Except when you actually read about the change in Pluto’s status and how unscientific it actually is.
Comment on Truth hurts!
ameancow@lemmy.world 11 hours agoAnyone who complains about this are the same people who whinged about the change of Pluto’s status as a planet.
In that, they are clinging to nostalgia instead of embracing a new, wondrous truth. Feathers and fur on dinosaurs shows an entirely new way of imagining the world before us, just like Pluto’s downgrade was simply because we found potentially thousands of more Pluto’s.
I think a lot of people broadly are insecure about change right now. Stability feels precious, and this nostalgic retreat is being leveraged by anti-science groups.
lorty@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
ameancow@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Oh? Do explain, and pretend I don’t actually know a lot about planetary science.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
Pluto’s downgrade was simply because we found potentially thousands of more Pluto’s.
The argument I’ve seen skips the step that the new definition was created to include those other Pluto like objects. They jump right to how the new planet definition was updated to not have overlap or ambiguity and therefor was about creating a way to exclude pluto rather than creating a definition that doesn’t lead to have declaring there are now 50 planets.
ameancow@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
How is that unscientific though? We need to create definitions and classifications, and it makes more sense to create that definition in the simplest place possible. IE: it’s simpler to consider Pluto a dwarf planet along with many, many other dwarf planets, than create a new solar-system model that has 50 more actual planets.
And lets say that we went with the 50+ planet solar-system model… what would be the delineation point there? What standard should we use to preserve that number 50? What if we find 50 more small bodies in the coming years? Where does it end?
The reclassification of Pluto made more sense than just saying we don’t have a clearly defined solar system. Planetary science requires the terminology so we can say what we’re looking at. Planets? Dwarf planets? Trojans? trans-neptunian objects? There is a LOT of stuff out there, we can’t call it ALL planets. So where would you have drawn the line that makes it “more scientific?”
athatet@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
Who stands to gain from Pluto not being a planet?
python@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
For real though - people will insist that Pluto is a planet but not even know about Eris.
massive_bereavement@fedia.io 10 hours ago
Ceres is super cool though I will always have a spot for Pluto.
Makemake is rad though, so fast it warped.
ameancow@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
There is a fantastic array of worldlets out there. I am so excited for Lucy and getting first glimpses of worlds we’ve never seen like the Trojans dragged along by Jupiter. We are so fortunate to be in an age where we get to see these sights. I feel like it’s easy to forget just how amazing this entire thing is, that we’re seeing the surface of places beyond Earth… and so far, most of them have been unique and surprising in some way.