Unless you are Pluto.
Comment on Sad Ganymede noises
nialv7@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Size doesn’t matter
wizzor@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
tdawg@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Wasn’t it more bc it doesn’t clear it’s surroundings?
accideath@feddit.org 4 months ago
And it has an orbit at a different angle than the 8 Planets and at it’s narrowest the ellipse of Plutos orbit is actually closer to the Sun than Uranus.
Morphit@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Do you mean Neptune? Pluto’s perihelion is 29.7 AU while Uranus’ aphelion is 20.1 AU.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 4 months ago
They did our boy dirty
itsmistermoon@piefed.social 4 months ago
That’s what I tell my wife but she won’t listen
Come on guys, laugh
prettybunnys@piefed.social 4 months ago
We’re laughing with your wife.
itsmistermoon@piefed.social 4 months ago
What have I done
prettybunnys@piefed.social 4 months ago
Oh honey it’s ok
Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
That’s not what she said.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Size is a factor. But not everything.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Correct, it’s called planet when it orbits arround the Sun AND has cleaned it’s orbit from asteroids, not the case of Pluto, whose orbit is still full of other objects, some even bigger than Pluto itself.
If it orbits an Planet instead of the Sun, it’s a Moon, even if it is bigger than some other planets.
Klear@quokk.au 4 months ago
“All right, Ganymede. You can be a planet, but firstvyou have to clean up your orbit. Start with Jupiter.”
Saapas@piefed.zip 4 months ago
Villain origin story
nexguy@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Jupiter has a permanent cloud of asteroids that follow it and neptune crosses the orbit of pluto so neither of those have cleared their orbits so of course they made exceptions so that their contilrived definition fits.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
Do you mean the asteroids at the Lagrangian points? Every single planet has asteroids there because math/physics dictates those points to be stable. Jupiter has the most at its points because it’s the largest planet.
Same with Neptune cleaning its orbit: It has collided with every single thing in its orbit EXCEPT those that synced their orbits to Neptune. An object that is gravitationally dominated by a single planet should not be a planet under any definition.
Sources because I had to read into your claims and I’m no astrophysicist:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point
nexguy@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Yes, that’s the made up exception. And for neptune not clearing its orbit due to pluto crossing that orbit? Well we have to make an exception for that so…um…the resonance between neptune and pluto. Exception achieved!
The rules are so contrived that it would not make sense for almost any other system except exactly ours. Whatever it takes to keep Earth’s category of “planet” important… you know… for reasons.
Very unscientific but very human.
Yondoza@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids sit at Lagrange points. Material found there is not counted in the ‘clearing the orbit’ calculations. They are in stable orbits caused by the mass of the planet in question, not in lieu of a massive enough body.
nexguy@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Well of course that was the exception they had to come up with for their contrived rule. The exception is: “whatever it takes to make pluto not a planet”. Since the vote was agenda fueled and not a scientific discussion.
Once something new is discovered and breaks the rules they will have to modify the contrived rule to keep pluto not a planet.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Pluto is a dwarf planet, which is still a planet.
Also, they absolutely should have just made an exception for Pluto so science teachers everywhere could have used that as a fun teaching point.
Small_Quasar@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Considering it’s in a double tidally locked orbit with its own moon Charon and the point that both rotate around is outside Pluto’s volume I would argue that the Pluto/Charon system is actually a dwarf-binary-planet.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’d okay with that. As long as it’s still technically a planet. (what? it’s my favorite!)
GreatRam@lemmy.world 4 months ago
youtu.be/xgFKxFX3IwY I recommend watching this video
GraniteM@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Also they shouldn’t have called the category of “things that aren’t planets despite being in some ways planet-like” “dwarf planet,” they should have called them “planetoids.” Star Trek had been referring to small planet-like objects as planetoids for decades, so the work in the popular consciousness has already been done. Dwarf planet not being a planet makes it sound like they’re saying dwarf people don’t count as people, and I don’t care for that at all.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Precedent for an exception would go to Ceres not Pluto.
nexguy@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You would think this is the case but they specifically decided through a vote that a dwarf planet is NOT a planet but a completely separate type of object. The whole vote was ridiculous and done at the very end of the conference so that only a fraction of the members were there to vote on pluto.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Then YOU come up with a definition of a planet that manages to include Pluto while simultaneously excluding Ceres, Eris, Cedna, Makemake, and 200+ other objects in the solar system large enough to be spherical, some of which are larger than Pluto
Zerush@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
science.nasa.gov/dwarf-planets/
…stackexchange.com/…/is-jupiter-a-dwarf-planet
Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
The text book publishers are always looking for a reason to sell new editions.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Jupiter, largest of all dwarf planets, shares its orbit with some i don’t know million asteroids.
ContriteErudite@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’ve often thought that ‘clearing’ it’s orbit is misleading. I believe the definition ought to be changed to ‘controls’ or ‘governs’ its orbit. This allows for objects in stable L4/L5 locations without inviting the caveats that ‘clearing’ needs.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Its because its a colloquial phrase that more or less the media picked up and ran with.
Actual astronomers and astrophysicists use math to describe what they’re talking about, math that you can find and learn fairly easily on wikipedia.
Lay people tend to just evaluate a phrase for its extremely literal meaning, not realizing that it is at best just pop science jargon, short hand to refer to a pretty well defined and precise concept, that is difficult to summarize without losing specificity.
There are many, many other examples of this kind of thing happening with other phrases or terms used to refer to complex concepts.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
If those asteroids are on the L1-5 points, they do not count. Since they will stay at that orbit forever.
(pragmatically speaking)
NominatedNemesis@reddthat.com 4 months ago
But how do we define what orbits what? On the scale from the Sun to Earth, the Moon orbits the Sun, just a litle more wobbly than the Earth’s path, by litle I mean well below the error when we imagine the Erath’s path as an elipse.
We can try to define if something goes around as orbiting, but If I pick two planet from our solar system one will goes around of the other, thechnically orbiting it? We can try to restricting the distance… but that is a problem as well, even worst idea that “nothing” comes in between: multiple moons? What about the moons’ moons?
Ahhh, humans and their need to neatly categorize things…
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Just because 2 objects orbit around the same point doesn’t mean they orbit each other. Your entire argument is flawed.
We know what objects orbits each other because of the L4/L5 instability threshold.
NominatedNemesis@reddthat.com 4 months ago
I knew my argument was flawed, that was somewhat the point. I generally I don’t think many ppl know about the Lagrange points. I know they are used to define what orbits what, but I don’t have the knowledge yet to incorporate to my very flawed wordview.
ContriteErudite@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Help me understand the point you are trying to make. Are you trying to hand-waive categorization as superfluous to developing broader understanding?
Natural satellites fall within the primary body’s Hill sphere, where the gravity of the larger mass dominates. The Earth/Moon system co-orbits the sun. Saturn has two satellites that orbit each other, and that system co-orbits Saturn.
NominatedNemesis@reddthat.com 4 months ago
Also thanks for mentioning the Hill sphere, I looking into that as well.
NominatedNemesis@reddthat.com 4 months ago
Not really, that was not my point. Just random thoughts shouted in the clouds. If I have to make a point, then I would say, categorizing things pretty hard, and the general populance understang and the scientific consensus about things are pretty far away.
I know there are some points (L1-4) and they use that to define what orbits what, but I lost when I tried to research it without any pre-existing knowledge on the topic. I usually read some scientific communication, but they usually over simplify things. It’s hard to shed the pre-existing view, replace it with a more correct one, then do it again and again.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
The point is on which influence yhe orjecy orbits another one. It’s clear that the orbiy arround Earth of the Moon is influenced also by the Sun and in less way even by the other planets, but itt orbits the Earth and not these “influencers”. Thedifference of orbit and gravitanional deviations is pretty clear.
NominatedNemesis@reddthat.com 4 months ago
I don’t know how would you define ‘influence’.
If I fix the reference point to the (mass?) center of the sun, then observe the moon relative position to the sun, then I see that the influence of the moon’s position is way grater than the Earth’s. Would the Moon fly away from the orbit if the Earth stopped existing?
CatAssTrophy@safest.space 4 months ago
However, if a moon is sufficiently large compared to its planet, it also gets to be a planet and part of a binary planet system, not a moon.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Aka the Charon-Pluto binary dwarf planet system