That’s an interesting thought. Considering that Π doesn’t actually measure whether objects are there or not, that still works out to a pretty good description of PIX’s proposed role, somewhere between the region-definers and belt members we know.
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I find the results of that equation peculiar. It seems to me that an object 7 times more massive than Earth should be a planet, not a dwarf planet, regardless of the debris in its orbit. Perhaps a cutoff in the definition should be included.
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That’s pretty much the point I’m trying to make.
Pluto isn’t a planet because it hasn’t “cleared its orbit,” and, fine, sure, that might not be controversial now. But if PIX is what and where they say it is, we may need to rethink what a “planet” is all over again.
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Might have to look at the definition of “clearing the orbit”. If Nine exists, it will be at least a partial cause of the eccentricities of the Sednoids’ orbits through orbital resonance. That’s not too dissimilar to what happens with Neptune - Pluto and the “Plutoninos” have eccentric enough orbits to have their perihelia inside Neptune’s orbit, but they will never hit Neptune as they’re locked into a 2:3 orbital resonance.
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Let Pluto be a planet. Can we have too many planets?
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Well, the IAU certainly could. They keep track of over a hundred thousand objects, and it becomes hard to use only a flat list of proper names. So they had turned to designations, with years and letters for comets, and Roman numerals for satellites, and Arabic numerals for belt objects. And these had never included the handful of “planets”, since they were thought their own category with just a few members.
So to them figuring out the limits of that category wasn’t just an exercise in capturing what we were learning about the solar system – though I will say I personally had been so excited to see that part unfold, watching over decades as the Kuiper belt went from a prediction to a known thing full of many different worlds, and similar belts were found around other stars. Let alone what is frustratingly always brought up instead, whether the one Americans already knew is getting its respectful title.
It was a question of keeping a working system of nomenclature, one that can handle many new discoveries without problems, and astronomers can hopefully still use for centuries to come. Apparently thankless work, as most taxonomy seems to be, but no less important for that.
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All the astronomic discoveries over the last decades have been absolutely mind-boggling for an interested layman like me.
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Vulcan was one of the artifacts which was the other one?
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I meant Pluto. I was using a confusing shorthand here, I guess, because that is a real object. But it is not what they were searching for, a planet X thought to be responsible for perturbations of Uranus’s orbit. Looking out into the distance, relatively bright Pluto was in about the expected place so hailed as the predicted planet.
But early on it was doubtful if it were really massive enough for that, though still overestimated by an order of magnitude; apparently Kuiper thought it would be big enough to clear his eponymous belt. The perturbing mass turns out not to exist, and now we know Pluto is small enough to be the first of many objects there.
I was also misremembering my older history. Neptune was predicted based on Uranus, but Uranus itself seems to have been discovered with no such expectation. So really, we are one for three.
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The experiment was ended early when it was discovered that Pauly Shore was also inside.
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I put this here because I’m fascinated by the way it’s gotten possible to simulate such complex materials in a computer. When I was in school, etc., etc. I don’t know if the physics being modeled is realistic, but it sure looks cool.
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Ouch.
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Reminds me of “The Ooh-Ahh bird is so named because it lays square eggs.”
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We’ll start to find out on Monday when the new robot lands.
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“What we are thinking of doing is a TV show with the working title ‘The Radical Wellness Show.’ I would be going into the field and talking to any number of doctors, scientists, civilians, people in crisis in Flint, Michigan, where there is something to uncover and confront about wellness,” she explained.
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This would be funny if it weren’t so terrible.
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Well, I’m sure it’s just as good at cleaning out someone’s privates as some of the suggestions Paltrow has pushed. 
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