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Submitted 10 months ago by iasmina2007@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
gigachad@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
SolidShake@lemmy.world 10 months ago
As a millennial who grew up with 9 planets. I don’t care. Pluto is Pluto. Doesn’t matter
Jack@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Scientists didn’t become pickier - they just later found that Pluto was in a belt of thousands of massive object (called the Kuiper belt), like the asteroid belt but much bigger.
When Ceres was discovered in 1801, it was thought to be a comet, later a planet, but after discovering it was one of many asteroids in the asteroid belt (which it wasn’t big enough to clear), they realized it wasn’t a planet.
When Pluto was first discovered in 1930, it was in a similar situation as Ceres and thought of as a planet, but when other Kuiper belt objects started to be discovered by 1992, they realized Pluto also wasn’t a planet.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 10 months ago
they realized it wasn’t a planet.
They made the definition of a planet more precise after Ceres and then again when they found even more comparable objects. The definition update that changed Pluto’s category was necessary because it would have added a half dozen new planets if they kept Pluto as a planet.
klu9@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
rockerface@lemm.ee 10 months ago
They’d rather remove Pluto from the list than add Ceres. This is clear discrimination!
UrPartnerInCrime@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
It’s not necessarily the size of Pluto thats the problem. It’s that it hasn’t cleared its orbit to make it stand out.
Windex007@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Are you suggesting it “shave” its surroundings to make it look bigger…?
witchybitchy@lemm.ee 10 months ago
planet-scaping, some call it
abbadon420@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Pluto can still float around the sun like any planet can. It’s just when some scientist comes along and says “well, actually…”.
Maybe in a couple years there’ll be another scientist who says “well, actually…” and Pluto will be a planet again.
It’s not up to Pluto, it’s up to the people who interpret the rules.Size doesn’t matter.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 10 months ago
You’ll always be a planet in my heart, Pluto <3
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Do some leople think Pluto actually got smaller and thats why it’s not a planet?!
iasmina2007@lemmy.world 10 months ago
[deleted]sxan@midwest.social 10 months ago
And also because if we included Pluto, we’d have to include another half dozen Pluto-sized dwarves we’ve discovered since.
But, yeah, my understanding is that it’s really about dominance. Pluto is too submissive. Not alpha enough, if you will.
wewbull@feddit.uk 10 months ago
That’s correct by definition, but the reason the definition was changed to exclude pluto was because our knowledge changed.
We found more Pluto-like objects and it became clear they weren’t the same thing as the other 8 planets. They needed their own classification. So we created one (Dwarf Planets) and put Pluto in it along with its brethren.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I wouldn’t put it past an awful lot of people given the stupidity I see on a daily basis.
Pluto is a strange relic that basically got considered a planet only due to the time and method by which it was observed. But it turns out that there are a lot of things in the solar system that are about the size of Pluto or even larger which would require us to either declare there are dozens and dozens of planets or, the slightly more sane avenue, come up with a slightly more specific definition of what a planet actually is which by necessity excludes Pluto.
All the hype about is basically just down to people refusing to change what they learned in elementary school. But the thing about science is that it changes and is refined over time as we gain understanding of the universe and how things work. This is what makes science science. Anything less is simply dogma.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 10 months ago
the thing that was actually influencing Neptune’s orbit, whatever that might be
Calculation error due to Einstein not being available (in Lowell’s case, at least; Tombaugh should’ve known better) and margins of error in the measured masses of the planets at the time (the Voyagers took care of that bit), if I’m not mistaken.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
The explanation I heard back then was that Pluto wouldn’t qualify as a planet, EXCEPT that it has a moon. I’m not sure why that exception would apply, but it seems it’s no longer good enough.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 10 months ago
All the hype about is basically just down to people refusing to change what they learned in elementary school
And it’s baffling because how does that even affect anyone in any way unless they work in astronomy? People don’t know and don’t care about the difference between solar system, galaxy and universe, but Pluto being recategorised is STILL causing them intolerable agony?
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 10 months ago
Look, those damn things (Pluto / Charon, since they’re basically a double bodied system) get closer to the Sun than Neptune, at certain points in their orbit.
There’s dozens of similarly sized objects buzzing around in the same region, and probably thousands of not millions in the Oort cloud.
The only reason “Pluto” were ever called a planet is that they coincidentally happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Tombaugh used Lovell’s miscalculations to look for an hypothetical transneptunian planet (Lowell, at least, had the excuse of having died before Einstein published his theory of relativity, but Tombaugh should have known that Newton wasn’t enough for this kind of thing).