…Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.”
That’s the prize-winning mnemonic that a 10-year-old girl in Montana came up with for keeping straight the planets and dwarf planets of the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Eris.
The news story doesn’t say whether she’s a Muser, but it seems likely. You can read about it here (spaces have been added to the URL, as usual, to keep spambots from tracing links back to us):
www.space. com/news/ap-080227-planet-mnemonic-contest. html
Of course, we’d be interested in hearing about any other good mnemonics you’ve learned or invented.
Wow! That’s really cool. I’m going to be sure to memorize that. Also, Ceres and Eris are my two fave planets. They’re also the planets I’ve written stories about.
Well, if she were a muser, wouldn’t she be bragging about it now?
In any case, she’s clearly an
“Alladin”“Aladdin” fan.1- Stories?? Post one, please!
2- She might not know about the blog, or maybe her internet is restricted.
lol at dwarf planets oh pluto you know that we still love you
This is really good though haha
*Clenches Teeth*
She forgot Charon.
Charon was a planet under the first proposal that the International Astronomical Union considered, but it wound up classified as a moon under the one the IAU finally adopted. Right, KaiYves?
Eris will always be Xena to me.
7- i dunno about xena or eris or ceres….can someone fill me in on stuff i positively have no idea about?
7- really?
7- Yes, Charon is a “natural satellite” (moon) of Pluto, along with Nix and Hydra. (Did you know those names were chosen because they are also the initials of New Horizons, the current mission to Pluto?)
Planets: Many Very Early Mornings, Justin Spit Upon Ned.
Dwarf Planets: Consequently- Very Politely- Everyone Quickly Sued. (Ceres, Vesta, Pluto, Eris, Quoar, Sedna)
3 – I think it’s spelled “Aladdin”.
King Phillip Came Over For Good Soup.
Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.
Yeah, I read about that. Cool.
(11) I think you’re right. MBers had been spelling it with two Ls and one D, so I did, too.
Did you know that nobody has ever found an original Arabic source for the story of Aladdin? It looks as if a translator wrote it and included it in a French version of the Arabian Nights stories in the 18th Century.
Argh. I hate changes. Okay fine, adding a newly discovered planet at the end, fine. But sticking one in the middle? Ble-ah!
I get this not, but let me say,
The elephants rock anyway!
15- Agrrrfishi! Where have you been? *coughPIEISLEcough* *coughNOW!cough*
Pluto’s still a planet.
I don’t care what the idiots say, Pluto is and will always be a true planet.
/gradster(1)/
To me, the fuss over Pluto is like arguing whether your thumbs are fingers. Either way, your thumbs are still there. So is Pluto. Call it the outermost planet or the innermost island in the archipelago known as the Kuiper Belt — Pluto doesn’t care.
18- Yeah, dwarf or not, Pluto is still there.
Besides, sometimes you just have to accept that the experts know better than you and that science is not about emotions.
(15) Agrrrfishi,
The first letters of the words in the sentence correspond to the names of the known planets and “dwarf planets”: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Eris.
Why doesn’t Pluto count as a planet, while Ceres and Eris do, even if all 3 are dwarf planets?
21- huh? Ceres and Eris don’t count…
22 – Oh, wait…I’m confused.
I guess what I’m wondering is why Ceres, Eris, and Pluto are somehow “more important” dwarf planets, and therefore are the only ones featured in the mnemonic.
Is it because they’re the only ones that are further in than the Kuiper Belt?
Also, how the heck do you pronounce mnemonic?
23- The IAU hasn;t mad any thing else a dwarf planet.
24 – Really? -looks it up online- Oh, I guess you’re right. Sorry.
Under the new system, Ceres, Pluto, and Eris are all “dwarf planets” — but dwarf planets don’t count as planets.
Under the old system, Ceres was an asteroid, Pluto was a planet, and Eris was a “Kuiper Belt object.”
This is one case in which experts disagreed. The problem boils down to two main points:
(1) When the Greeks first used the word “planet” (wanderer) to refer to objects in the sky, they meant, basically, “a starlike light that moves across the sky within an observable period of time.” Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Saturn were planets; Earth wasn’t, because it was down here and everything else moved around it. Uranus, Neptune, the asteroids, and moons other than our own hadn’t been discovered yet, because they were too dim (i.e., too distant and/or small) and/or slow-moving. So the word planet is really pre-scientific and has never had a strict scientific meaning.
(2) Scientists don’t need a definition for “planet.” They can study these objects perfectly well without arguing about definitions. The definition is mainly for public consumption — that is, for non-astronomers like us.
When the International Astronomical Union decided to try to define “planet,” its members divided into three main schools of thought:
(1) “Let’s just take the nine things we’ve been calling planets and keep calling them planets, and call anything else we discover something else.”
(2) “A planet is anything that’s fairly big and has its part of space pretty much to itself.” (“Fairly” and “pretty much” are open to interpretation.)
(3) “A planet is anything that’s round, i.e., massive enough for its gravity to scrunch it into a sphere.”
The 3-ites complained that definition 2 depended not on what the object was, but on where it was. Besides, we know that in the history of the solar system, planets’ orbits have changed. Does that mean that a planet can move and become a nonplanet? Meanwhile, the 2-ites complained that definition 3 would open up the field to too many new planets, including shrimpy little Ceres, Pluto’s moon Charon, Eris, and who knows how many more big ice balls out in the Kuiper Belt.
In the end, they wound up compromising between definitions 2 and 3 by inventing the term “dwarf planet” for objects that are round but don’t have sole gravitational dominion over their parts of space. The definition left a lot of people dissatisfied, but at least it’s a definition. And, as I’ve said, it really doesn’t matter.
But there’s no need to feel sorry for Pluto. Before, it was a lonely misfit, following a weird orbit on the outskirts of the planetary club. Now suddenly it’s part of a swarm of similar objects, with thousands of friends. (Hm… Looked at that way, the Kuiper Belt sounds a bit like MuseBlog.)
25- so what are exo planets?
i mean 26.
Exoplanets are exoplanets.
26 – Thank you for the explanation!
27- Worlds of other suns, to put it poetically.
To put it less poetically, exoplanets are planets that orbit stars other than our sun.
23 – Noo-mon-ic.
32 – Nice one…
Lately, Aging Guys Feel Strong, Maybe Pills Bring Greatness?
The Fellowship of the Ring:
Legolas, Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Boromir, Gimli
(Gimli and Gandalf may be switched.)
I have lately become slightly obsessed with LOTR.