Comment on How did we switched from "Dinosaur are giant lizards" to "Dinosaur are giant birds"

• captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Pluto wasn’t demoted. It didn’t get a pay cut or see a loss of benefits.

  Our vocabulary has gotten richer and more specific as we’ve explored Pluto and things like it. As we launch missions like New Horizons out there, we’re going to need new terms to talk about the things we find. We sent a whole probe to Pluto; Uranus and Neptune had to share.

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  • kevincox@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t think that is quite accurate.

    We discovered many more Pluto-or-larger sized things that were closer to the sun than Pluto. It became increasingly obvious that there was nothing special about Pluto and we either needed to add hundreds of planets or “demote” Pluto.

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    • deadlyduplicate@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t believe that is accurate. Beside moons (which don’t orbit the sun), Pluto is the largest and closest dwarf planet.

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      • accideath@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Not the closest. Ceres is a dwarf planet inside the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

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• don@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Holy shit science vanished a whole dwarf planet that’s insane 😱

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