Pluto will always be a planet to me, and you’ll pry that definition from my cold, dead hands!
Real scientific, Jerry.
Hungry For Apples?
A dwarf planet is a type of planet, right?
:'(
New Billy Joel song? I heard he’s writing again.
Arenyou gonna start calling Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Orcus planets?
We went through this 150 years ago ehen the asteroid belt was discovered. Every astronomer wanted credit for discovering a new planet, so at one point there were 15 before all the astronomers got together and said it was untenable.
Yes. We could have had a planet Orcus and we were like “nah, we’ll pass.” That would have been metal as shit.
Stay strong. A dwarf planet is a perfectly valid kind of planet, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
It’s not the size that counts but the ability to clear your orbit. ;)
So tell me about Jupiter
Good question! I had forgotten about Jupiter’s Trojans and Greek asteroids!
I went and checked the definiton of Clearing the Neighborhood by IAU, emphasis mine:
The phrase refers to an orbiting body (a planet or protoplanet) “sweeping out” its orbital region over time, by gravitationally interacting with smaller bodies nearby. Over many orbital cycles, a large body will tend to cause small bodies either to accrete with it, or to be disturbed to another orbit, or to be captured either as a satellite or into a resonant orbit. As a consequence it does not then share its orbital region with other bodies of significant size, except for its own satellites, or other bodies governed by its own gravitational influence. This latter restriction excludes objects whose orbits may cross but that will never collide with each other due to orbital resonance, such as Jupiter and its trojans, Earth and 3753 Cruithne, or Neptune and the plutinos.[3] As to the extent of orbit clearing required, Jean-Luc Margot emphasises “a planet can never completely clear its orbital zone, because gravitational and radiative forces continually perturb the orbits of asteroids and comets into planet-crossing orbits” and states that the IAU did not intend the impossible standard of impeccable orbit clearing.[2]
Trojans and Greeks orbit Jupiter’s LaGrange points in a stable orbit and so they are governed by Jupiter’s gravity. You could say they’re really weird moons orbiting semi-stable points Jupiter creates.
So since there are like 95 moons (as of last Feb) of jupiter, I’m calling out a dwarf planet
You know, this post made me realize something. Some people are viewing it in terms of “rank”, instead of an arbitrary scientific classification designed to efficiently communicate ideas in a clear and concise way.
It’s like … mythology or something, and the planet(oid) being anthropomorphized.
Do people also view kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species as “ranks” of some sort, with some intrinsically greater value being given to some over others?
It’s like … mythology or something, and the planet(oid) being anthropomorphized.
I mean, the planet(oid)s are named after gods.
The personification of its classification is probably related to the exclusivity of the title and “bigger is better” mentality. Since every life form has a taxonomy for domain to species, there’s not really an exclusivity to each echelon. I don’t imagine anybody really thinks like this meme below, for example:
This makes me want to devise a tiered, inclusive classification scheme for space objects.
We could start with orbital objects, any object that normally experiences regular, periodic orbits with minimal deviation. So, everything in the galaxy would be one except potentially Sag A, and the galaxy itself. Perhaps the next branching subsets could be things undergoing continuous fusion somewhere in their body or not?
Thing is everyone has one of those.
Compare it to non-sentience, sentience, and sapience, to properly anthropomorphize it.
Every celestial body fits into a specific classification too.
Yeah but no one just has a kingdom or phylum.
Every living creature gets an entry from domain to species.
Celestial bodies aren’t a hierarchy, a planet isn’t also a dwarf planet or an asteroid.
I think it’ll matter a bit more once (if) we get to explore our solar system for real. I feel like right now the concept of “planet” is still rather distant in our minds and a lot of people just base it on vibes
Hard not to anthropomorphize things when they’re named after our gods
Planet Y
In case it’s a dwarf
Planet x
Damnit who let Elon name that planet?
aint no planet x coming cause aint no space cuz aint not globe earth
aint no birds flying cause aint no worms cuz aint not soil earth
deleted by creator
Cease your investigation!
Is planet X really discovered?
Finally, all that yoyo polish!
I believe there was a mathematical constant to find the space ( km/ lightyaers from the sun ) where a planet should be. Do’nt remember the name tho. Is pluto on the next ‘free space’ ?
Shoutout to the creep stalking me atm to spam downvote my comments. You know you can just block me, right? Grass is free to touch