The only reason Pluto is no longer a planet is because we discovered there were loads more planets and couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge their existence!
i’ve spent 25 years on this blue marble fascinated by space, and only recently discovered there multiple long orbit dwarf planets going around the sun??? that is so cool why is this not widely known!
we used to have a handful of elements, but when we kept discovering more, we didn’t change the rules to have elements, and “strange elements” so schools only have to teach about 16 elements.
NASA says there are only 5 dwarf planets in the system. But, it’s all pretty arbitrary. The line between planet, dwarf planet and asteroid are all pretty fuzzy.
An alien civilization looking at the Sol system might say that it’s only got one planet, Jupiter. Everything else is so much smaller that they’re not really significant.
Another logical cut-off would be that planets had to be bigger than any moons in the system. If we went by that standard, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus and Mars could all still count as planets, but Mercury would get ditched because it’s smaller than Ganymede and Titan.
What’s funny is that we’re still using the name “planet” which comes from “asteres planētai”, meaning “wandering star”. For the Greeks what mattered wasn’t the size or the mass, it was how bright they were. That meant that a tiny object near the sun like Mercury (Hermes) got the name planet, because despite being tiny, the fact it’s close to the sun means it reflects a lot of light. And Jupiter (Zeus) and Saturn (Cronus) got named not because they’re so big, but because they’re big and far away from the sun, which means they reflect sunlight in a similar way to the much smaller inner planets. Earth’s moon might have been given the name “planet” if it had been a lot smaller and/or further away.
Pluto is a planet!
The only reason Pluto is no longer a planet is because we discovered there were loads more planets and couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge their existence!
i’ve spent 25 years on this blue marble fascinated by space, and only recently discovered there multiple long orbit dwarf planets going around the sun??? that is so cool why is this not widely known!
Well, it is widely know.
Unpopular opinion: dwarf planets are cool.
It’s been like that for decades to be honest. Ceres used to be called a planet, but you don’t see anyone complaining about it’s demotion
but so what?
we used to have a handful of elements, but when we kept discovering more, we didn’t change the rules to have elements, and “strange elements” so schools only have to teach about 16 elements.
It’s all just made up categorization. It’s like that because astronomers have agreed to categorize them like that. That’s all.
Yes, a dwarf planet!
And Jupiter is a Gas Giant, but we still count it as one of the planets of our solar system
Because if dwarf planets counted, we’d have to include a hell of a lot more than 9 planets.
NASA says there are only 5 dwarf planets in the system. But, it’s all pretty arbitrary. The line between planet, dwarf planet and asteroid are all pretty fuzzy.
An alien civilization looking at the Sol system might say that it’s only got one planet, Jupiter. Everything else is so much smaller that they’re not really significant.
Another logical cut-off would be that planets had to be bigger than any moons in the system. If we went by that standard, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus and Mars could all still count as planets, but Mercury would get ditched because it’s smaller than Ganymede and Titan.
What’s funny is that we’re still using the name “planet” which comes from “asteres planētai”, meaning “wandering star”. For the Greeks what mattered wasn’t the size or the mass, it was how bright they were. That meant that a tiny object near the sun like Mercury (Hermes) got the name planet, because despite being tiny, the fact it’s close to the sun means it reflects a lot of light. And Jupiter (Zeus) and Saturn (Cronus) got named not because they’re so big, but because they’re big and far away from the sun, which means they reflect sunlight in a similar way to the much smaller inner planets. Earth’s moon might have been given the name “planet” if it had been a lot smaller and/or further away.
Any time you cut off a spectrum you get weirdness around the edges.
then accept the spectrum.
just list the top 15 or 20 largest planets in the solar system when making a poster or a textbook.
you literally just cut off the spectrum 😭
And we should.
Pluto is a
planetplant!Pluto is a dog!
The most performative “hurr durr science” bullshit ever. Who fucking cares if Pluto was considered a planet when you were a kid?
Not you specifically. There are people who really seem to care about this shit.
Pluto’s not a planet, but he doesn’t care because he knows he’s hot shit.
https://youtu.be/EuRjmzz6qL0