Pluto is at most 1/100,000th the mass of all the other matter "sharing" its orbit, so it is very much further away from matching criterion (3) than even Ceres is.

And planets around other stars are called "exoplanets", not "planets", so strictly speaking there's no problem there.

All objects orbiting another object "share a common Center of Gravity", in all cases (including Ganymede and Titan) that Center of Gravity is *inside* the main body, except in the case of Pluto & Charon where the Center of Gravity is outside of Pluto (Well, there are probably other examples if you look to small double asteroids, but Pluto-Charon is the only "big" couple where this is the case)

So while the definition of the IAU may be contentious in some circles, it is by no means idiotic...

Bad comparisons?

Oh, come on, naming scientists that predate Darwin's theory of evolution by centuries as evidence that rational scientists can be creationists?

The reality is quite simple: to be a creationist *and* "scientists" at the start of the 21st century is essentially impossible - anyone who pretends to be both is either a hypocrite or delusional.

All of which does not mean he has to be wrong about his research, only that it's not unreasonable to question his scientific capacities...

League of Nations *after* WW1

Your history lessens are vague to the point of mangling the timeframe. The League of Nations was set up *after* World War I (the trenches-in-France war) to prevent it from reoccuring.

It failed because it was basically a "Revenge agains Germany" thing and Adolf and his cronies came to power and started doing their own thing. Next thing we knew, millions of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and handicapped people were being gassed and tens of millions of other people died around the world.

So yes, the UN is somewhat similar in that it was also set up by the winners of a World War, but they did at least attempt to learn from the mistakes made before.