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Are you stupid? - Find out with this test
Think I got the question about #planets in solar system wrong
It's a fairly arbitrary answer at the moment
There's 8 planets in our solar system. Pluto is gone.
Yeah - but depends when the test was written......
Btw, what does this have to do with digg?
It was a link on Digg
Oh
darn, im 2% stupid.. thats slightly more stupid than the other guy
wooop! I got it down to 0% (the one about the hole got me, then it was just a case of figuring out which question I lost the point on and what the smartest answer was (apparently people whos computer time is super-accurate are smart)
Actually, several of the questions seem to have more than one correct answer, including that one - since my computer time isn't
and I got my score to 0%
I just had to cheat at the question where it said not to look back in the test.
You are 51% stupid. This means...
You are, on average, smart and stupid. Read a few more books and decrease your score!
Does this mean I am the most stupid person here
No, it means you didn't read the questions carefully enough. Try again, but be more paranoid...
Wow better than I thought I'd do!
You are 10% stupid. This means...
You are far from stupid. Congrats on a great accomplishment!
Yay!
First try, no looking back at the question that says you're not allowed to:
And I'm also sure there are several correct answers for a number of them.
Don't worry, OmegaMan - as you get older, you'll lose that short-term memory thing.
as you get older, you'll lose that short-term memory thing.
Is it bad if I lost that at 13?
Can't remember when I lost it...
dekrazee1,
you have lost your long term memory too!
lol
What's memory?
hehehehhe
Hmm, 2% I wonder what I got wrong?
Damn!
hahahaha
ok, I really should get this test thing done...
I'm 10% stupid apparantly!
and to think it was mostly guesswork.
Guesswork?
<a href="http://www.stupidtester.com/index.php?im">
<img src="http://www.stupidtester.com/images/stupid.php?val=1479219101c90cdb" alt="StupidTester.com says I'm 4% Stupid! How stupid are you? Click Here!">
</a>
No Cheating! Whoopie
Looks like I am too stoopid to get the image to show.
Huzzah! Now I can prove to all my friends that I really do deserve bad haircuts
Ok, so I finally did it
Have to say, I wasn't expecting that.... I was kinda fooling around with it!
ok, here we go
pluto is not a planet anymore ya its an ice dwarf or something!
they found some kind of orbiting object that was larger than Pluto but not really a planet, but if that wasn't a planet then it raised the question of what a planet is and whether Pluto should be called one, ended up that Pluto + 2 other objects became dwarf planets
Everytime I come into this group, the topic title makes me wanna say this -
YES
So now that Pluto's not a planet anymore - does that mean that the Stupid tester itself has become stupid?
no, 8 is the right answer to give on that question
it might also except 9.. not sure
I checked, switching the answer from 8 to 9 didn't affect the overall score (it said I was 0% stupid both times)
How many times do you have to be told you're not stupid before you accept it?? Hmmm?
The few hundred astronomers that voted on the question of Pluto are incapable of thinking themselves out of the self imposed stupor that their debates have caused.... they might as well continue the ages old discussion of how many angles can fit on the head of a pin.
By the definition they came up with, Earth is not a planet .... but they don't seem to be concerned about that!
Yeah, I thought it odd too....
It's not like Pluto is anxious over its status....
earth is very much a planet by their standard - its the largest body in the immediate vicinity, its large enough to have become round under it own gravity, it orbits the sun, and it's cleared the area around its orbit by pulling in any other bodies that used to be going around at this distance
No, Earth hasn't cleared the area around its orbit... further, the definition as laid out is not "at this distance" but simply that it has cleared the neigbourhood of its orbit.... and if it was per the wording you suggest Super-King, then Jupiter would fail as there are asteroids in the same orbit of Jupiter that have 'synchronized' with Jupiter but not been cleared (the Trojan Asteroids). The definition is not sufficient nor exclusive enough to be practical. Sometime down the road it will be rectified by the tens of thousands of astronomers that weren't at the meeting.
oh.. well you seem to have better information than I do.. and more accurate wording
well in that case the re-definition needs some major tweaking, I don't see why the divide has to be so strict though - we can tell what a planet is by commonsensical methods
I think the definition the Greeks used is more common sense than the formal one we have now... asteres planetai or "wandering stars", were lights in the heavens that moved over the course of the year, in contrast to the "fixed stars" which stayed motionless relative to one another. This then encompased Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (they thought the Earth special and at the center)...
Looking back at my posts it looks like from the first I was more cynical (and snarking in all posts, sorry about that!) than perhaps I should have been.... but the outcome of the IAU meeting really galls me. Although I haven't been actively involved in astronomy since about 1972 when I left the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (my professional life moved a different direction). at that time decisions on matters such as this seemed to be based on science ...but the meeting that decided the definition was plainly motivated by backroom politics, coniving, and scheming to get something passed rather than to get it right..... this can be seen in the reports of people actually there.. the wording was to be voted on was kept secret until the session of the vote... a small group excluded all others and then brought it to the floor for an up or down style showdown...the proper committee structure and consultation with the membership at large was ignored... only those in the hall voted etc. etc.
Those on the side of the definition claim that opponents are playing 'lawyer' and that the distinctions they bring are meaningless -- and everyone should know that the wording doesn't need to be precise. (And this is science?).... what settles it for me though is the consideration that the location of a body determines if it is a planet or not by this definition... not more meaningful measures such as size (mass; diameter; spherical shape etc) , orbital inclination or other factors (eg. comparison to the mass of all other objects in the same orbit ).
So what does the definition mean (ignoring the minor failings)? Well doing a 'thought experiment" shows that it is 'location specific" that is, if Pluto was swapped in position with Mars then Pluto would be called a planet and Mars would not... even though Mars is much larger than Pluto, there is no way that Mars would have cleared the Kuiper belt ... there is simply too much debris at that location for it to be cleared in the lifetime of the Solar System todate... and yet that is really all that the definition demands. (an object large enought to do the clearing will be spherical if what we "know" about the formation of planetary bodies is true)
So.. ignoring the IAU, do you think Pluto should be a planet?
Short answer: Yes its a planet (but I'm prepared to be on the wrong side of the debate ... and would flip to the other side given a definition that was consistent -even if arbitrary)
Long answer: I'm right on the cusp and have myself flip flopped before the meeting as various alternatives were discussed in the community at large (before the hijacking of the IAU groupies) ...for while its hard to accept Pluto as a planet and not the larger bodies that are further away (and that might lead to 50 or so planets)... I don't think we want 50+ planets.
it seems that ultimately an arbitrary factor has to be chosen to force the number to a 'reasonable limit' ... for I like a definition tied to mass but the exact mass would still be arbitrary given the wide range of bodies just in our solar systems, let alone others... (the fear of this was of course part of the rush to judgement on the selected definition)
I think they put too much emphasis on common sense (that it had to be a small number) and then neglected to use it in making up the definition! If they wanted common sense then they should have stuck to that as the defining attribute of the definition and not tried to finagle the definition in ways that don't stand the test of reason or common sense.
I would judge it on mass (which leads naturally to the self-rounding, so could be used as an indicator of mass, as it is in the current definitions)
Possibly angle of orbit - all the definite planets go around on roughly the same plane, a similar thing happens on the galactic scale, with galaxies being far wider than they are thick, so I could support that being in a definition (although if something of considerable size was found going round perpendicular to the normal plane, that would need a re-think
The greek definition would include every body in the Solar System except the Sun, so I think that's out
Clearing the area seems from what you've said to be an unreasonable demand on a body aspiring to be a planet, so leave that out
1) An underlying (but unstated) assumption in the Greek system though was that it was visible to the unaided human eye... hence the limitation to the bodies I mentioned above.. as far as common sense goes it comes pretty close (although some problems arise according to each object's reflectance or apparent ration of brightness to size)
2) Pluto's orbit is significantly inclined, I haven't kept up to date enough to know if the large objects past Pluto are inclined or not...
3) I'm hesitant on mass alone (for the reasons I indicated in the 'thought experiment" ... if Pluto was where mars is would the limit be drawn to include Pluto or not ? ....Pluto is not significantly different in size to our own moon... but that said this factor remains the closest to common sense even if the exact division has to be drawn somewhat arbitrarily.
4) if we allow a little more complexity into the definition I would go with one suggestion that said to be a planet a body has to be greater in mass than the other items in its near or same orbit and add the stipulation that it controls the orbit of items in its neighbourhood... (this eliminates the problem of the Trojan Asteroids with Jupiter, the fact that earth has not cleared the meteor fields in its orbit , but would make Pluto a non planet as it has been forced into a cycle by the gravitational effect of planets not just the sun) - and then we need a suplementary definition along the line of dwarf planet or planetoid etc.
I'm feeling too stupid for this topic
'nuff said.
Forget Pluto, another dethroned entity - the Nile
Well, I guess I was on the wrong side of that argument for oh so many years... If asked I would have answered the Amazon was the longest.... i've been mistook all these years without knowing it... I wonder where else my education has let me down (or perhaps its that damn memory thing again).
But now that I'm right I'm all confused with what to do with reconciling my headstrong impulses for all those years when I was wrong.... hmmm
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Good thing for me, I've always thought it was the Amazon, so no database tweaking needed.
I like the Amazon river.... I've always had a thing for it.... Pirahnas, anacondas..... brilliant!
I knew the Nile was longest, now I have to remember that its not any more
Probably in a year or two someone will find some new tributary to the Nile that makes it 106km longer
Actually that's quite a sizable amount of river for us to have not noticed..
You're right it is really quite suprising ... even more so that the debate is still not settled even with this new measurement.
A different suprise to me was that they felt the need to mount a special expedition to prove it (and they are still left with two possible alternatives on the longest route) as I would have thought that images from the Landsat (specifically designed for land and resource management purposes) would have been the best way to tackle the question now.... (but then given the choice of 'working in the office' vs getting out in the field - well, perhaps the 'best' process was decided by default !)
Maybe they can't follow every little twist of the river using the images and so can't measure its length precisely enough
yes i am
Ohhhh... I don't believe that!
