you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 12 points 18 hours ago (11 children)

I imagine nasa would be perfectly fine with Pluto still categorized as a planet. It was just a handful of people at a IAU conference(many had left by the time the vote happened) that made the change.

  • source
  • hideshow 11 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 17 hours ago (9 children)

    Historically it's fine. Technically it's not. The thing is, it's still a type of planet, it's not like it's now called something completely different. It's more specific to fall in line with the likely many, many neighbors that are out there.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (8 children)

    I would completely agree with you except IAU specifically said Pluto is a dwarf planet and that, for some reason, a "dwarf planet" is NOT a sub category of planet. It's its own thing and not a planet.

    It was a weird conference and a weird vote.

    Edit: "planet" IMHO is more of a traditional category like constellation. Some how a tiny rock like mercury is more like Jupiter than the tiny rock Pluto. It doesn't make much scientific senseso it seems more traditional. It would be like removing the name for a constellation because one of the stars is really a bright nebula or something.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

    It was a weird conference and a weird vote.

    Nah, the other option was to add a bunch of planets, including Ceres right between Mars and Jupiter. If you wanted to keep things as close to what they were before, removing Pluto was the more conservative option.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    There could be many options. My favorite is a reclassification. Terrestrial planets(first 4), gas planets (next 4) and drwarf planets (numerous). Though mercury could fit into the dwarf planet category which is fine with me. The current classification was made specifically to demote pluto with rules that particularly apply to it so that mercury would not fit into it. It was to keep the "planet" category special and to not have too many(keep it traditional). Seems a bit geocentric and less scientific.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 4 points 12 hours ago

    I totally agree. It felt like it was an arbitrary ruling to keep the number of memorable celestial bodies low.

    I actually like the idea of PMOs being defined as planets but it also sounds like there's too much disagreement for any resolutions on this topic.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

    The problem is that since Pluto was discovered, we've found many similar bodies. Astronomers suggest there could be hundreds.

    If you define "planet" so that it excludes Pluto, 8 objects in our solar system qualify as planets. Any definition that includes Pluto qualifies at least 13 planets with a high likelihood that that number will increase every few years.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (3 children)

    It is convenient to classify it as a dwarf planet but that doesn’t mean that “dwarf planet” and “planet” are scientific categories in the purest sense of the term

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 3 hours ago (2 children)

    What's the "purest sense of the term"? A planet is presently defined as a body which orbits a star, has enough mass to be roughly round, and has cleared its orbit of other objects. Dwarf planets are defined as fulfilling the first two criteria, but not the third.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 3 hours ago (1 child)

    I mean that these descriptions are somewhat arbitrary. Roughly round is not a very precise delineation, there will be edge cases where it’s not clear which category they fall into

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 3 hours ago*

    Roughly round is not a very precise delineation

    The actual qualification is "hydrostatic equilibrium", but I didn't want to complicate the point with technical mathematical jargon.

    there will be edge cases where it’s not clear which category they fall into

    Which is pretty par for the course so far as scientific classifications go. Classification is a human endeavor to attempt to neatly categorize things to better understand them, but the universe is what it is and defies tidy categorization. Just about any scientific classification you can devise will have edge cases and ambiguity.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (1 reply)