this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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pluto (mander.xyz)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Gas giant planets, ice giant planets, rocky planets, dwarf planets.

I don't see what the big deal is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

The deal is the weird part where they made a specific point of and big deal out of the new classification not being a type of planet despite having the word planet in the name.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The "big" deal is that a ton of celestial bodies of comparable size to pluto would have to be considered either as planets or as general debris. Finding a clear definition which would include pluto as a planet and not include other stuff would be very impractical and possibly nearly impossible.

But the biggest fuck up was to name a non-planet a "dwarf planet".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I'm well aware of the existence of countless dwarf planets in the solar system, and the naming issues that arose from the discovery.

I don't mind that they called them dwarf planets. But I don't know why everyone got so upset about it. It sounds like just another class of planet to me, which seems quite appropriate.

I agree that they marketed the change about as poorly as they could.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Sure, people have taken the matter way too personal. That's mostly people who have a nostalgic relationship to their childhood classes about "the 9 planets".

As I've read, they made the definition in the particular way to remove gray areas of inaccurate meassurements. A celestial body shouldn't be wrongly classified due to being a few kilometres larger than some limit, then be reclassified later due to better meassurements. Planets need to be somewhat spherical, orbit a star and clear their orbit from significant debris. They made a great system which doesn't leave big gray areas. A planet is defined in a well thought out way by people way smarter than me.

And then they go and call the non-planets "dwarf planets".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I've heard some push to just call them all "Worlds." Planets, moons, asteroids, etc. and all, which is also fine by me.