Should they reclassify what is a "moon" ?

[Ar-Pharazon]

I was just looking at THIS article, detailing one of Saturn's 60 known moons.

Daphnis is only 4.3 miles across.

Should they think about reclassifying what is or isn't a moon, like they did with what constitutes a planet?

I mean, any little rock they can see with a telescope or Cassini, or any other passing spacecraft shouldn't be considered a moon if Pluto isn't considered a planet.

 

[RoJoHen]

Let's come up with names for things not big enough to be moons!

Moonoid.

Moonenite.

Mini-Moon.

Moon Wannabe.

The Space Rock Formerly Known as Moon.

 

[Hermiod]

There's an obvious "That's no moon" joke to be made here.

 

[RoJoHen]

There's an obvious "That's no moon" joke to be made here.

I was going to point out the egregious mis-titling of this thread. Obviously, "That's no moon" should have been the title.

 

[STR]

Let's come up with names for things not big enough to be moons!
...
Moonenite.
...

Who named us click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click?

The moon has one third less gravity than your earth, I don't know if you can understand that, but our vertical leap is beyond all measurement.

 

[RoJoHen]

Thousands of years ago, before Sigourney Weaver...

 

[STR]

Here on the moon, our weekends are so advanced, they encompass the entire week.

 

[tau136]

And what about Pluto ? It isn't classified a planet any more so what does that make it's moon?

 

[Deckerd]

Pluto is a planet. The people have spoken.

 

[Hermiod]

^"The people" also say the world was created in six days by a supernatural entity who then knocked up a woman without her consent.

 

[Deckerd]

No but this is real people. TrekBBS people. People of common sense, plain speaking, and an innate capacity to argue about trivia.

 

[Hermiod]

^I have no reason to believe that TrekBBS represents a better educated cross section of our society.

 

[Deckerd]

Better than what? Or rather whom? Better than Daily Wail readers? I would say definitely.

 

[Hermiod]

Than the global average. Being a Star Trek fan doesn't make you smart.

 

[Deckerd]

It's the other way round: if you're smart, you're a ST fan.

 

[Hermiod]

Still doesn't mean that TrekBBS attracts only the smart Star Trek fans.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

^I have no reason to believe that TrekBBS represents a better educated cross section of our society.

While I'm the first to admit the low-end of the Bell Curve is well-represented here, I don't think you've spent enough time on the Internet. The level of discourse here is far above the median, probably around the 90th percentile if I had to take a wild guess.

Consider that the vast majority of netizens can't even string together a complete sentence, and communicate almost exclusively in txt-speak, and it's not hard to come to the conclusion that people here on TBBS are smarter than average.

Being Star Trek fans is likely tangential to the intelligence issue, though. We just got lucky, but I'm sure there is some kind of feedback loop involved where a community made up mostly of bright people will tend to attract other bright people--much like a community made up of drooling idiots tends to attract more of same.

 

[JarodRussell]

Certainly not. The smart Trek fans are surely not wasting their time and life here.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Certainly not. The smart Trek fans are surely not wasting their time and life here.

Touché.

 

[Hermiod]

^I have no reason to believe that TrekBBS represents a better educated cross section of our society.

While I'm the first to admit the low-end of the Bell Curve is well-represented here, I don't think you've spent enough time on the Internet. The level of discourse here is far above the median, probably around the 90th percentile if I had to take a wild guess.

Consider that the vast majority of netizens can't even string together a complete sentence, and communicate almost exclusively in txt-speak, and it's not hard to come to the conclusion that people here on TBBS are smarter than average.

Being Star Trek fans is likely tangential to the intelligence issue, though. We just got lucky, but I'm sure there is some kind of feedback loop involved where a community made up mostly of bright people will tend to attract other bright people--much like a community made up of drooling idiots tends to attract more of same.

I'm not suggesting that Star Trek fans or TrekBBS members are somehow below average intelligence, only that I see very little evidence that they are of superior intelligence.

Even if we were somehow of superior intelligence, that still doesn't make us qualified to make far reaching decisions on whether or not Pluto is a planet. People who most definitely are of superior intelligence have been arguing about that one for decades.