From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Fri Jan 10 2003 - 21:27:43 MST
avatar wrote,
> I guess if Quaoar is not a planet this is not a problem.
>
> It's the same question as is Australia a continent or an island.
OK, I see your point. If Quaoar was a planet, its name would be
inconsistent with other planetary names.
> Juno would be perfect, even fitting in with the
> modern requirements as the goddess of childbirth.
One of the "big four" asteroids in the Ceres asteroid belt is already named
Juno.
> I do like your logic though. As a matter of humour, perhaps Pluto should
> change it's name when within Neptune's orbit and when beyond it.
My logic was from the official naming conventions for solar system objects.
None of these ideas were original with me.
> All I can say is that the newspaper headlines across the world
> did not read
> "Quaoar - new Kuiper Belt object discovered" but "Quaoar - new planet
> discovered". At least the six or seven articles I read said that.
Do you have any specific examples? Catching news reports making basic
scientific mistakes is a hobby of mine. I haven't seen any that claimed
Quaoar was a planet. I did see a lot that claimed it was "almost" a planet.
The way the news released stated that this 'plutino' was almost a planet
lead many subsequent reports to refer to the planetoid with the name
"Plutino".
> I should check what the Chinese call their planets. The question of naming
> (original, translated, and applied) is wickedly interesting.
All cultures and languages I know of seem to have considered the planets to
be deities and hence had deity names from their culture.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <http://HarveyNewstrom.com>
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