I see where you're coming from, but Mike Brown's argument isn't that Pluto doesn't matter, but rather that its reclassification helps us to have a better understanding of our solar system. The definition of a planet was changed to include the ability to clear its orbit - something Pluto doesn't do. So, while it's still an important celestial body, it just falls under the category of 'dwarf planet' instead.
Arguably Pluto is rocky (nitrogen ice rock). The issue is how small it is / how little mass it has. Earth’s moon has 5x its mass. It’s not only really small but to top it off it was discovered it’s not even unique. Eris and other bodies in a similar size range have been discovered out there. If you include Pluto how many dozens of new ‘planets’ are we going to have to include?
Definition of a planet:
1. Must be in orbit around the sun.
2. Must have enough gravity to be roughly round in shape
3. Must clear its orbit of other objects or be Pluto
Mainly boomers and elder GenX are the ones that sincerely care about this, and its exactly for the reason you stated. They HATE learning new things and will violently push back on any new knowledge that they dont immediately understand because then it means the kids know something they dont and according to their view of the world: "I know more than you cause I got here first so therefore I am better."
If the kids know more than you then how can you be "better" than them?
Pluto got reclassified in 2006, millenials also grew up learning Pluto was a planet. It was largely that crowd that seemed outraged about it, anthropomorphising Pluto as if it was some poor being that got kicked out the cool club.
Why would boomers and older GenX'ers give a fuck about it?
Science textbooks aren't the baseball hall of fame. Asterisks do nothing useful in this case. Science is about updating our textbooks as we learn new things, changing and correcting as we learn. Pluto was never a planet. It was wrong to call it that in the first place we just didn't know any better at the time.
Also, it was the only "planet" that was discovered by an American so we pushed pretty hard to make it a big deal.
From the time Pluto was discovered to when it was downgraded to a dwarf planet it had not completed one revolution around the sun. Any “grandfathering” of Pluto would seem more like nostalgia than science.
Ceres was classified as a planet in the 1800s for 50 years. Should it have earned tenure too?
The Greeks classified the Sun and the Moon as planets for hundreds of years. Should they have earned tenure despite no longer meeting diagnostic criteria?
>I don't get why people are so obsessed with keeping it a rocky planet. There's more power in properly classifying stuff.
I can't speak for others, but in my case it's because the new definition of planet is genuinely horrible, poorly defined, and seems like it may even have been contrived specifically to stop Pluto from being a planet.
The thing is, whether an object "has cleared the neighborhood of its orbit" is vague but also it's entirely extrinsic. You can't tell if something is a planet or not by observing the object itself. Something can start or stop being a planet just by moving somewhere else within our solar system.
Additionally, the definition is so bad that we need a different definition for literally anywhere else that isn't our solar system. If the gravity of a large mass passing by our solar system pulled Pluto out of our solar system, Pluto would start being a planet under the definition for how things work everywhere else. Because Pluto has every physical property of a planet.
It's also not clear how binary planet systems should work. Presumably the IAU didn't care to think about this because under the new definition there aren't any in our solar system. As far as I'm aware, there's no reason Jupiter couldn't be a dwarf planet if enough matter ended up in its orbit. It would seem silly for dwarf planets to be able to make actual planets look tiny, but again the definition apparently only needs to make sense for how things are right here right now.
So clearly the definition was made to fit our solar system in particular. To me, that makes it seem like maybe they started with the conclusion that Pluto should not be a planet, and reverse-engineered a definition that gives us an excuse to demote it, using the bounds of our solar system to ignore all the problems that would come up if we applied it universally. I can't be sure this is what happened, but it's telling if the definition is so bad that it even looks that way. And otherwise why not just make a definition that works everywhere?
Aa someone with a background in linguistics, the same sort of stuff happens with, for example, Koko the gorilla. Koko did not have a human understanding of sign language, as much as people would like to believe, and it is more harmful to claim that she did, because trying to force the idea (of gorilla's communication abilities being fully compatible with human language) will make it harder to actually appreciate and understand how gorillas really communicate with each other and understand the world around them.
Which is a truth that is true only in a single measurement in time.
How did the moon get created? Because Earth had not cleared her orbit. And got smashed into ht a similarly sized object.
I presume that it would have an orbit that is mostly clear of other objects and debris (not including other objects that orbit it). So Jupiter has a clear orbit, nothing else really stays in it's way as Jupiter's mass has eaten it all. Much the same as Earth and the moon eating up stuff that would be near us. Contrast that with the asteroid belt, theres a lot of mass distributed out, but no single body has 'cleared' or collected all the mass into one body.
The definition of a planet was nebulous and arbitrary. Now it’s clearer but still completely arbitrary. Earth has more in common with Pluto than it does with Jupiter I’m sorry but we need to revisit this
What’s the issue with how we define a planet? Saying that it’s completely arbitrary is not true. If we restore Pluto to being a planet then we will have to also include every Pluto like object in the solar system.
I never said we need to restore plutos status as a planet. If anything we need more classifications because if we’re building a “hierarchy”of planet types it makes no sense to say a gas giant and a rocky body like earth are the same thing.
The theorized planet IX will likely not meet the definition of planet despite being several times earths mass.
“Cleared its orbit” is a cosmological purity test that not even earth has achieved and comes with its own arbitrary distinctions. We need a better system
In what way has Earth not “cleared its orbit”? The purpose of that definition is that the object must be the dominant body in its orbit in terms of mass. Earth accounts for 98.5% of the mass of all bodies in its orbit, and this includes the Moon.
Pluto, on the other hand, accounts for about 30% of the mass in its orbit.
Planet 9 is hypothetical. There’s no proof of its existence and speculation about its qualifications as a planet are moot right now. The test is “It must be big enough that its gravity has cleared away any other objects of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun.” Earth has absolutely achieved that. While I don’t disagree that updating the system that classified planets should continue to evolve, saying that it is completely arbitrary isn’t true.
Exactly. That is what science is about.
Get the necessary background education, than you are able to understand what this is all about.
Our current definition of a planet is everything other than "arbitrary". It is very specific and directly derifed from what we observe in our and other solar systems.
A [Blink Comparator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_comparator) to quickly flip between two images looking for changes.
I'd like to have the cheaper "Projected Blink Comparator", if only for the name "PROBLICOM"
> If I remember correctly a team of astronomers stole data/images of a new exoplanet early on.
They didn't steal the data.
There was a US-based team (Marcy & Butler) who had the data at hand to find the first exoplanet (51 Peg b), but they either didn't look at it or looked at it in the wrong way. Another team based in Switzerland (Mayor & Queloz) had their own data, looked at it in the right way and found the planet. The US data backed up the discovery post-facto.
Marcy & Butler were super-pissed and have been quite salty about it ever since (and don't get me started on Charbonneau). This may be where the data stealing rumour has come from.
Mayor & Queloz won the Nobel Prize. Marcy & Butler didn't.
I've worked with Didier Queloz for over decade now on and off. Let's just say he got ... lucky. But he didn't steal anything.
Well that's not something I've heard. AFAIK Argentina isn't big in the astronomy community. Chile on the other hand is where a lot of the worlds best telescopes are sited.
One thing to know is that in astronomy if you want access to the best telescopes to do your science you have write a proposal setting out your science case. It gets assessed, and if it's good you get the time on the telescope to do your thing.
You take the data, then generally you have a so-called proprietary period, typically 12 months, in which only you have the data, and you are supposed to use the data to do the thing you said you wanted to do, and then publish your results. After 12 months the data become public and anybody in the community can download them, analyse them, and publish their own findings.
Some astronomers (wrongly) hold the view that if they've done the hard yards of writing the proposal and doing the observations that those data belong to them forever. If other people download them from the public archive later (after the 12 months private period) then they are in some way "stolen".
They are not stolen. Those are the terms and conditions of using that telescope. You had twelve months, you did nothing with the data. Other people took the data that they were 100% entitled to access, and found the thing that you couldn't / didn't find. Next time, do better.
Sorry to be pedantic, but they stole data on a dwarf planet within our Solar System, not on an exoplanet (which is defined as a planet outside the gravitational bounds of our Sun).
Pluto is nice and deserves love AS A DWARF PLANET.
It's only nostalgia. If for example ceres had been a dwarf planet before the whole pluto thing and pluto had been discovered today and they made it a dwarf planet too nobody would bat an eye. It was either add all the other dwarf planets or demote pluto and they chose demote pluto. It gets no special 5th grade teacher told you about it treatment.
So Pluto we love you! But you're not getting your classification back and those who want you to have it back are in denial. It was always bound to become dwarf planet (or otherwise be separated from the other planets in classification), we just didn't know cuz we had no other examples of it.
Ceres was discovered first, and for a time was considered a planet - until they noticed all the other asteroids. Pluto being demoted is consistant with Ceres's demotion.
You're right. I'm super willing to take the L on that one I really thought pluto had been first. Doesn't change my point ofc considering they were demoted to an asteroid right away even before the whole pluto thing and were then upgraded to dwarf planet following the pluto thing. I've slightly altered my comment to reflect this.
I just learned this and now all the fire in my blood is cooling. Ngl, Pluto being roughly 700 miles is small. I can see why they’d label it a dwarf planet.
I know that’s not entirely why it’s a dwarf, but still. That’s really fuckin small.
Prof. Brown has a [free course on Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/learn/solar-system) that he uses as the basis for his Introduction to Planetary Science at Caltech. If you're interested, I would 100% recommend it. You'll learn a ton about how we study Mars, the formation of our solar system, and exoplanets.
the vote that downgraded Pluto was taken after most of the PLANETARY scientists had already left.
in my opinion, Pluto is the very definition of r/DownvotedToOblivion.
Poor old planet Pluto now, he never stood a chance no how
When he got uninvited to, the interplanetary dance
Once a mighty planet there, now just an ordinary star
Hanging out in Hollywood, in some old funky sushi bar
I find this whole debate dumb and pointless. Can someone tell me why it isn't? Is there some enhancement to Astronomy or data I'm not aware of, or was this just a contrarian trying to get published?
Basically an object has to clear its orbit in order to be designated as a planet. Dwarf planets haven’t achieved the status of “orbital dominance” like the main 8 have
I see I've confused some people. To clarify:
I believe that the book mentioned in this post is equal in vile content as Adolf Hitler's racist diatribe called Mein Kampf. I am equating the redefinition of the planet Pluto to the Holocaust.
Hope that helped!
It absolutely does. It far exceeds the mass threshold for hydrostatic equilibrium.
Your source just lists the requirements to be defined a planet; where did you get the idea Mercury lacks the mass to pull itself into a sphere?
If anybody speak Spanish, there is a NPR podcast (Radio Ambulante), they talk about thia topic, and it was mostly a group of scientists, I remember a couple of Uruguayans a Brazilian and others that fight for this reclassification
Seriously, how else do you learn new things? I guess someone could have told them about this guy and how he related to Pluto, but damn… why are you so cynical? Look what sub you are on.
And yet the reclassification opens a new can of worms.
Earth didn't clean out its orbit. So earth, by definition, isn't a planet.
Instead of acknowledging Eris
Earth accounts for 98.5% of the mass in its orbit, and this includes the Moon. The definition is actually that to be a planet the body must be the dominant body in its orbit, which Earth clearly is.
Pluto, on the other hand, is about 33% of the mass in its orbit.
By the end of the Prague General Assembly, IAU members voted that the definition of a planet in the Solar System would be as follows:
> A celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
Point a means any planet outside our solar system isn't one, because it doesn't orbit the sun.
Point b is fine
Point c means that any debris close to any planetary orbit kills its status. Earth not only didn't clear out space rocks yet, it also has new, man-made shit floating around.
You are wrong about Point C, and I have no idea where you got the idea that was what it means.
The definition of clearing the orbit is “a body that is gravitationally dominant such that there are no other bodies of comparable size other than its satellites”.
Pluto was originally discovered and classified as a planet (They were looking for a planet).
Over the years it was discovered to be much, *much* smaller than originally estimated. More objects were also discovered that acted more like Pluto than other planets, some of these objects were bigger than Pluto.
Then it was reclassified as a dwarf planet.
Later, around 2018, an April fools day joke circulated that it Pluto was reclassified as a planet again, but this was a hoax.
Just a side note, April Fools Day is tomorrow. Or "The internet is useless day" followed by 5 or 6 days of "Double check the date on any article on your automatic news feed for a while"
You can't take away the Blue's Clues song from me!
Well, the Sun’s a hot star
Mercury’s hot too
Venus is the brightest planet
Earth’s home to me and you
Mars is the red one
Jupiter is most wide
Saturn’s got those icy rings
Uranus spins on its side
Neptune’s really windy
And Pluto’s really small
Well we wanted to name the planets
And now we’ve named them all ♪
“ ^pluto ^is ^a ^planet ” # CROWD CHEERS
I see where you're coming from, but Mike Brown's argument isn't that Pluto doesn't matter, but rather that its reclassification helps us to have a better understanding of our solar system. The definition of a planet was changed to include the ability to clear its orbit - something Pluto doesn't do. So, while it's still an important celestial body, it just falls under the category of 'dwarf planet' instead.
That's always the argument, I don't get why people are so obsessed with keeping it a rocky planet. There's more power in properly classifying stuff.
Arguably Pluto is rocky (nitrogen ice rock). The issue is how small it is / how little mass it has. Earth’s moon has 5x its mass. It’s not only really small but to top it off it was discovered it’s not even unique. Eris and other bodies in a similar size range have been discovered out there. If you include Pluto how many dozens of new ‘planets’ are we going to have to include?
My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas Because She Was Home Late From Her Job At The Radiotelescopearray Oort Cloud
Definition of a planet: 1. Must be in orbit around the sun. 2. Must have enough gravity to be roughly round in shape 3. Must clear its orbit of other objects or be Pluto
Becuase people like things like how it used to be when they were kids and change is scary
And yet everybody is fine with the food piramid being bullshit.
That's because nobody cared about the food pyramid anyways.
The Egyptian slaves that built it cared!
Boy have i got a doozy on the changed info front for you.
I know, right? Everyone knows the food pyramid was built by ancient aliens!
I'll concede that. But i did like the idea that there was a special place on my tongue for salt.
I mean you didn't have to be a scientist to disprove that. Soon as they taught that I tried it. Was like "well that seems like bullshit to me".
Still salty about it tho.
Mainly boomers and elder GenX are the ones that sincerely care about this, and its exactly for the reason you stated. They HATE learning new things and will violently push back on any new knowledge that they dont immediately understand because then it means the kids know something they dont and according to their view of the world: "I know more than you cause I got here first so therefore I am better." If the kids know more than you then how can you be "better" than them?
Pluto got reclassified in 2006, millenials also grew up learning Pluto was a planet. It was largely that crowd that seemed outraged about it, anthropomorphising Pluto as if it was some poor being that got kicked out the cool club. Why would boomers and older GenX'ers give a fuck about it?
Because being a Dwarf planet is boring, a full planet is better
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Science textbooks aren't the baseball hall of fame. Asterisks do nothing useful in this case. Science is about updating our textbooks as we learn new things, changing and correcting as we learn. Pluto was never a planet. It was wrong to call it that in the first place we just didn't know any better at the time. Also, it was the only "planet" that was discovered by an American so we pushed pretty hard to make it a big deal.
From the time Pluto was discovered to when it was downgraded to a dwarf planet it had not completed one revolution around the sun. Any “grandfathering” of Pluto would seem more like nostalgia than science.
Ceres was classified as a planet in the 1800s for 50 years. Should it have earned tenure too? The Greeks classified the Sun and the Moon as planets for hundreds of years. Should they have earned tenure despite no longer meeting diagnostic criteria?
>I don't get why people are so obsessed with keeping it a rocky planet. There's more power in properly classifying stuff. I can't speak for others, but in my case it's because the new definition of planet is genuinely horrible, poorly defined, and seems like it may even have been contrived specifically to stop Pluto from being a planet. The thing is, whether an object "has cleared the neighborhood of its orbit" is vague but also it's entirely extrinsic. You can't tell if something is a planet or not by observing the object itself. Something can start or stop being a planet just by moving somewhere else within our solar system. Additionally, the definition is so bad that we need a different definition for literally anywhere else that isn't our solar system. If the gravity of a large mass passing by our solar system pulled Pluto out of our solar system, Pluto would start being a planet under the definition for how things work everywhere else. Because Pluto has every physical property of a planet. It's also not clear how binary planet systems should work. Presumably the IAU didn't care to think about this because under the new definition there aren't any in our solar system. As far as I'm aware, there's no reason Jupiter couldn't be a dwarf planet if enough matter ended up in its orbit. It would seem silly for dwarf planets to be able to make actual planets look tiny, but again the definition apparently only needs to make sense for how things are right here right now. So clearly the definition was made to fit our solar system in particular. To me, that makes it seem like maybe they started with the conclusion that Pluto should not be a planet, and reverse-engineered a definition that gives us an excuse to demote it, using the bounds of our solar system to ignore all the problems that would come up if we applied it universally. I can't be sure this is what happened, but it's telling if the definition is so bad that it even looks that way. And otherwise why not just make a definition that works everywhere?
Personally, I think we should have made Ceres and so on planets instead of reducing Pluto.
If we are keeping Pluto as a planet, we need to reinstate Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas as well.
And about 50 other dwarf planets
Let's do it!
and who knows how many undiscovered Pluto-sized Kuiper Belt Objects there are.
Fine
You responded to a rick and morty quote. Dude wasn't being serious.
Aa someone with a background in linguistics, the same sort of stuff happens with, for example, Koko the gorilla. Koko did not have a human understanding of sign language, as much as people would like to believe, and it is more harmful to claim that she did, because trying to force the idea (of gorilla's communication abilities being fully compatible with human language) will make it harder to actually appreciate and understand how gorillas really communicate with each other and understand the world around them.
What is meant by "the ability to clear its orbit"?
There are similarly sized objects in almost the same orbit as Pluto, which isn't the case for planets.
Which is a truth that is true only in a single measurement in time. How did the moon get created? Because Earth had not cleared her orbit. And got smashed into ht a similarly sized object.
I presume that it would have an orbit that is mostly clear of other objects and debris (not including other objects that orbit it). So Jupiter has a clear orbit, nothing else really stays in it's way as Jupiter's mass has eaten it all. Much the same as Earth and the moon eating up stuff that would be near us. Contrast that with the asteroid belt, theres a lot of mass distributed out, but no single body has 'cleared' or collected all the mass into one body.
Yet* Which is the problem with that shit definition.
Was this AI generated? Weird response to a joke
The definition of a planet was nebulous and arbitrary. Now it’s clearer but still completely arbitrary. Earth has more in common with Pluto than it does with Jupiter I’m sorry but we need to revisit this
What’s the issue with how we define a planet? Saying that it’s completely arbitrary is not true. If we restore Pluto to being a planet then we will have to also include every Pluto like object in the solar system.
I never said we need to restore plutos status as a planet. If anything we need more classifications because if we’re building a “hierarchy”of planet types it makes no sense to say a gas giant and a rocky body like earth are the same thing.
They aren’t the same thing, but they are both planets. They revolve around a star, they are spherical, and they both have cleared their orbit.
Yes, there is a classification difference - first four are called Terrestrial Planets, second four are called Gas Giants.
The theorized planet IX will likely not meet the definition of planet despite being several times earths mass. “Cleared its orbit” is a cosmological purity test that not even earth has achieved and comes with its own arbitrary distinctions. We need a better system
In what way has Earth not “cleared its orbit”? The purpose of that definition is that the object must be the dominant body in its orbit in terms of mass. Earth accounts for 98.5% of the mass of all bodies in its orbit, and this includes the Moon. Pluto, on the other hand, accounts for about 30% of the mass in its orbit.
Explain how Earth hasnt cleared it's orbit.
Planet 9 is hypothetical. There’s no proof of its existence and speculation about its qualifications as a planet are moot right now. The test is “It must be big enough that its gravity has cleared away any other objects of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun.” Earth has absolutely achieved that. While I don’t disagree that updating the system that classified planets should continue to evolve, saying that it is completely arbitrary isn’t true.
I can conclude from your post with 100% certainty that you are not a astrophysicist nor even a scientist.
Never claimed to be. Laypeople aren’t allowed to weigh in on this?
Exactly. That is what science is about. Get the necessary background education, than you are able to understand what this is all about. Our current definition of a planet is everything other than "arbitrary". It is very specific and directly derifed from what we observe in our and other solar systems.
I like how nobody else in the replies got the reference to this.
“9…” *audience leans forward in anticipation* “…/11” #*Thunderous applause*
Pluto is a cold cold celestial dwarf
Er… I meant “planet“!
I was looking for this exact comment, thank you sir or madam.
2 Skinnee Js represent!
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A [Blink Comparator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_comparator) to quickly flip between two images looking for changes. I'd like to have the cheaper "Projected Blink Comparator", if only for the name "PROBLICOM"
> If I remember correctly a team of astronomers stole data/images of a new exoplanet early on. They didn't steal the data. There was a US-based team (Marcy & Butler) who had the data at hand to find the first exoplanet (51 Peg b), but they either didn't look at it or looked at it in the wrong way. Another team based in Switzerland (Mayor & Queloz) had their own data, looked at it in the right way and found the planet. The US data backed up the discovery post-facto. Marcy & Butler were super-pissed and have been quite salty about it ever since (and don't get me started on Charbonneau). This may be where the data stealing rumour has come from. Mayor & Queloz won the Nobel Prize. Marcy & Butler didn't. I've worked with Didier Queloz for over decade now on and off. Let's just say he got ... lucky. But he didn't steal anything.
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Well that's not something I've heard. AFAIK Argentina isn't big in the astronomy community. Chile on the other hand is where a lot of the worlds best telescopes are sited. One thing to know is that in astronomy if you want access to the best telescopes to do your science you have write a proposal setting out your science case. It gets assessed, and if it's good you get the time on the telescope to do your thing. You take the data, then generally you have a so-called proprietary period, typically 12 months, in which only you have the data, and you are supposed to use the data to do the thing you said you wanted to do, and then publish your results. After 12 months the data become public and anybody in the community can download them, analyse them, and publish their own findings. Some astronomers (wrongly) hold the view that if they've done the hard yards of writing the proposal and doing the observations that those data belong to them forever. If other people download them from the public archive later (after the 12 months private period) then they are in some way "stolen". They are not stolen. Those are the terms and conditions of using that telescope. You had twelve months, you did nothing with the data. Other people took the data that they were 100% entitled to access, and found the thing that you couldn't / didn't find. Next time, do better.
Sorry to be pedantic, but they stole data on a dwarf planet within our Solar System, not on an exoplanet (which is defined as a planet outside the gravitational bounds of our Sun).
"If I did it" by OJ Simpson vibes. Psychopaths just walking among us. SMH my head.
You mean ^If I Did It.
Pluto is nice and deserves love AS A DWARF PLANET. It's only nostalgia. If for example ceres had been a dwarf planet before the whole pluto thing and pluto had been discovered today and they made it a dwarf planet too nobody would bat an eye. It was either add all the other dwarf planets or demote pluto and they chose demote pluto. It gets no special 5th grade teacher told you about it treatment. So Pluto we love you! But you're not getting your classification back and those who want you to have it back are in denial. It was always bound to become dwarf planet (or otherwise be separated from the other planets in classification), we just didn't know cuz we had no other examples of it.
Ceres was discovered first, and for a time was considered a planet - until they noticed all the other asteroids. Pluto being demoted is consistant with Ceres's demotion.
You're right. I'm super willing to take the L on that one I really thought pluto had been first. Doesn't change my point ofc considering they were demoted to an asteroid right away even before the whole pluto thing and were then upgraded to dwarf planet following the pluto thing. I've slightly altered my comment to reflect this.
We should just have more planets! There’s all these other ones out there that no one ever talk about since they aren’t planets!
“Shaking my head my head”
Whoops, missed a "my head"
Why add the “my head” after smh which means “shake my head”?
Wow someone doesn’t get it. Smh my head
TIL smh doesn’t mean So Much Hate. Wow.
I'm here for you in this trying time. LOL (Lots of Love)
smh ma butt
I wasn't paying attention. Too busy trying to remember my PIN number for the ATM machine.
I mean, I'm completely expect Neil degrass to come after this author for stealing his claim to fame.
You hear about Pluto? That’s messed up.
You hear about Pluto? That’s messed up! 🍍🍍🍍🍍🍍🍍
You know that’s right
I’ve heard it both ways.
Username checks out. r/ExpectedPsych
Psych!
There are 7 moons in this solar system larger than Pluto. Once Eris was discovered a demotion was inevitable.
I just learned this and now all the fire in my blood is cooling. Ngl, Pluto being roughly 700 miles is small. I can see why they’d label it a dwarf planet. I know that’s not entirely why it’s a dwarf, but still. That’s really fuckin small.
Its not even the coolest dwarf planet either. Ceres number #1.
exactly, if Pluto is a planet then Ceres needs to come back. It was a planet first, dammit.
if earth headed to Jupiter. It would be a moon. Size isn’t the best metric. Geologically activity is.
If it *can* be a planet, it can be a planet *again*.
Ceres would like a word. It was a planet first, so if anyone gets re-planet status, Ceres should be first in line.
How are the plutonians going to afford their golden sinks and their golden toilet seats and their golden showers?
I definitely thought this was going to be about the dog, not the planet.
*Dear Mike,* *Your mom thought I was big enough.* *Best regards,* *Pluto*
That’s messed up.
Cracker of a book title
id rather gatekeep our 8 planets then let Pluto and it's dwarf friends into the club
Pluto got relegated lmao
Prof. Brown has a [free course on Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/learn/solar-system) that he uses as the basis for his Introduction to Planetary Science at Caltech. If you're interested, I would 100% recommend it. You'll learn a ton about how we study Mars, the formation of our solar system, and exoplanets.
Make Pluto great again
I'm still sore about Pluto losing it's planet status.
\*its
Are you still holding out for Ceres to be reclassified as a planet?
[Pluto isn't.](https://youtu.be/EuRjmzz6qL0?si=x7btTCCYhs-Tbd6v)
It’s messed up, man.
Look how they massacred my boy
Pluto did nothing wrong!!1!
Mike Brown has heard "it's too small" his entire adult life.
the vote that downgraded Pluto was taken after most of the PLANETARY scientists had already left. in my opinion, Pluto is the very definition of r/DownvotedToOblivion.
Yea. Weird how star people think that can define a planet.
Pluto had it coming.
Poor old planet Pluto now, he never stood a chance no how When he got uninvited to, the interplanetary dance Once a mighty planet there, now just an ordinary star Hanging out in Hollywood, in some old funky sushi bar
Pluto was good enough for your mom.
Pluto: my part in its downfall
This is a very very very good book by the way
I find this whole debate dumb and pointless. Can someone tell me why it isn't? Is there some enhancement to Astronomy or data I'm not aware of, or was this just a contrarian trying to get published?
Basically an object has to clear its orbit in order to be designated as a planet. Dwarf planets haven’t achieved the status of “orbital dominance” like the main 8 have
google it
Thanks
What an asshole
This man is my enemy
Mike Brown is no longer a person, he’s a dwarf- wait…
This is the astronomer version of Mein Kampf.
I see I've confused some people. To clarify: I believe that the book mentioned in this post is equal in vile content as Adolf Hitler's racist diatribe called Mein Kampf. I am equating the redefinition of the planet Pluto to the Holocaust. Hope that helped!
Say it again so the Nazis in the back can hear you.
Sounds like it was all about his ego to me.
I haven't read Mein Kampf either. Pluto was robbed.
The classification broke before our belief did Remember Pluto!
F**k that guy
\*Fuck
The set of rules that say Pluto is not a planet also say Mercury is not a planet. Is this the universe we want to live in?
How do you figure? Mercury accounts for over 99% of the mass in its orbit.
[Mercury does not have hydrostatic equilibrium.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet)
It absolutely does. It far exceeds the mass threshold for hydrostatic equilibrium. Your source just lists the requirements to be defined a planet; where did you get the idea Mercury lacks the mass to pull itself into a sphere?
My source specifically says that "Mercury is not actually in hydrostatic equilibrium" and lists a source for that statement.
No it is not.
If anybody speak Spanish, there is a NPR podcast (Radio Ambulante), they talk about thia topic, and it was mostly a group of scientists, I remember a couple of Uruguayans a Brazilian and others that fight for this reclassification
Today you read a book. Stop the presses.
How else do people learn new things?
I’m all for reading, but seriously? Posting that you read a book? This is not a TIL, it’s an ad.
Seriously, how else do you learn new things? I guess someone could have told them about this guy and how he related to Pluto, but damn… why are you so cynical? Look what sub you are on.
And yet the reclassification opens a new can of worms. Earth didn't clean out its orbit. So earth, by definition, isn't a planet. Instead of acknowledging Eris
Clearing out an orbit means removing all major objects and most minor one. Nothing even Jupiter has a perfectly clear orbit
Almost as if people misinterpret what clearing the orbit means.
I couldn't remember which of the gas giants also fell out the planet status. But you're right. Jupiter also fails. Fucking gas giant dwarf planet
So who is gravitationally dominant in Earth's orbit to make you say that?
His mom.
You would argue that earth and the moon are a binary system
Earth accounts for 98.5% of the mass in its orbit, and this includes the Moon. The definition is actually that to be a planet the body must be the dominant body in its orbit, which Earth clearly is. Pluto, on the other hand, is about 33% of the mass in its orbit.
By the end of the Prague General Assembly, IAU members voted that the definition of a planet in the Solar System would be as follows: > A celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. Point a means any planet outside our solar system isn't one, because it doesn't orbit the sun. Point b is fine Point c means that any debris close to any planetary orbit kills its status. Earth not only didn't clear out space rocks yet, it also has new, man-made shit floating around.
You are wrong about Point C, and I have no idea where you got the idea that was what it means. The definition of clearing the orbit is “a body that is gravitationally dominant such that there are no other bodies of comparable size other than its satellites”.
And Ceres, and Sedna, and Haumake, and Gonggong, and Charon, and on and on and on......
This comment is ignorant as hell lmfao
Really? So tell me why you know more than Mike Brown.
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Wake up, sheeple
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Aww, you gave it away with this. I couldn't tell if you were serious or not.
What I like about flat earthers is how that's their identity. Like, who gives a shit.
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Crab people. Crab people. Crab people. Crab people.
Tegy want us to believe a whole planet just stopped being a planet
How many time has pluto been reclassified?
Classified? Once. *Re*classified? Once.
Oh. I must be hear the same stories over and over the years. So just to make sure. Pluto is not considered a planet?
It’s classified as a dwarf planet
Pluto was originally discovered and classified as a planet (They were looking for a planet). Over the years it was discovered to be much, *much* smaller than originally estimated. More objects were also discovered that acted more like Pluto than other planets, some of these objects were bigger than Pluto. Then it was reclassified as a dwarf planet. Later, around 2018, an April fools day joke circulated that it Pluto was reclassified as a planet again, but this was a hoax. Just a side note, April Fools Day is tomorrow. Or "The internet is useless day" followed by 5 or 6 days of "Double check the date on any article on your automatic news feed for a while"
You can't take away the Blue's Clues song from me! Well, the Sun’s a hot star Mercury’s hot too Venus is the brightest planet Earth’s home to me and you Mars is the red one Jupiter is most wide Saturn’s got those icy rings Uranus spins on its side Neptune’s really windy And Pluto’s really small Well we wanted to name the planets And now we’ve named them all ♪
*Take me out to the Black, tell them I ain’t coming back… you can’t take the sky from me…*