Submitted 3 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/d91af6f6-0bc5-4e02-b754-4d46e60d504f.jpeg
Weird how many people seem to think it’s like a competition or something. It’s a descriptive label.
The whole Pluto thing taught us a lot about the psychology of letting go of something taught at a young age. People getting proper frothing at how they shoulda just let Pluto keep it, just to save themselves the extremely minor cognitive dissonance.
When people get upset about pluto, I’ll just tell them if pluton is planet, so is Ceres. Which thennresults in mindless staring because they never even heard about Ceres…
And Cedna. And Eris. And Makemake. And Haumea. And…
Yeah. Removing pluto was the more conservative option.
There are about 200 of these space objects that are roughly the size of Pluto.
So either we live in an 8 planetary system, or a 200+ planetary system. But it will never be 9 again.
I really doubt more than .001% actually care if it’s called a planet or not, it’s just a meme to pretend that you care. Like pineapple on pizza.
No one actually cares if you put pineapple on pizza. No one actually cares about Pluto being a planet. But there are many people who see themselves as some sort of white knight defenders of the truth against haters that don’t actually even exist.
I care if you put pineapple on pizza. Please put it on yours. Please. That means less on mine. Not that i dislike it, i just lack the parts to digest it properly.
Have you seen the lengths people go to in order to not have to change their world view even a smidge? To not have to correct themselves about anything at all? I’ll give you a hint, literally every right wing party in the world doing well is because weak people can’t change a damn thing about themselves.
“World view” is very fitting here.
Not just the right. The entire Taiwan situation is entirely due to the Chinese being taught at school that Taiwan just is part of China like it’s an immutable fact.
Amen.
I always suspected that the discussion about letting Pluto stay a planet is especially relevant in the US since Pluto was the only wannabe planet to be discovered by US scientists … so it’s a point of national pride.
It’s likely most of us Americans don’t know about this fun fact.
I’ve certainly not seen anyone frothing at the mouth about it in the francosphere. It’s a non-subject, we just updated our textbooks and moved on. Whereas in English-speaking media even reasonable actors mentioning Pluto in passing will pointedly remark on its status one way or another. Americans won’t admit it but the only reason that’s a thing is chauvinism.
It’s funny how being bilingual one spots a lot of small semantic or cultural differences that amount to large paradigm shifts between languages. Like how most French people were taught the hydrocution myth (swimming after a meal supposedly being deadly), older Koreans believe fans to be dangerous to use while sleeping, and English speakers associate vanilla flavour with blandness because of the (English-specific) synonym even though the flavor itself is very powerful and no less overused than e.g. strawberry flavoring.
What’s less funny is how when you point out such a difference some people get Big Mad about it because they can’t admit that some core belief from their childhood is actually a specific sociolinguistic quirk not shared by the rest of the world. People get tribal about the weirdest, most inconsequential shit.
I’d agree with you but the definition is arbitrary and is not of natural kind. Even worse, instead of making the definition of a planet more clear it just makes the determining what is a planet more difficult.
Honestly, if they just went with defining ‘Major Planets’, ‘Minor Planets’, and asteroids determined by mass and spherical shape, I think everyone would’ve moved on by now.
it just makes the determining what is a planet more difficult.
If this is true, then please tell me what totally non-arbitrary reason there was for Ceres to not be universally considered a planet?
well guess which Moon is also pretty close in size to Mercury
Is it the sun?
Yes. Everyone knows the order goes:
Sun, Sun sized Mercury that laughs at all the little planets, Venus, etc.
What is yer mum’s bare arse, Trebek!
The one all the cheese comes from?
The answer is obviously Titan
The one that David Bowie’s son did a documentary about?
People fighting for Pluto that it should be a planet instead of a dwarf planet
Ceres: 🥺
Context: Ceres is now considered a dwarf planet, and used to be considered just an asteroid, but when it was first discovered it was considered a planet. That was in 1801. There is no objective criteria for what a planet is and isn’t. Like a lot of things in nature, things just exist, and as humans we categorize them. Ceres is round like a planet like Pluto. I’m not saying it should e considered a planet, I think dwarf planet fits them both nicely. As late as the 1950s Ceres was still sometimes considered a planet by some people.
I have a sort spot for it. I love it.
I’m fighting for jupiter to also be a dwarf planet because it has not cleared its orbit of a few million asteroids.
All those asteroids are cqptured in Jupiter’s Trojan points, no?
There is no objective criteria for what a planet is and isn’t
There are - exactly three.
- is in orbit around a star,
- has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and
- has “cleared the neighbourhood” around its orbit.
The last one means that its gravitational pull has removed any smaller objects that might be in its orbit, either by kicking them out of it, or by catching them as moons.
Pluto is barely round and its orbit is full of debris.
There is no objective criteria for what a planet is and isn’t. Like a lot of things in nature, things just exist, and as humans we categorize them.
You’re the second person to ignore the sentence immediately following that.
The scientific community was basically backed into a corner: either create a new category for Pluto and similar bodies, or we go from 9 planets to over 3,000 (iirc), lol.
The only sensible choice was made, imo.
I found it interesting that Warframe, set in the Solar System (+ SciFi/Fantasy stuff) features not only the various planets (including Pluto), but also moons (Deimos, Phobos, Europa) and dwarf planets (Ceres, Eris, Sedna) and even an asteroid (though the original name isn’t known, if it ever had one). Not relevant to the topic, just came to mind.
Most of my space knowledge comes from Elite Dangerous lol. They used a lot of real star catalogs when making the galaxy and visually it’s really good.
it blew my tiny mind when i found out that there are multiple dwarf planets in long solar orbits in our system
they might be small and enjoy solitude but why are we forgetting about them???
and now apparently there’s also a dwarf planet in the inner solar system that nobody talks about??? rude
there’s also a dwarf planet in the inner solar system
It’s arguable about whether it’s in the “Inner Solar System”. Ceres is inside the asteroid belt, and the asteroid belt is the separator between the inner and outer system. It’s like floating in the middle of The Rhine and debating whether you’re in Germany or France
Exactly! It’s right there past Mars! It’s not like it’s some weird thing off in the cold dark past Pluto.
There is no objective criteria for what a planet is and isn’t.
There is, though, or rather there should be another one.
The official definition says
But I also said,
Like a lot of things in nature, things just exist, and as humans we categorize them.
There is no objective criteria for what a planet is and isn’t.
There is, though, or rather there should be another one.
The official definition says it’s a planet if it’s big enough to be round, which IMHO is a bullshit definition because nobody cares whether your object’s round, as in, for practical settlement purposes.
What’s important though is that it’s large enough to hold an atmosphere (at least if it had one). That’s only the case if the gravitational field is strong enough, which is the case roughly for objects of mass starting at around 10^23 kg. That definition fits surprisingly well the current actual classification of what is a planet and what isn’t, though.
The official definition says it’s a planet if it’s big enough to be round, which IMHO is a bullshit definition because nobody cares whether your object’s round, as in, for practical settlement purposes.
That’s the second out of the three points of the definition.
As to why it’s not bullshit - the roundness is a byproduct of the object achieving hydrostatic equilibrium (which is the actual criterion, not roundness).
What’s important though is that it’s large enough to hold an atmosphere (at least if it had one).
Define an atmosphere. Because there’s multiple asteroids that technically have one, albeit extremely thin ones. And be careful about being too nitpicky, as Mercury’s atmosphere is just it’s rock being vaporized due to its proximity to the sun
And of course, scientists often just use the non-dimensional number characterizing this; gravitational scale height divided by the atmospheric scale height is the Gandolfi number (Gf). :-)
Gas giants aren’t planets: they’re just clouds, man.
Space clouds.
The sun is just a particularly angry cloud.
More like a failure as a sun. We should all point and laugh at Jupiter.
Failed stars
Git Gud Ganymede, break out of Jupiter’s orbit
Well … what planet does Mercury orbit? Oh … yea, then its not a moon.
*yeah. Not yea or nay. It isn’t a vote.
From google: “yea is the word we sometimes use for yes, yay is the word we use to express joy, approval, or excitement.” From Grammarly: “you can use yea or yeah for yes”
If your going to be a weird-ass internet grammar nazi then at least be right about the grammar, otherwise you look like a total and complete idiot. That’s my vote.
Meanwhile Jupiter-san gets all the titles and meteor hugs
I don’t like the format generally, so I never thought I’d appreciate a kawaii-anime-style narration with interesting facts about planets, yet here we are. Where’d you get them from? Or are you drawing them yourself?
New York City born and raised.
I distinctly remember a third grade class when the teacher told us that the population nation of Sweden was smaller than the population of New York City.
Nobody does indignation like a 9 year old.
If you’re only counting New York City proper this is true, but the New York City metro area vastly out populates the entire nation of Sweden. (20M vs 10M)
Mercury used to be bigger than it currently is. The only thing that’s survived the wrath of The Sun is its core.
Mercury is hard core.
Don’t take Mercury for granted.
This is how we lost Pluto to the “well ackchually” gang.
“Moon” is more an indictment of the mediocre fusion product of the mass being orbited than any statement about the orbiter.
The Moon beign classified as a Moon despite qualifying as a binary planet. :(
I love how i get knowledgeable stuff under such memes
Best part of lemmy
Can’t have cleared your orbit around the sun if you don’t orbit the sun.
Planet is just not a very useful distinction. Like, Mercury, Mars, Ceres and Ganymede have more in common with each other than Jupiter or Neptune.
Don’t read into the mythos of Ganymede or any of Jupiter’s moons fwiw.
Wait… How do we know Ganymede orbits Jupiter and not the other way around? 🤔
Tell me who you walk with…
And now I know what my endevouros release is named ofter.
nialv7@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Size doesn’t matter
Zerush@lemmy.ml 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
“All right, Ganymede. You can be a planet, but firstvyou have to clean up your orbit. Start with Jupiter.”
nexguy@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Jupiter, largest of all dwarf planets, shares its orbit with some i don’t know million asteroids.
NominatedNemesis@reddthat.com 2 weeks 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…
CatAssTrophy@safest.space 3 weeks 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.
wizzor@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Unless you are Pluto.
tdawg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Wasn’t it more bc it doesn’t clear it’s surroundings?
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They did our boy dirty
itsmistermoon@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
That’s what I tell my wife but she won’t listen
Come on guys, laugh
prettybunnys@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
We’re laughing with your wife.
Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
That’s not what she said.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Size is a factor. But not everything.