So despite the announcement yesterday, reliable sources tell me that some members of the astronomy community are hoping that there is still maybe a small window of opportunity for Pluto. Some members of the community are preparing a petition which protests the IAU planet definition! They don’t agree with the … Click to continue reading this post
I learned a new term from a producer at a television studio the other day (in a context I do not know if I’m allowed to blog about yet): “Spinach TV”. I love it. This is a term expressing the idea of television programming that is supposed to be “good … Click to continue reading this post
So you’ll recall that when we thought we had twelve planets we started trying to think of new mnemonics to help people remember the planets’ ordering. For example, from Yvette: My Very Educated Mother Can’t Justify Someone Using New Planetary Conventions… oh no, they haven’t named the last one yet!!! … Click to continue reading this post
Ok… Let’s try this again shall we? It’s official! There are eight planets in our solar system. The vote has taken place. Last week’s proposals have been rejected. Pluto has been demoted, apparently. They were voting on the following (I got this here): 1) A planet1 is a celestial body … Click to continue reading this post
The saga continues. Nobody yet knows how many planets we have. There has been fierce argument at the International Astronomical Union. As a result, the definitions of last week have been revised. “Pluton” has been discarded as a term (partly because of the clash with a geological term, a clash … Click to continue reading this post
Well, the press conference I told you about has happened! This is so exciting! There’s new and very direct proof from observations of the Bullet Cluster with the Chandra X-ray Observatory that Dark Matter really exists. So the need to make modifications to how gravity works on large scales in … Click to continue reading this post
[Update1…. Oh no it’s not official! See here.] [Update2: The vote is in… see here.] [Update3: (7th June 2010) Moved the updates 1 and 2 one sentence earlier since, bizarrely, some readers (ahem! you know who you are…) don’t seem to read further than one sentence, or check the posting … Click to continue reading this post
NASA is about to make an exciting announcement, apparently. On Monday 21st August there will be a press conference, and there will be actual information (they say) at several places mentioned in this link. I have not the slightest idea of the details of the announcement [but see update below], … Click to continue reading this post
