All of a sudden, our neighbourhood might be getting a little more crowded.

Next week the International Astronomical Union will meet at its annual convention. The hot topic?

What defines a “planet”!?

This is a very important question because thanks to more powerful telescopes… we have discovered a number of very large “rocks” (a.k.a. asteroids) in our Solar System. Some in the big belt between Mars and Jupiter, and some waaayyy out with Pluto.

These large rocks are, in one case at least, even larger than Pluto itself! (It’s known as “Xena”)

You can read the scientific proposal for new planets that will be voted on here.

New Scientist explains it a little

To be a planet:

#1: Must be big large enough to be “rounded” by it’s own gravity (this could mean planets only 500-1000KM across… Pluto is 2000KM)
#2: It must primarily orbit a star (see below… about “double planets”)
#3: It must not be a moon of another planet

So apparently this definition would give our Solar System 3 new planets!!

It would go like this:

Inner-Planets:
#1: Mercury
#2: Venus
#3: Earth
#4: Mars
#5: Ceres (Formerly a large asteroid… but was once considered a planet in the 1910s
#6: Vesta (Possibly added depending on further observations)
#7: Pleilas (Possibly added depending on further observations)
Outer-Planets:
#8: Jupiter
#9: Saturn
#10: Uranus
#11: Neptune
#12: Pluto - Charon (now the twelth planet! is actually a “Double Planet” because Charon is so big compared to Pluto, they actually orbit each other while they both orbit the Sun

Here are some new definitions as thye have been proposed:

Planet: A round thing orbiting a star. More precisely, according to the draft definition: “A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.”

Pluton: A planet orbiting beyond Neptune, taking more than 200 Earth years to circle the Sun. So far, it would include Pluto; Pluto’s former moon, Charon; and “Xena” (2003 UB313).

Satellite: Anything orbiting a planet, as long as the mutual centre of gravity does not fall outside the planet. Includes several bodies much larger than many planets, such as Jupiter’s moon Ganymede (diameter: 5262 kilometres).

Small solar system body: Anything orbiting the Sun that’s not a planet or a satellite. Most asteroids and comets would be SSSBs. Currently called minor planets.

Here is an amazing story from the BBC today.

3 Fisherman were picked up near the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific last week. They had been drifting in a 25ft boat for 9 Months!!

They were fishing off of the Mexican coast.. their engines broke down… and so they drifted.

They lived off rain water, and raw birds and fish. Lucky for them they had rain to drink, most people lost at sea die of dehydration. The most ironic of deaths…

Their boat must have had a covered area as well or they would have surely died of exposure/sunstroke or the like.

An Amazing story, some people are touched.

It’s been a big week… me and deck-builder-extraodinaire, Cliff (my father-in-law) built a deck… ok. so he did 95% of the work. But it was fun. And there’s more work to be done, but it’s coming along nicely.

Israelis bomb UN/Lebanese Convoy… Again… (this time by an unmanned aerial vehicle.. blame it on the robot, right? oh wait, it’s not a robot… it’s an RC fighter plane)

This time the convoy had actually been approved by the Israeli government and military to move out of the South. It consisted of around 350 Lebanese army and police and 500 civilian vehicles.

ie.

It obviously wasn’t Hezbollah.

Why is it so bloody hard to accuse “the good guys” of war crimes when they are there, so obviously in front of you. I don’t give a hoot about good the “internal” military justice is. People don’t learn well from themselves… sometimes they need to be taught right from wrong.

That’s all I have to say about it.

A few weather-related notes for tonight.

Live Science has a few interesting stories.

#1: Looks like we might be headed for an El Nino year this winter in North America. That’s the warm ocean current that hangs out off the West Coast of South America.

Some of it’s known effects.. across North America

Wet and Snowy in the South-East and North East and Prairies to Eastern Canada respectively.
Warmer in the West and US MidWest.. wet on the BC West Coast… but lots of snow on the mountains.
It also often grabs mackerel up to coast to Northern Washington and Souther BC waters… which is bad news for Salmon runs, as the Mackerel love to eat the salmon fry as they exit the rivers in the spring.

#2: Results from a new Antarctic study indicate snowfallprecipitation levels in Antarctica have not changed significantly in the past 50 years. This goes against model predictions that have predicted Global Warming and Climate Change… but 50 years is also a very short period of time geologically, so we may be looking at too small a snapshot. Either way, it’s interesting to see… and will add to the puzzle and the eventually to the general understanding of the Earths incredibly complex weather patterns.

#3: Finally, Live Science reports that the US NOAA has found that nighttime low temperatures across the US have been “much above normal” consistently over the past 8 years. That means, given all their data, US low temperature data has been higher than the highest 10% of temperatures in their archives. Those are hot nights. That means the US just isn’t cooling down at night like it used to. Which means more people get no rest from the heat… more energy use for A/C… etc etc… The record for hot nights was set during the “Dust Bowl” years… in 1941. But the past 3 years have been very close.. and on average, much hotter than even during those hardtimes after the Depression.

Cheers.

Chris