this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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top 43 comments
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[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Me, who misread the caption at first, who knows Plato is a philosopher

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought it was a kind of modeling clay.

[–] univers3man@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

No, you're thinking of play doh, a type of starchy tuber.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 17 points 1 year ago

Back in school we used to have a book with an illustration of the solar system with all the planets in neat almost circular orbits in a plane around the sun. And there was Pluto with its skewed orbit that was all over the place. My teacher couldn't convince me that it should be lumped in with the rest of the planets.

I felt satisfaction when Jim Carrey's kids in Me, Myself and Irene complained that it shouldn't be a planet. That was the first time I ever heard a person say that.

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It you class it as a planet you can have to do it for all the others

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago

And who wants to memorize more than eight or nine planets.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 9 points 1 year ago

Pluto isn't a planet but Phobos is still a moon. Seems unfair.

[–] Liz@midwest.social 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  1. The rocks, ice, and gas out there doesn't give a shit what we think.

  2. Arguing that a planet must have cleared its orbit of other major bodies invokes an arbitrary size and location judgement for what constitutes a planets orbital space and what constitutes a major body.

  3. The argument that the inclusion of Pluto would require the inclusion of a lot of other planets and that that is obviously bad/wrong is absurd. Why can't a system have a whole lot of planets?

I propose an unoriginal definition of a planet:

  1. Large enough to become spherical under its own mass.

  2. Too small to fuse hydrogen, regardless of its presence.

I think we should really consider the term "planet" to be somewhat vague, and use the term "proper planet" when referring to all the things that match my proposed definition. The proposed definition includes things we have other names for and that's okay; we just use those other names when we need the extra specificity, like moon, rouge planet, dwarf planet, etc.

[–] magnusrufus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Well said. This is my take on it too. It's really the only reasonable approach.

[–] onion@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Our moon would be a planet under that definition

[–] Liz@midwest.social 4 points 1 year ago

Yes that's right. It would also be a moon. I see no reason why it can't be both.

[–] diverging@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The stupidest consequence of the definition is not the classification of Pluto, but that there are only eight planets in the entire universe.

a planet is a celestial body that:

  1. is in orbit around the Sun
[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] diverging@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

No. I copied and pasted that. The definition says 'the Sun'. There was a proposal to classify 'exoplanets' but the IAU never accepted it, and so those large masses orbiting other stars remain undefined.

Exoplanets are addressed in a 2003 position statement issued by a now-defunct IAU Working Group on Extrasolar Planets. However, this position statement was never proposed as an official IAU resolution and was never voted on by IAU members.

[–] darakan@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

Me who knows Pluto is a manga

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Always "Pluto, Pluto, Pluto". Why does no one ever remember Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake? They're each as much of a "planet" as Pluto is.

[–] ReeferPirate@lemy.lol 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, dwarfs.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are dwarf stars not stars?

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No, because they aren't undergoing hydrogen fusion due to their insufficient mass.

[–] magnusrufus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_star

That doesn't seem to be entirely accurate.

[–] affiliate@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

new planet definition is dumb and i don’t subscribe to it. pluto is always a planet as far as im concerned

[–] multifariace@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then you must accept at least 5 more and up to a couple hundred. Are you prepared?

[–] affiliate@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then the most important question is: What mnemonic do you use to remember them all?

[–] affiliate@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

mee vee eee mee jee see uee nee pee

You missed at least Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake.

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Gas giant planets, ice giant planets, rocky planets, dwarf planets.

I don't see what the big deal is.

[–] magnusrufus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

The deal is the weird part where they made a specific point of and big deal out of the new classification not being a type of planet despite having the word planet in the name.

[–] dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The "big" deal is that a ton of celestial bodies of comparable size to pluto would have to be considered either as planets or as general debris. Finding a clear definition which would include pluto as a planet and not include other stuff would be very impractical and possibly nearly impossible.

But the biggest fuck up was to name a non-planet a "dwarf planet".

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm well aware of the existence of countless dwarf planets in the solar system, and the naming issues that arose from the discovery.

I don't mind that they called them dwarf planets. But I don't know why everyone got so upset about it. It sounds like just another class of planet to me, which seems quite appropriate.

I agree that they marketed the change about as poorly as they could.

[–] dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure, people have taken the matter way too personal. That's mostly people who have a nostalgic relationship to their childhood classes about "the 9 planets".

As I've read, they made the definition in the particular way to remove gray areas of inaccurate meassurements. A celestial body shouldn't be wrongly classified due to being a few kilometres larger than some limit, then be reclassified later due to better meassurements. Planets need to be somewhat spherical, orbit a star and clear their orbit from significant debris. They made a great system which doesn't leave big gray areas. A planet is defined in a well thought out way by people way smarter than me.

And then they go and call the non-planets "dwarf planets".

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I've heard some push to just call them all "Worlds." Planets, moons, asteroids, etc. and all, which is also fine by me.

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Seems to be an appropriate thread for this absolute banger: https://youtu.be/EuRjmzz6qL0