1) Astronauts have repaired the tear in the insulation blanket on the Orbiter using staples, duct tape, and, presumably, old reruns of MacGyver.

2) A computer glitch on the International Space Station is causing major trouble. Installation of the new solar panels evidently set off some sort of software or hardware bug, and the guidance gyros (among other utilities) on the station aren’t working. Atlantis is being used for attitude control. NASA says this is fixable, and they’re working on it.

3) A woman in Palatine, Illinois is picking up Shuttle video transmissions on her baby monitor. This is a funny story and all, but my main interest is that when I first saw it, I thought she lived in Palpatine. Oh well.

Artist drawing of Eris and Dysnomia. Remember, the camera adds ten pounds. Copyright Robert Hurt, IPAC

If you’re in the "Pluto is a planet" crowd, then you might consider selling all your 9^th planet merchandise on eBay while you still can: astronomers have found that Eris is more massive than Pluto.

Eris was discovered a few years back, and observations indicated it might be bigger (that is, have a larger diameter) than Pluto. This is pretty hard to do, because it didn’t look like much more than a dot in telescopes; the diameter had to be inferred by its known distance and its brightness. If it’s made of something dark (like organic chemicals, common on distant objects), it must be big to look as bright as it does; if it’s made of something reflective (like snow or ice) then it’s smaller. Subsequent Hubble observations indicated it was indeed bigger than Pluto, and the former ninth planet took one more body blow.

Now it’s known that not only is Eris bigger, it’s more massive. About 30% more massive, in fact.

The mass is derived by observing the orbit of its moon Dysnomia (remember when they were called Xena and Gabrielle? Man, I’m glad they changed the names). By seeing how long it takes the moon to orbit Eris, the mass of Eris can be found. Mike Brown from Caltech (that evul librul who discovered Eris), and his grad student Emily Schaller, determined Eris to have a mass of 1.66 x 10²² kilograms. Pluto’s mass is 1.27 x 10²² kilograms.

Eris wins.

(Not that it’s all that big in the first place: Earth, for comparison, is 6×10²⁴ kg, about 200 times more massive than both Pluto and Eris combined.)

First off, let me comment on how cool it is that we can determine the mass of an object that is currently 14 billion kilometers away. That’s amazing.

Second, of course, this news will probably mildly rekindle the "Is Pluto a planet?" debate. As I have said many times, there is only one answer to this: it doesn’t matter. Why? Because the word "planet" is ill-defined; the group of astronomers who tried to define it last year did an OK job, but the scientific definition left the public rather cold. People want to define the word viscerally, emotionally… I might even use the word unreasonably. In the case of the public, most people want Pluto to be a planet, and won’t be open to all the reasons why it shouldn’t be.

And in the end, we’re arguing over semantics. Pluto doesn’t care whether it’s a planet or not. Worse, lumping it into a category where it might not fit — and one with arbitrary boundaries — may make it easier to miss important facts about it. It’s a sort of mental illusion. If you think of it as a planet, you might miss a bit of data about it that fits better with Pluto being a big Kuiper Belt Object, or comet nucleus, or some other weird bit of flotsam.

Words have impact. They shape our thoughts.

Call it a planet if you want. It doesn’t matter that much to me — and less to Pluto itself — but you’ll be doing the object, and yourself, a disservice. And Eris is bigger anyway. Nyah nyah.

The way cool Pamela Gay, who writes the Star Stryder blog, has put up the seventh Carnival of Space, a collection of spacey blog entries from the past week. This is a great way to get all your space reading in one spot, so go give it a read!

Via AstroDyke I read an article in the New York Times about astronomy communities being built around the country in places like Arizona, Georgia, and Florida. These are towns founded and lived in by people who want clear, dark skies, so they have established these communities in places where there are no city lights to interfere with nature’s glory.

I’ve been reading about these places for some time, and I think it’s great. It’s too bad our well-lit civilization has forced astronomers to do this, but it’s great to see people taking this issue into their own hands. This is a natural extension of dark sky star parties, events where astronomers gather to have fun during the day and observe at night. I love star parties. I’ve been to several (though not the biggies yet — Texas and Nebraska– although, hmmmmm, it’s only a six hour drive for me now) and the sense of community, fun, and love of the sky is so refreshing and energizing. Plus: big ‘scopes! Woohoo! I would never have the chance otherwise to peer through an 18″ Obsession fitted with an [OIII] filter (lust lust lust); years ago I used one to observe the Veil nebula, the twisted and filamentary remains of a star that exploded long ago. To call it spectacular is to seriously insult the view: it was like a white rag, twisted and curved, set against the night sky.

It took three things to get that view: a big ‘scope which can swallow a lot of light; the filter, which let through light from the hot but ethereally thin supernova gas but blocked much of the sky glow; and a dark sky to start with.

I may never live in one of those communities, but it’s good to know that others are, and care enough to set them up and maintain them.

AAARRRRRGGGGG.

If I were the defendant in this trial, I would appeal. The jury prayed over their decision.

Actually, this makes me wonder about a "jury of my peers". If I found that the jury prayed over whether to convict me or not, they are not my peers. If I were found guilty, I would certainly appeal on that ground.

The article quotes a juror:

Kissam [a juror] said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prove Cook [the defendant] behaved recklessly.

“Ninety-eight percent of the evidence pointed to (Cook) being correct,” Kissam said. “He did all he could do.”

Criminy, where to start? The juror based their decision on evidence, but still prayed? Why bother?

And why bother anyway? Prayer doesn’t work. If they are willing to base their decision in a trial on evidence, why not look to the evidence that prayer doesn’t work?

Yup. Pretty much dead on accurate.

I’m bummed to report that Don Herbert, better known as Mr. Wizard, has died. His TV show, "Watch Mr. Wizard", popularized science to a huge audience in the 1950s and 1960s. I never saw his show except in excerpts, but it helped introduce an entire generation to science. All of us who popularize science owe our jobs to him.