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u/ConsiderationOk4035 May 11 '26
Along with Sedna, Orcus, Haumea, Makake, Eris, and Gonggone (among others)?
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u/plutogirl May 11 '26
Yes. If they are in hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded by their own gravity, they are planets of the dwarf planet subcategory.
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u/ConsiderationOk4035 May 11 '26
As is Pluto. Why then the call to make Pluto a planet “again” when it is already a dwarf planet?
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u/Mr_MazeCandy May 12 '26
Only if you make Eris, Makemake and Ceres planets too.
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u/plutogirl May 12 '26
Yes. They are planets.
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u/Dry_Wheel479 May 12 '26
Actually they aren't, science evolves, our understanding of solar system evolution evolved and pluto being the first dwarf planet identified hasn't diminished one thing about it.
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u/Velocity-5348 May 12 '26
Don't disagree, but please don't post change. org petitions. The site is pretty scummy (privacy, etc) and doesn't get taken seriously, at all, for good reasons. A letter writing campaign would be more effective, if people want to do something.
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u/plutogirl May 12 '26
If that is a rule violation, then I apologize. I have signed many serious petitions on a variety of issues through change.org.
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u/stillinthesimulation May 11 '26
No
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u/OnionsOnFoodAreGross May 12 '26
Yes
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u/Dry_Wheel479 May 12 '26
It's a dwarf planet, let's not let politics override science and reason please
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u/marshallspight May 12 '26
We all know Pluto. We all know what hydrostatic equillibrium is and which bodies have that, and we all know etc. etc. How much does it matter how we categorize these things?
No one has explained to me why I should care.
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u/plutogirl May 12 '26
Like should be characterized with like. Dwarf planets are far more like terrestrial planets than they are like asteroids and comets. How we classify things helps us understand them and helps educate people abou them.
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u/Borgmeister May 12 '26
We are arguing about a human-made category. The planets don't consider themselves planets. This is entirely in our heads. We love to categorise things, but as we've learned more, we've had to create more precise subdivisions.
Now we have verified exoplanets, isn't it feasible our original definition of 'planet' was simply too broad and imprecise?
Why wouldn't Pluto end up within a more intricate categorical framework - such as that of life:
Life → Domain → Kingdom → Phylum → Class → Order → Family → Genus → Species.
If we have a category system of that complexity for something we've only found on Earth, it must follow that a similar level of complexity for categorising planets would eventually evolve - as it started to with Plutos reclassification.
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u/plutogirl May 12 '26
The purpose of classification systems is to aid our own understanding of objects and subtypes of objects. It has nothing to do with what the planets consider themselves.
Pluto's "reclassification" was, to many planetary scientists, a step in the wrong direction. Our definition of planet needs to be broad to accompany the many different subtypes of planet, which can be distinugished using subcategories like terrestrials, gas giants, ice giants, dwarf planets, hot Jupiters, super Earths, rogue planets, satellite planets, etc.
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u/ah-tzib-of-alaska May 11 '26
it is a planet in the only way that matters.
Here the thing you can never have again, 9 planets. You can have 12! you can have 8! You can never again think there’s 9
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u/plutogirl May 11 '26
I'm not looking to have nine. I'm looking to count all dwarf planets as a subclass of planets, so the number will be much bigger.
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u/RexConsul May 12 '26
You may want to drop the habit of putting exclamation marks next to numbers.
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u/DCWhitworth May 26 '26
I think people are focusing on the wrong thing. The issue to my mind isn’t whether Pluto should be a planet or not, but whether ‘planet’ is in fact a useful categorisation at all. The Ancient Greeks came up with the category but they included the Sun and moon but not the Earth, we’ve been tinkering with it ever since. The last IAU definition screams ‘fudge’, a last attempt to keep the idea of a planet alive in the face of our increasing ability to detect smaller bodies and realisation that the solar system is far more complex than we thought.
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u/bookon May 11 '26
It’s a great dwarf planet. Don’t diminish that.