* Astronomy

Conference Webstream Debate (windows media player stream)

New proposal for Resolution 5: Definition of a Planet

(1) A planet is a celestial body that (a) is by far the largest object in its local population(1), (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape (2), (c) does not produce energy by any nuclear fusion mechanism (3).

(2) According to point (1) the eight classical planets discovered before 1900, which move in nearly circular orbits close to the ecliptic plane are the only planets of our Solar System. All the other objects in orbit around the Sun are smaller than Mercury. We recognize that there are objects that fulfil the criteria (b) and (c) but not criterion (a). Those objects are defined as "dwarf" planets. Ceres as well as Pluto and several other large Trans-Neptunian objects belong to this category. In contrast to the planets, these objects typically have highly inclined orbits and/or large eccentricities.

(3) All the other natural objects orbiting the Sun that do not fulfil any of the previous criteria shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies". (4)

(1) The local population is the collection of objects that cross or close approach the orbit of the body in consideration.

(2) This generally applies to objects with sizes above several hundreds km, depending on the material strength.

(3) This criterion allows the distinction between gas giant planets and brown dwarfs or stars.

(4) This class currently includes most of the Solar System asteroids, near-Earth objects (NEOs), Mars-, Jupiter- and Neptune-Trojan asteroids, most Centaurs, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), and comets.

Further Considerations

There has been a long discussion about what a planet is. This problem appears at both ends: for the very massive bodies and for the smaller ones. At the large end, the limit seems to be clearer; it is now widely accepted that planets must not generate any energy from nuclear fusion, while brown dwarfs generate some nuclear energy from the fusion of deuterium. More problematic is the small end. We think that the definition should be kept as simple as possible and based on physical and cosmogonic reasons.
There is a wide consensus that planets formed by the accretion of small bodies ? the planetesimals. The accretion process led to the formation of embryo planets that, as they grew in size and acquired more powerful gravitational fields, went to a process of runaway accretion in which the size of a few of them detached from the rest of the bodies of their neighbouring zones. Given the powerful gravitational fields of these massive bodies - that we can call at this stage protoplanets - they were able to clean the population that had close encounters with them. The bodies interacting with the protoplanets were finally incorporated to the planets or scattered to other regions.
From a cosmogonic point of view, it therefore makes more sense to consider a planet as an object that acquired a mass large enough to clean a zone around its orbit. According to this definition, only eight planets, Mercury (perhaps marginally), Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune fulfil this condition. It is obvious that, at least for our solar system, this cosmogonic definition implicitly carries the condition of objects with a roundish shape determined by self-gravity.
From our definition, Pluto, Ceres and other large Trans-Neptunian objects in quasi-hydrostatic equilibrium (1) should be not considered as planets, since they never were the dominant bodies in their accretion zones. It is suggested that Pluto be kept unnumbered by historical reasons.

Is may be possible that in the near future cases of objects not foreseen at present could appear beyond our solar system, as for instance free-floating planets, stray planets, or double planets. We think that we should not advance definitions at this point for these exotic cases and leave their discussion when if they became a part of the observed world.

(1) From our present knowledge of the Solar System, we know that objects as small as Mimas (D~400km) are roundish. If this were the lower limit for an icy body to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, then we would already have several tens of bodies fulfilling this requirement.

-- Edited by Blobrana at 00:51, 2006-08-22

Title: What is a planet?
Authors: Steven Soter

A planet is an end product of disk accretion around a primary star or substar. I quantify this definition by the degree to which a body dominates the other masses that share its orbital zone. Both theoretical and observational measures of dynamical dominance reveal a gap of five orders of magnitude separating the eight planets of our solar system from the populations of asteroids and comets. This simple definition dispenses with upper and lower mass limits for a planet. It reflects the tendency of disk evolution in a mature system to produce a small number of relatively large bodies (planets) in non-intersecting or resonant orbits, which prevent collisions between them.

Read more (235kb, PDF)

If we assume that the typical small Kuiper belt object reflects 10% of the sunlight that hits its surface we know how bright a 400 km object would be in the Kuiper belt. As of late August 2006, 44 objects this size or larger in the Kuiper belt (including, of course, 2003 UB313 and Pluto), and one (Sedna) in the region beyond the Kuiper belt. In addition our large ongoing Palomar survey has detected approximately 30 more objects of this size which are currently undergoing detailed study.

We have not yet completed our survey of the Kuiper belt. Our best estimate is that a complete survey of the Kuiper belt would more than triple this number.

For now, the number of known objects in the solar system which are likely to be round is 53, with the number jumping to 80 when the objects from our survey are announced, and to more than 200 when the Kuiper belt is fully surveyed.

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