Patrick Reany
9 January 2024
First, I posed the following trick question to BingChat.
Patrick:
What space probe started off to find a planet, but found a dwarf planet instead?
BingChat:
The Dawn spacecraft was launched in 2007 with the primary objective of studying
the two largest objects in the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. It was the first
mission to orbit two deep-space destinations and the first to visit a dwarf planet.
The spacecraft was propelled by a solar-powered ion propulsion system, which is
far more fuel-efficient and much gentler than conventional chemical propulsion
systems. After spending nearly eight years floating through deep space, Dawn
finally reached its destination, Ceres, in 2015 and slid into its orbit with no
complications.
Well, this is clearly wrong. It's as if BingChat never heard of the great controvery
of dwarf planets and pluto. Of course the trick is not that the planet changed, but
that the terminology changed. For me, it was rather bizarre to watch it transpire as
it did with the destination object being demoted to a 'dwarf planet' while the probe
was in flight.
Then I posed it to ChatGPT 3.5
Patrick:
What space probe started off to find a planet, but found a dwarf planet instead?
ChatGPT:
The space probe you're referring to is New Horizons. Launched by NASA on January
19, 2006, New Horizons was primarily sent on a mission to study Pluto and its moons.
However, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) reclassified Pluto as
a dwarf planet. Therefore, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to explore a dwarf
planet when it conducted a flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015, providing valuable data
and images of this distant and previously poorly understood world.
Okay, so ChatGPT 3.5 got it right off. I have to wonder why BingChat didn't just ask
me for clarification.
As for the Pluto demotion problem, I offered my own odd solution: Whatever was
officially considered as a planet in the year 1980 is to be a planet in perpetuity.
You'll have to invent a new name for planet-like objects discovered after that.