this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 7 months ago (9 children)

Pluto will always be a planet to me, and you'll pry that definition from my cold, dead hands!

[–] [email protected] 48 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Stay strong. A dwarf planet is a perfectly valid kind of planet, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (7 children)

It's not the size that counts but the ability to clear your orbit. ;)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Good question! I had forgotten about Jupiter's Trojans and Greek asteroids!

I went and checked the definiton of Clearing the Neighborhood by IAU, emphasis mine:

The phrase refers to an orbiting body (a planet or protoplanet) "sweeping out" its orbital region over time, by gravitationally interacting with smaller bodies nearby. Over many orbital cycles, a large body will tend to cause small bodies either to accrete with it, or to be disturbed to another orbit, or to be captured either as a satellite or into a resonant orbit. As a consequence it does not then share its orbital region with other bodies of significant size, except for its own satellites, or other bodies governed by its own gravitational influence. This latter restriction excludes objects whose orbits may cross but that will never collide with each other due to orbital resonance, such as Jupiter and its trojans, Earth and 3753 Cruithne, or Neptune and the plutinos.[3] As to the extent of orbit clearing required, Jean-Luc Margot emphasises "a planet can never completely clear its orbital zone, because gravitational and radiative forces continually perturb the orbits of asteroids and comets into planet-crossing orbits" and states that the IAU did not intend the impossible standard of impeccable orbit clearing.[2]

Trojans and Greeks orbit Jupiter's LaGrange points in a stable orbit and so they are governed by Jupiter's gravity. You could say they're really weird moons orbiting semi-stable points Jupiter creates.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Does it dig mines and sing upbeat work songs?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

ROCK AND STONE…….. and orbits

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Arenyou gonna start calling Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Orcus planets?

We went through this 150 years ago ehen the asteroid belt was discovered. Every astronomer wanted credit for discovering a new planet, so at one point there were 15 before all the astronomers got together and said it was untenable.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Yes. We could have had a planet Orcus and we were like "nah, we'll pass." That would have been metal as shit.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (4 children)

without orbital dominance?

amazon.com ass planet with fake reviews.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So Neptune has a rogue rock in its orbit that also orbits the sun and we're just gonna give Neptune a pass on that one because we saw it first.

At best, this is size discrimination, and neptunotism, and we both know it!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Look, just be careful that you don’t confuse proplutoism with antineptunotism.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but it's delivered with a nice hand written note from a single mom in China so I 5 star anyways.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Whatever, Pluto is a dwarf planet like every other dwarf planet too.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 7 months ago (9 children)

You know, this post made me realize something. Some people are viewing it in terms of "rank", instead of an arbitrary scientific classification designed to efficiently communicate ideas in a clear and concise way.

It's like ... mythology or something, and the planet(oid) being anthropomorphized.

Do people also view kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species as "ranks" of some sort, with some intrinsically greater value being given to some over others?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It’s like … mythology or something, and the planet(oid) being anthropomorphized.

I mean, the planet(oid)s are named after gods.

The personification of its classification is probably related to the exclusivity of the title and “bigger is better” mentality. Since every life form has a taxonomy for domain to species, there’s not really an exclusivity to each echelon. I don’t imagine anybody really thinks like this meme below, for example:

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

This makes me want to devise a tiered, inclusive classification scheme for space objects.

We could start with orbital objects, any object that normally experiences regular, periodic orbits with minimal deviation. So, everything in the galaxy would be one except potentially Sag A, and the galaxy itself. Perhaps the next branching subsets could be things undergoing continuous fusion somewhere in their body or not?

[–] GregorGizeh 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Do people also view kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species as "ranks" of some sort, with some intrinsically greater value being given to some over others?

Well, for humans we most certainly do

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

So, "homo" is better than "sapiens"? And "animal" is better than homo sapiens?

Or do I have it backwards, and "lower" ranks are better? So, "pinus ponderosa" would be better than "plant"?

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago

Damnit who let Elon name that planet?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (2 children)

When ever Eris isn't on screen everyone should be asking "Where's Eris?"

[–] [email protected] 34 points 7 months ago (2 children)

"Where is Eris? Is it safe? Is it all right?"

"It appears that, in your anger... You classified it as a dwarf planet."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Hmmm… Lost a planet Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Our Ceres is perfectly legal

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The planet formerly known as twitter.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (4 children)

aint no planet x coming cause aint no space cuz aint not globe earth

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

aint no birds flying cause aint no worms cuz aint not soil earth

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Cease your investigation!

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Imagine how poor Pluto would feel if we decided this new entry counted as a proper planet.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Nah, man. Pluto doesn’t care any more. Even as a dwarf planet, he knows he’s still hot shit

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Pluto is the celestial body your Wife tells you not to worry about because “Oh, don’t worry it’s just Pluto coming over when you are out of town, and Pluto isn’t a planet so there is nothing for you to get anxious or jealous about”.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

It'd have to be exceptionally large to clear its orbital path at that distance from the sun. It'll probably join Pluto in the dwarf planet category.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

He should pull himself up by his bootstraps and get his Alpha Planet grindset on. No one can be a proper planet with this Sigma Planet mindset

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Is planet X really discovered?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago (3 children)

They found more evidence for its existence recently, but no. Nobody has ever seen it or even found out in which direction to look. The evidence is that the other planets move in ways that only makes sense if there is some mass somewhere pulling their orbits.

Sort of like having to discover the moon from watching the tides in the sea.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

this method is how we discovered Neptune and Pluto and many exoplanets. Kepler's laws are extremely specific about orbits, so once you pin down the disturbances the planet makes you significantly narrow down the places it can be.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but that new evidence is way less distinguishable from noise than the one for Neptune.

At this point, the most likely is that there isn't anything there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Can we just send someone to check it out? Stop being lazy.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Thought there were some significant progress..

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

Well we figured out where to look for it, and it is definitely the sky. We tried looking the last place we left it, and then we looked all around the basement from top to bottom. Yup, we can say with confidence folks, Planet X is hiding somewhere above us.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Yeah well, not really. Next year maybe, according to the article linked yesterday.

https://lemmy.world/post/14670867

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I saw it named planet 9

Named so here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine

Planet X

~~Ceres~~ and Eris didn’t even get turns being planets

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Ceres was considered a planet in the first half of the 1800's, along with a bunch of things in the asteroid belt. There was a point where there were 64 planets.

In the present state of knowledge astronomers give us the following list:
Sixty-four "primary planets" revolving round the Sun as our Earth does.
Twenty satellites, including our Moon.
Of the sixty-four primary planets fifty-six are asteroids, comparatively small bodies, all of which were discovered in this century, and fifty-two since the year 1844.]

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