Re: Hey Mr. Hyde!

From: Beth (BethStone21_at_hotmail.NOSPICEDHAM.com)
Date: 03/20/04 

Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 04:02:55 -0000

Evenbit wrote:
> Beth wrote:
> <<going via the Andromeda galaxy and visiting the new
> planet, Sedna, on your way back>>
>
> Is Sedna really a planet? Or is it just a member of the
> long-hypothesized Oort Cloud?

If Pluto is, then Sedna is...the problem may have been, in fact,
jumping so quickly to call Pluto a "planet"...as it's big, true, but
in planetary terms, it's sitting on the edge for sure...and its orbit
is _highly eccentric_ (when first discovered, it was the "planet"
furthest out...this is actually no longer true and that's one of the
weird things about Pluto's orbit...sometimes it's further out than
Neptune, sometimes it isn't ;), which gives it more of an "asteroid"
than "planet" feel...

Also, ummm, it would be a Kuiper Belt object, if I properly understood
what I heard them say on the TV about it...the "Oort cloud" (what a
fantastic name, eh? ;) would be further out there still...the Kuiper
Belt is a bit like the "asteroid belt" that exists between Mars and
Jupiter, as a "belt" of rocks in orbit...the "Oort Cloud" - should
there be one - is, as the name suggests, just a whole bunch of rocks
all over the place way out in the solar system...though the metaphors
aren't perfect, the terms "belt" and "cloud" should convey the general
difference between the two...the "Oort Cloud" would be less likely to
be subject to the "eliptic" plane like the planets and the "belts"
are...being more "diffuse" from the plane - with lots more "eccentric
orbits" exhibited - as the term "cloud" befits it...

I heard a really bizarre and not-yet-scientifically-approved theory
about the "asteroid Belt" and the "Kuiper Belt"...overlaying a
"harmonic series" over the solar system, the planets' orbits roughly
coincide with "good harmonies"...and where the "asteroid belt" exists
would be a "harmony" but a "rough harmony"...hence, the theory
stipulates - though it _is_ a kind of weird theory, seeing as it
actually stems from looking at "harmonies" and uses musical theory as
a base - that gravitational influences are, in effect, creating
"harmonies"...just not of sound or colour, but of gravity and
energy...and, thus, the "asteroid belt" is where there should have
been a planet, which never actually formed...that idea isn't new but
the theory does try something new in trying to come up with a reason
_why_ this never happened there...the "harmonies" are all wrong...of
course, those of a scientific mind will rightly be sceptical of this
explanation, due to the fact that it could be summed up as, *ahem*, a
case of "bad vibes"...which hardly sounds deeply scientific...but it's
an interesting theory that even if it turns out to be utterly, utterly
wrong, it still makes for a good "story", anyway...

Of course, the real astronomers go one further: "What is a 'planet',
anyway?"...there's actually no real difference or dividing line...it's
just that there's _clearly_ these big collections of mass - known
since antiquity - called "planets"...Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn and, in modern times, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto...they
are nice and big so there's no "disputes" (except maybe with Pluto
;)...they follow clear kinds of orbits strictly around the "eliptic"
plane (with the exception of Pluto again, which "kind of" follows this
but does also "stray" quite wildly, unlike the main "planets" :)...

Well, the first six planets have been known about forever...they even
name the days of the week directly or indirectly in many languages
(very convenient...5 "planets" plus the Sun and Moon makes 7 days of
the week...how long God took to create everything in Genesis but,
also, 7 even had an important significance before this immortalisation
in Genesis sealed the idea forever thereafter...also a very nice
number in that it goes into 28, which is the real periodicity -
rounded to an integer - of the Moon...it only gets "biased" with
months of 30 / 31 days because, otherwise, months wouldn't actually
fit into years properly...mind you, they actually _don't_ in Nature so
forcing this for human "convenience" is a bit like a square peg in a
round whole..."leap years" are all about accounting for the facts that
days and years don't actually 100% match up either...plus, ask an
astronomer about "days" and they reply "conventional or
sidereal?"...because though the Earth may rotate in 24 hours, it also
heads a little distance along its orbit...and that orbit itself is
another kind of "rotation" too...so, "sidereal" takes account of
this...it's what you get if you measured your days strictly against
the star background (which slowly progresses throughout the year
because of the orbit of the Earth itself :) and not solely on the
actual rotation of the Earth only :)...

This stuff doesn't fit quite as neatly as people believe...or, to be
fair, how the scientists like to portray it to the "lay person" in
order to make it more understandable...it's the old thing of
"abstracting" things a touch to simplify them to be more easily
understood but, of course, an "abstraction" is NOT the real thing,
it's merely a convenient "representation" for thinking and discussing
things...hence, 24.something hours just becomes 24 hours,
365.24blah-blah-blah becomes "365 (oh, and there's some 'leap year'
things every once in a while to account for the fraction so it doesn't
go out of synch too far over long periods of time ;)"...months are
stretched to fit into a year...

And, finally, there's a whole bunch of rocks spinning around the Sun
that are technically really all the same kind of thing...but, like,
the ancients called the ones they could see "planets" and the most
obvious ones get that name...yet, if you're really looking at this
closely, there's an awful lot of "debate" about which is what...it's
not just Sedna...there's also "Charon"...typically considered to be an
"asteroid" but it's pretty big in just-short-of-Pluto terms...the
astronomers don't take much notice of "Charon" - named after the
skeleton ferry man who would take people across the toxic river Styx
to the underworld of Hades in legend (Pluto was the God of the
underworld so the "joke" there is that "Charon" is the "ferry man"
floating around near Pluto...it's a dubious connection, what with that
being a mix of "gods"...much as "Sedna" is an _Inuit_ goddess of the
sea - taking up something similar to Poseidon or Neptune's role -
doesn't really fit into the main crop of "gods"...although, of course,
the names are merely descriptive to scientists...it's only the
_astrologers_ with their "horoscopes" who tend to take the names more
literally...like Mars - the god of war - happening to astrologically
symbolise violence, action, reaction, masculinity and so
forth...astrology asks for a lot of Faith in its basic premise anyway
but something else that comes into it from this is that the arbitrary
names that the planets get given aren't "coincidence" but are
"pre-ordained"...that is, whoever found and called Sedna "Sedna" has
just so happened to have picked the perfect "god name" for it that
astrologers can look up "Sedna" in the "dictionaries of ancient gods"
and find out what this new "planet" Senda would symbolically represent
in a horoscope...I would say "wow! Now there's a massive coincidence",
except the whole point with this astrology concept is that there is no
"coincidence"...rather this was "pre-ordained" to happen "by the
stars" or whatever...also, the _discovery_ of new planets is often
linked by astrologers to world events...that even their _discoveries_
by man is a "pre-ordained" kind of thing...this is how they address
the legitimate questions of "wait a minute! People didn't know Pluto
was there...but, once found, you assert that it has an 'influence' in
their lives...doesn't this mean, therefore, that Pluto _always was_ an
'influence' because it _was there all along_?"...and the usual reply
is: "ah, no...the discovery of the planets _coincides_ - because it's
pre-ordained to be so - with new influences entering into human
lives...hence, Pluto and Neptune were discovered as scientific
thinking and modern technology entered into the human condition and
that's what they represent" ;)...

As I say, even if these astrologers and their "theories" are total
nonsense - a likely possibility (even if there was some "influence" -
to be fair, the Sun and the Moon are _known_ to have a direct
influence but then one is massive and holds the solar system together,
beaming out the main power source for the entire Earth, and the other
is right next door that the gravity and energy they exert _is_
directly measurable that, for these two, this is no surprise...the
suprise would be to find that the rather pathetic "influences" of the
other planets, very weak in comparison, does anything useful to the
"human condition" - it _AIN'T_ going to work as they suggest nor would
it really be able to tell you about "tall, dark strangers" and
"opportunities for money", I'm sure ;) - then fair's fair on the fact
that they make excellent little "stories"...

Indeed, much like the "stories" about the gods and goddesses of
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, etc....there's nothing wrong with
"stories" at all, so long as you know they are stories and don't get
too carried away with them ;)...

Is Sedna a planet? Well, is Pluto actually a planet? What about
Charon? "Eros" is pretty big...where does that lump of rock - usually
considered without doubt as an "asteroid" - come into things?

That's kind of the problem with these things...which is why you have
to have an "open mind" on these things...kind of just "allow" people
to believe something is a "planet" if they really want to insist on
it...I mean, the term doesn't actually _mean_ anything
astrologically...it literally means "wandering star" so the term is
already kind of "wrong" and meaningless to begin with...

Is the definition of a "planet" that it reaches a certain size? That
it's big enough that, via gravity, it has a "rounded" shape rather
than the more "random rock formation" typical of an asteroid like
Eros? That it's big enough to retain its own atmosphere? That it
orbits the Sun in a particular kind of non-eccentric way?

The great problem here, you see, is that the word "planet" was
something people were saying long, long before any of this stuff was
even known about...it literally means "wandering star" and comes from
the ancients seeing "stars" (without telescopes, they all come out as
little dots of light, if you're lucky to see them at all ;) that,
unlike the rest, seemed to "wander" around the star background...the
term actually has _no scientific meaning_ whatsoever...like everyone
else, the astronomers still like to call things "planets" and other
things "asteroids" and so forth but the dividing line is 100% "fuzzy"
here...there's NO "official definition" because the word stems from
antiquity...when they were believed to be "stars"...when the stars
were believed to be little lights "attached" to a big inverted "bowl"
around the Earth...and so on and so forth...the concept of definitions
like "large enough to retain its own atmosphere" in times when people
didn't even really know that Earth had an "atmosphere" because the
idea of an invisible substance called "air" was a tricky enough
concept to grasp is just way beyond what could be expected...

And, as the word is _so established_, there was no Hope of
"retro-fitting" a more formal "scientific" definition onto it
later...if someone proposes "retain its own atmosphere", this won't
match how some other scientist had always thought of the word "planet"
and they'd reject that definition...

So, truth is, the word "planet" itself doesn't really mean anything -
nothing too specific, anyway - that the question does amount to "is
Sedna one of those things that no-one agrees a formal definition on,
anyway?"...a question that kind of answers itself...

Note that this is _FAR FROM UNIQUE_...look in on a biology newsgroup
and they spend all day arguing over "what is life?" / "If Amoebas are
living then why can't we say Amino Acids are alive?" and so on...and,
yeah, at this point, you can laugh and nod at how we all debate in
this group _over and over for years_: "That's not 'real' assembly!" /
"What is an assembler?" / "It's 1:1! No, wait, that's not right...umm,
then it's mnemonics! No, that doesn't fit either"...blah-blah-blah...

At the cutting edge of _ANY FIELD_, it all reduces back to the great
unanswered philosophical questions of: "Why are we here?" / "What the
hell is this all about?" / "Why are some things like this and other
things like that, anyway?"...and so on and so forth...which kind of
makes some logical sense, if you really think it over for a
while...when human knowledge runs out, it's inevitable that it turns
into "religion" and "theory" and "superstitution" and that kind of
thing...

Doesn't matter what field you pursue, the truth is that the more you
know, the more you will _doubt_ that you understand anything at
all...it's more of that "grand universal deep irony" I keep telling
people about...there's a reason why the wise men always talk in
riddles and philosophy and answer questions with more
questions...they've been at this stuff long enough to realise a simple
truth: For all that we've done as a species, we know a big fat amount
of _nothing_...always have done, always will do...the idea of
"knowledge" and the "perfection" of "wise men" and that kind of thing
is just "psychological candy" for the mind...it's why, often, the
wisest man finds it most difficult to answer the most simple of
"beginner" questions...how beginners - already starting with
"philosophy", "prejudice", "superstitition" and stuff - can literally
be "from the mouths of babes" in really being temporarily up there
with the "kings" of the field...until they fall naturally into the
"regimented thinking" of the field...at which point, somewhat
ironically, the "expert" is the one who then sets forth to "undo"
everything they ever learnt in the subject and challenge it all to
push things further still...

So, remember, "EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG"...five senses? Nope, more
than 300, in fact...seven colours of the rainbow? Nope,
"infinite"...oh, until you learn about Planck and that the universe
isn't "analogue" at all and it becomes "finite" (just very, very big
;) once again...until the quantum physicists decide to knock you for
six once more suggesting that the whole thing is nonsense because it's
really all about "nebulous probabilities"...it becomes "infinite"
again because there's an infinite amount of "universes" where all
possibilities are played out of which our small "finite" is but one
"player" in a bigger "universal play" playing its part..."two sides to
every story"? Complete nonsense...at least six billion...and that's
before you bring in the bizarre "nebelous probabilities" that every
one of us six billion is repeated infinitely across a massive
"multiverse"...and, no doubt, if they were ever able to measure and
quantify this "multiverse" then scientists would start discovering
that the "multiverse" is merely one "multiverse" in a bigger
"multi-multi-verse" and so on and so forth...

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it."
[ Aristotle ;) ]

Beth :)