New Planets Shouldn鈥檛 Rock Your World
Don鈥檛 be scared, if you think you鈥檒l have to memorize the potentially growing number of planets.
The proposal to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that would change the definitions of planets and add three planets to our solar system is nothing to get concerned over, says UAB physics professor Perry Gerakines, Ph.D.
鈥淚t may end up that we have hundreds of planets in the solar system with this new definition,鈥� Gerakines said. That shouldn鈥檛 scare schoolchildren all over the world. What will happen, if the proposal is adopted, is that the way we talk about planets will change. 鈥淚nstead of just talking about planets, we鈥檒l be talking about types of planets,鈥� he said.
Gerakines is a member of the IAU but did not attend the Prague Conference. He reminds people who would panic over the changing definition of planets that 500 years ago, it was widely thought that the Earth was the center of the universe and that planets were merely 鈥渨andering stars.鈥� The word 鈥渨orld鈥� once meant 鈥渦niverse鈥� until it was found by Galileo that planets were similar to Earth. Nowadays, we know of many 鈥渨orlds鈥� such as ours.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 the nature of science,鈥� Gerakines said. 鈥淪cience is about adapting our thinking according to what we observe in the universe.鈥�
Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham
