"Persephone" isn't Roman.
If a Ninth Planet is discovered in the Outer Solar System, should it be called Hercules?
- Thread starter INACTIVERedDwarf
- Start date
Yes, I know. That's why I mentioned that Minerva or Proserpina would fit the theme better.
But Uranus isn't Roman either, so it's not entirely without precedent!
I miss Pluto
It does still exist, you know...
There can't be a ninth planet in the solar system. A planet is an astronomical body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals. Any object distant enough to not yet be detected, or at the projected distances for the purported “planet”, would be too far to have already cleared its neighbourhood of planetesimals – and even if it had, we wouldn't be ever able to confirm it, if we weren't able to detect the body in the first place. If a blue Saturn orbits the sun at a distance of light year, it wouldn't be a planet. A ninth planet, or extrasolar planets, or any such, do not exist by definition. There are eight planets in the universe in total.
If you see any issue with that, take it up with the IAU.
If you see any issue with that, take it up with the IAU.
I'm pretty sure there are more than eight planets in the entire universe.
One of the reasons given for demoting Pluto was "If we keep Pluto then we'd have to elevate Ceres, Sedna, Eris, Makemake, Quaoar, and lots of others, and that's too many to expect school kids to memorize."
What a dumb, unscientific reason.
It might be smart they excluded extrasolar planets from the definition from the get-go, because our solar system is boringly regular. But the remaining planetary systems can be insane – simple things like double planets are probably very common, planets have crazy orbits, orbiting the wrong way, can be affected by multiple stars, planets can be orbits titled degrees off the star system plane (probably way more), planets can orbit at 650 AU, their orbits almost touch each other, and Ethan Siegel might be right about small planets orbiting at the Lagrange points of massive planets. Heck, I can't find the article, but I also read about a three extrasolar planets that orbited in a configuration that doesn't fit with the definition of an orbit.
So a lot of what we find outside of our system will be very hard to fit with the definition that we made up to fit our size. But if we get confirmation of a big body on the edge of ours, it's not as regular as we wanted it to be, and that will too be a challenge.
I find the arguments about terminology/classification to be sort of a waste of time. Whether Pluto is or isn't a planet, it still is a full-fledged member of the solar system. The same would be true of this body.
What we're discovery is that the outer regions of solar systems and the intersetellar medium is a far more dynamic place than we originally thought. TNOs or dwarf planets, because they're small and so far out, remained largely undetected. Now we've found quite a few and there are probably more out there, maybe some even bigger than Pluto. Our understanding of the nature of solar systems is always going to be limited by our detection-methods and we should not be locked into any static paradigm.
There are rogue planets that somehow got knocked out of their original home and just float around aimlessly. This "planet" may be one these that has been subsequently captured, hence it lurks on the outermost rim with an incredibly slow and wide orbit. Does it really matter if it didn't form from the original protoplanetary disk? It's still a heck of a lot closer than our nearest stellar neighbor.
Oh, and I'm sure a lot of people would want this to be called Nibiru even though it would not fit the literal definition of what new agers think of it.
What we're discovery is that the outer regions of solar systems and the intersetellar medium is a far more dynamic place than we originally thought. TNOs or dwarf planets, because they're small and so far out, remained largely undetected. Now we've found quite a few and there are probably more out there, maybe some even bigger than Pluto. Our understanding of the nature of solar systems is always going to be limited by our detection-methods and we should not be locked into any static paradigm.
There are rogue planets that somehow got knocked out of their original home and just float around aimlessly. This "planet" may be one these that has been subsequently captured, hence it lurks on the outermost rim with an incredibly slow and wide orbit. Does it really matter if it didn't form from the original protoplanetary disk? It's still a heck of a lot closer than our nearest stellar neighbor.
Oh, and I'm sure a lot of people would want this to be called Nibiru even though it would not fit the literal definition of what new agers think of it.
I think there's a rule against naming things after established practising religions , so Hinduism is out of the question.
I think it might be an asteroid , but pretty certain there already is one too. In fact, I seem to remember the name being mooted when 2003-UB313? (or whatever the designation was for what is now Eris) was first announced in 2005, as it was already in use for something.
I remember other suggestions for it being Rupert (the more common name of persephone in "mostly harmless") and Hard-Rock Round-Planet (presumably after SpongeBob).
Viburnum - Latin for "snowball".
It's not hard to tweak the rules (excluding the tweaks that would have to be made should certain hypothesized planetary capabilities or as-yet unconfirmed planets turn out to exist, and ignoring other largely irrelevant distinctions such as orbital tilt or number of stars in the system.)
If we simply MUST be ultrapedantic - and why not, really? - a planet orbits the center of mass of the dynamic system it forms with its star/s. (So much for distant orbits!)
Secondly "A planet clears its orbit" was the dumb layman's translation anyway. It should have been "a planet dominates its orbital neighborhood." Since, if planet 9 exists, we discovered it because it controls the orbits of a number of Kuiper belt objects, it's a planet. Same way one of the reasons Neptune is a Planet and Pluto is a dwarf planet is because Pluto is in resonance with Neptune, and Jupiter dominates the Asteroids, which is why Ceres is a dwarf.
Ah, you're right. 399 Persephone is a main belt asteroid.
So is 26 Proserpina.
So is 93 Minerva.
And 5143 Heracles.
And 3671 Dionysus.
And 14827 Hypnos.
If we simply MUST be ultrapedantic - and why not, really? - a planet orbits the center of mass of the dynamic system it forms with its star/s. (So much for distant orbits!)
Secondly "A planet clears its orbit" was the dumb layman's translation anyway. It should have been "a planet dominates its orbital neighborhood." Since, if planet 9 exists, we discovered it because it controls the orbits of a number of Kuiper belt objects, it's a planet. Same way one of the reasons Neptune is a Planet and Pluto is a dwarf planet is because Pluto is in resonance with Neptune, and Jupiter dominates the Asteroids, which is why Ceres is a dwarf.
Ah, you're right. 399 Persephone is a main belt asteroid.
So is 26 Proserpina.
So is 93 Minerva.
And 5143 Heracles.
And 3671 Dionysus.
And 14827 Hypnos.
Last edited:
Let's not bring pseudoscience into this.
as far as I am concerned, we already do have 9 planets.
The six suggested names all pose a bit of a problem:
The six suggested names all pose a bit of a problem:
- Hercules - name already exists as name of a constellation
- Persephone - name already exists as name for asteroid #399
- Terminus - not a good idea as it translates as "the last one" - it'd be a bit awkward if there turned out to be one (or several) beyond it
- Erebus - name already exists as a crater on Mars
- Minerva - name already exists as name for asteroid #93
- Dionysus - name already exists as name for asteroid #3671
I don't know why can't another planet be called Persephone?
December (the 12th month) translates to 'the 10th month'. Ditto November ('9th month'), October ('8th') and September ('7th'). Doesn't really cause any problems I'm aware of.
Because it would cause confusion.
Most people don't know enough Latin to say, "Hey, waitaminute, this doesn't make any sense...".
I would like Miranda and if that wasn’t acceptable Lilith.
But if we did ever manage to make it out that far, that just seems to be asking for something bad to happen!
