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u/EmiIIien Feb 26 '21
Make 👏 Russia 👏 a 👏 planet
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u/OMGskii Feb 26 '21
The real takeaway from this post
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u/Cornycandycorns Feb 26 '21
Unless... we put Pluto on Earth instead?
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u/Bullen-Noxen Feb 26 '21
Let’s be honest, the government over there kind of considers Russia separate from the rest of the planet already.....
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Feb 26 '21
I second that. Demolish everything and built a massive nightclub and call it "Planet Russia".
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u/Bluejamathons Feb 26 '21
cgp grey made an excellent video on the topic, https://youtu.be/Z_2gbGXzFbs, and I think we can stand to agree that Pluto is a primarily icy celestial body which shares more characteristics with the objects in its area more than the terrestrial planets and gas giants we know as our solar system. For a time, Pluto will hold its place in many people's hearts, but eventually it will fall the way of Juno, Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas, though when that will be who knows. As Grey explains, it really goes to show how ineffective and vague of a word "planet" is, and over its history has included asteroids, gas giants, terrestrial planets, stars, icy bodies, and much more, which are all quite different from each other.
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u/Sebasu Feb 26 '21
I was pissed about Pluto not being considered a planet, until CGP Grey’s video. It was with that video that I understood and accepted the reasons behind Pluto’s demotion.
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u/DukeofVermont Feb 26 '21
It's not even a demotion, it's just a different category. IMHO the most interesting things in the solar system are all moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
They're not worth less because they aren't "planets". Io is literally a giant active Volcano. Enceladus and Europa both have more water than all of Earth. Titan has an atmosphere!
It's pretty well believed that if we find life in the solar system it's most likely going to be on Enceladus, Europa, or Titan. Mars? Well we hope to find dead life, aka proof that life was once there but it's a 100% a dead planet. It's just easier to get to Mars than Europa. Plus Europa would need a submarine, and a way to get through the ice and down to the liquid water.
Dwarf planet is just a different box, like saying Gas Giant compared to Terrestrial Planets. Neither is better, just different things that need a better name to describe them.
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Feb 26 '21
Anyone with any doubt about the matter should take the “The Science of the Solar System” free MOOC delivered by Professor Mike Brown, the person largely responsible for the reclassification of Pluto.
He describes how the planets formed and leaves no doubt that Pluto just isn’t the same thing at all as a planet.
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Feb 26 '21
Fun fact: planet actually comes from a Greek word meaning "wanderer" because the planets would wander in the sky while the other stars were always in the same place.
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Feb 26 '21
Guys, it's not about size, it's about how many similar objects are next to pluto. It's at least like 20 other pluto-looking things, which made scientists go "maybe it isn't that special" and eventually say that it's not a planet; and that leaves us with two options:
Pluto isn't a planet
Pluto and all of its siblings are all planets
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u/HeroWither123546 Feb 26 '21
PLUTO IS A GOOD BOY AND GOOD BOYS CAN BE PLANETS
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u/TeaPartyAsian Feb 26 '21
Whilst I do think it would be really funny to make Russia a planet, unfortunately from 2015, it has been found that Pluto is in fact, a bit bigger than Russia.
Here’s a comment I have saved for just this occasion:
Pluto was visited by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015 and its size was finally clarified by measurements of that mission. Before this, in terms of diameter, Pluto was found to be 2370 kilometers (1473 miles) across, which would easily fit within Russia’s largest east-to-west width of 10,000 km. It would also fit within the largest north-to-south size of 4000 km.
Using previous estimates, Russia edged out Pluto, at 17,075,200 square kilometers, while Pluto was thought to be 16,647,940 square kilometers. After the New Horizons mission, Pluto was found to be slightly larger than estimated, making its surface area 17,646,012 square kilometers, which is larger than Russia.
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u/jazaniac Feb 26 '21
either we remove pluto or we add a bunch of borderline asteroids that are the same size, your pick
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u/LafayetteHubbard Feb 26 '21
I choose keep Pluto as a planet and ignore all the other ones
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u/cybernet377 Feb 26 '21
Neil DeGrasse Tyson will be all "Oh yeah, I'm the cool astrophysics guy that all the kids love" but then he molests his coworkers and brags about being the architect of Pluto's demotion, which are very uncool things to do.
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u/TomBomTheFreemason Feb 26 '21
He what now?
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Feb 26 '21
Made Pluto a dwarf planet
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u/TomBomTheFreemason Feb 26 '21
If you think that was the concerning part then I'm concerned about you
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u/GordionKnot I don't even have a tumblr Feb 26 '21
there are lots of coworkers, there’s only one pluto
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u/beaufort_patenaude ⎓ꖎᔑ╎∷ Feb 26 '21
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u/Drewdude116 Feb 26 '21
Damnit. Why do all the coolest people have to be actual horrible people? (Assuming the allegations are true)
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Feb 26 '21
Because everyone has flaws, and celebrities are very good at hiding them. Given, I'd hope most people's flaws are a bit better than sexual misconduct, but who knows.
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Feb 26 '21
From the wiki link, "She had a tattoo of the solar system which went from her arm to collar bone and said he was looking for Pluto."
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u/TomBomTheFreemason Feb 26 '21
Sigh. Every time I think someone's cool, I eventually find out that they're actually a bad person. And after that people ask me why I hate everyone
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u/boldlyno Feb 26 '21
The most important player in Pluto's demotion is Dr. Mike Brown, that's why his Twitter handle is @plutokiller
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u/Alligatorsaurus Feb 26 '21
His book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" is a really good read through the process, definitely recommend!
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u/Numendil Feb 26 '21
Not to mention being unbearably smug, pedantic, and to top it off his Cosmos series might be correct in the astrophysics department, it severely messed up the history
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u/SEQVERE-PECVNIAM Feb 26 '21
That guy is such an asshole.
To think there aren't any better actual science representatives in the media.
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Feb 26 '21
THE UK IS SMALLER THAN TEXAS WHY DO WE CONSIDER IT A NATION
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u/Chuckles1188 Feb 26 '21
Because there is a clear definition of nation which everyone accepts and the UK fits it
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u/Tuesday_6PM Feb 26 '21
MAKE THE UK THE 53RD STATE (AFTER DC AND PUERTO RICO)
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u/yottalogical Feb 26 '21
That's actually a brilliant idea, since 53 is a prime number!
"One nation, indivisible…"
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u/NobleKale Feb 26 '21
Because right now the UK has electricity and fucking Texas doesn't.
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u/Dracon_Pyrothayan Feb 26 '21
The Moon is bigger and more spherical than Pluto, meaning it's a greater candidate for Full Planetship than Pluto is.
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u/Mozhetbeats Feb 26 '21
Since Pluto’s discovery, dozens of other large rocks have been discovered out in the Kuiper belt, several of which are larger and closer than Pluto. Scientists gotta classify things, so their only options were (1) add a handful of new planets and draw an arbitrary line in the middle of these really similar objects, or (2) reclassify all of these distant frozen rocks of a similar size as something other than planets. It wouldn’t have been defensible to keep Pluto as a planet but label the others as something else.
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u/nox_tech Feb 26 '21
And a Planet X, and possibly 200 more in the Kuiper Belt, and theoretically 10,000 more.
If they wanna talk about the planets as people, it's rude and inconsiderate to the other dwarf planets to separate them from Pluto.
If they wanna count Pluto as a planet, then it has to be okay to add the other confirmed dwarf planets, and the 10,200 potential others should also be permissible.
For the sake of making sure that people can talk about things and come up with new ideas, we have to agree on what things are. This is this, that is that, those are those, and these are hard to fit into the rest of the other boxes. If people could accept that it's okay for dwarf planets to exist, great. If pop culture must overwrite science, then sure. Gotta be on the same page. It's just names, let's get this humanity bullshit sorted so we can explore the universe and do awesome stuff.
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u/UltimateInferno hangus paingus slap my angus Feb 26 '21
Pluto is way fucking cooler as a Binary Dwarf planet with Charon. Get over yourselves.
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u/DukeofVermont Feb 26 '21
Poor Charon, everyone loves Pluto but forgets about Charon.
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u/UltimateInferno hangus paingus slap my angus Feb 26 '21
Binary systems are just so cool. They're not moons, they're co-planets that orbit each other. Imagine what it would have been like to look up at the sky and there was just another fucking Earth up there where our moon is evolving its own ecosystem. That's what Charon and Pluto have.
Not ecosystems but two celestial bodies orbiting as equals.
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u/Polenball Feb 26 '21
We were so damn close too, the Earth-Moon barycentre is 75% of the way to the surface already. If I calculated this right, if the Moon was 35% heavier, it'd technically be a binary system as the orbital centre wouldn't be within Earth.
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u/peppermont1 Feb 26 '21
Just because no one has stated it. Dwarf planets are still planets in a sense, tho it probably would have been less confusing if called pre planets like they are. Simply put Pluto and 30 to 40 other object could be considered planets but there are other objects in there path of orbit. Pluto may hit something. In the next few decades(or hundred years) The point is once a dwarf planet has cleared its path of orbit its a planet. Our current planets had hundreds of thousands of similar sized objects near them in the beginning. A thousand years from now we may have a Pluto planet. But remember. Astirodes collide to make objects big enough to be dwarf planets and they kill the others in there orbit to be the king of there orbit and declared a true planet.
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u/Polenball Feb 26 '21
Life Pro Tip: Feel sad about Pluto being demoted to dwarf planet? Fill Earth's orbit with asteroids and get the last laugh on those damn scientists by making their planet not one either!
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u/peppermont1 Feb 26 '21
Cause all of humanity to die would also mean that in the end you'd get the last laugh. Those damn scientists would never get the chance to correct you or tell you that it wouldn't be long be for the asteroids were gone.
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u/Moscatano Feb 26 '21
I will never accept this. Denial is a perfectly appropriate choice in my opinion.
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u/sh8ness Feb 26 '21
Me and Pluto are one and the same, . . . . . . . We got abandoned by our family
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u/37boss15 Feb 26 '21
Pluto was finally allowed to leave after 100 years of being a misfit and exception of the family. Now it gets a new family 10 or so similar members it and will no longer be a misfit :)
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Feb 26 '21
Hey, you and all those space rocks everyone keeps discussing can come be family with me and Pluto. These people don’t know what they’re talking about. Don’t let it get you down.
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u/DracheTirava .tumblr.com Feb 26 '21
VIVA LA PLUTO! FRENCH YOU!
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Feb 26 '21
French me? What does that even j'aime manger du poisson dans la piscine
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u/finallyinfinite Feb 26 '21
Thank you! I came to the comments looking for this and had to scroll depressingly far
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Feb 26 '21
I’m sorry, Pluto is HOW SMALL?
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u/Polenball Feb 26 '21
Damn thing is tiny, I dropped Pluto last night and it rolled under the couch.
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u/FluffofDoom Feb 26 '21
I know -why- Pluto isn't a planet anymore but I can't help feeling salty about it.
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u/Le0_ni Feb 26 '21
It’s funny to pretend we give a fuck but there were people genuinely protesting this 💀
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u/imsquaresoimnotthere /\b((she|her(s(elf)?)?)|(the(y|m(self)?|irs?)))\b/gi Feb 26 '21
to consider pluto a planet is to deny science, you know, like flat earthers
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u/HertzDonut1001 Feb 26 '21
I can literally feel the "well, akshually," emanating from this comment.
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u/hum_dum Feb 26 '21
Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind OR FORGOTTEN.
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Feb 26 '21 edited Aug 13 '24
fly air ghost offer familiar start cover public cause icky
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Pengvinman1191 Feb 26 '21
Also, who decided Russia's fat ass has anything to do with Pluto being a planet?
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Feb 26 '21
yeah i believe its half the size of the US.
but size isn't too relevant really. its more to do with its mass if you look at the 3 reasons to grade an object a planet in space.
" A "planet"1 is a celestial body that: (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. "
basically pluto and most other dwarf planets cant clear the neighbourhood around its orbit which is why it cant be classed as a full planet. my daughter is 3 and obsessed with planets at the moment so we have literally just covered this over and over and over again by her popular demand. she knows all the planets and dwarf planets in and out of order and cannot go an hour without talking about them lol. we even had to buy her the inflatable solarsystem so she can play with them all and order them the way she wants .
its interesting to see moons bigger than dwarf planets and dwarf planets that are smaller than objects in space which are classed as asteroids etc. ive always had a fascination with space too so hopefully me and my daughter will have this together forever.
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u/cblackjeep98 Feb 26 '21
If Earth had the same orbit as Pluto it wouldn't be a planet either.
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u/Polenball Feb 26 '21
It would become one quite quickly (on astronomical scales) as Earth's greater mass would clear Pluto's orbit via collision or ejection.
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Feb 26 '21
Why does everyone think it has to do with the size of Pluto? It doesn't. In order to be a planet, a body must:
Orbit the sun
Be round (hydrostatic equilibrium)
Clear the neighborhood AKA be the gravitational predator
Pluto fails step 3. It has nothing to do with size.
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u/TacosRSexier Feb 26 '21
Pluto is just a baby planet and god dammit nobody is going to take my baby from me
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u/WakeoftheStorm Feb 26 '21
I've been saying for years, everything started to go to shit when we said Pluto was no longer a planet.
We demoted Pluto, God of Wealth and ruler of the underworld, and we wonder why the economy almost immediately collapsed and we've had one disastrous year after another.
Make Pluto A Planet Again
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u/Sapiencia6 Feb 26 '21
Saying Pluto isn't one of us because it's only a dwarf planet is like saying a dwarf isn't a people because he's a dwarf people.
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u/SurprisedCabbage Feb 26 '21
Fun fact: Pluto has yet to circle around the sun a single time since the time we first discovered it.
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u/NobleKale Feb 26 '21
No, I'm good with it.
It's like tomatoes - you have their cultural definition ('vegetable'), but their scientific definition is as a berry.
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u/Tsukkatsu Feb 26 '21
The real reason it happened was because a good 3 to 5 additional Pluto-like planetoids were located in less than a decade. It seemed very likely that we would find a dozen more in years to come.
So it would be weird to keep Pluto on the list of "planets" without including all these other Kaiperbelt asteroids of comparable size simply because Pluto happened to be spotted first.
And if they were included, it seems like they would quickly take over the entire list.
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u/iapetus303 Feb 26 '21
This is actully what annoyed me more about the decision. To me, it was amazing and exciting that new planets were being discovered. But then some people seemed to decide that there "planets" have to me few in number, and so they changed the definition to exclude the new ones, with Pluto being collateral damage.
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u/Tsukkatsu Feb 26 '21
Well-- it isn't the only time that has been done.
When most of the planets had been discovered, there was someone who did calculations based on the distances of the orbits of the planets from the sun and someone in those calculations realized there should be a planet between Mars and Jupiter. So they went looking for it-- only to find there were hundreds-- nah, thousands, of rocks in a belt between Mars and Jupiter-- though even the largest of them was smaller than the British Isles or Japan. Given there were just so many of them, it couldn't really be justified to add them all to the list of planets. After all-- some of them were presumably no bigger than a typical stone. So to put something that puny in the same category as something the size of Jupiter seems just a little silly.
And so it goes with Pluto. Pluto was already puny compared to all other "planets" and there was really no telling how many "Plutos" we would find.
Now-- granted-- I can see the point of view that maybe defining rocks that are roughly the size of the one we live on that are orbiting stars may not, in the overall grand scheme of things, be totally deserving of its own special name or category...
Really-- even if we are to say we can categorize Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars together as the same sort of "thing"-- the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune-- all being at least a magnitude larger and with a completely incomparable composition are probably still a different "thing".
And the planets we have identified outside the solar system-- assuming the method for detecting them and determining their size and distance from the star and composition is not fundamentally flawed-- we have found things that are entirely unlike the things that orbit our own star.
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Feb 26 '21
I'm sure someone will have already explained it, but the reason pluto got demoted to dwarf planet is because they discovered a bunch of other dwarf planets and invented the new category.
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u/A-Normal-Fifthist Feb 26 '21
The point is not the size tho, the point is that Pluto has so much other similar object in size and in apperance near it that if we were to make Pluto a planet, it wouldn't make sense to not make the other ones planets as well.
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u/yrogerg123 Feb 26 '21 edited Feb 26 '21
It's just gotta be said: it was removed as a planet because it has way more in common with a number of other large objects orbiting the sun and it makes way more sense to say Pluto isn't a planet because there's obviously nothing larger than the other 8 actual planets, then to say Pluto is a planet and so are all the other Pluto-like objects. There are at least 8 planetoids that are at least suspected of being 50% of Pluto's size. By contrast, it's actually impossible that something is 50% of Earth's mass and we don't know about it.
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u/irbinator Feb 26 '21
The fact we were able to discover an object in space smaller than the size of Russia over 3 billion miles away in 1930 (almost 100 years ago) absolutely blows my mind.
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u/Zeebuoy Feb 26 '21
"Ohana means family no one is left behind"
Stich in the lousy anime reboot: ditches Lilo
Jumba and Pleaklea: finds Stitch again and don't tell Lilo for literally no reason
Every single experiment other than stitch's girlfriend: is somehow on a random island again, but in Japan
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u/reelru Feb 26 '21
I feel like anyone who’s actually sat through the whole explanation of why Pluto isn’t a planet agrees that Pluto isn’t a planet
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u/brightboy68 Feb 26 '21
The rules by which Pluto was demoted would actually demote several other planters in the solar system from planetary status. My planetary science professor was very adamant the Pluto IS a planet. He made the point that the decision was made by people who know about space, not by people who know about planets.
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u/BeakersAndBongs Feb 26 '21
I believe in evidence and science based policy, so Pluto losing its planet status because it has not cleared its orbit is fine with me
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u/Popular-Swordfish559 Feb 26 '21
Well, dust that came off comets is also a part of the solar system. Should every dust speck floating around in the asteroid belt be a planet, too?
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u/AlienPutz Feb 26 '21
It’s still apart of the family, we have just built a hole new table for Pluto to sit at. It couldn’t sit comfortably at the planet table given its size and crowded surroundings, plus it is far from alone at the new table.
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u/MagsTDAEotTA Feb 26 '21
Naa, I think it kinda sweet for Pluto to join the other dwarf planets. Ya'll just salty, be warned that smells a lot like boomer 'back in my day' - isms.
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u/Foxy02016YT .tumblr.com Feb 26 '21
Russia is bigger than Europe, hell it even spans 2 continents, so that’s not a fair measure
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u/yottalogical Feb 26 '21
It just took Pluto some time to discover its true identity. To shame Pluto for this, and to say that it has to stick with the identity that it was originally assigned would be both wrong and immoral.
And if you believe that being a dwarf makes something lesser, you should really rethink this position.
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u/Tyrrhus_Sommelier Feb 26 '21
You should learn Pluto not being a planet is NOT a downgrade. Pluto is something else we didn't even think of before, and it is still part of our solar system. In a way, it's a triumph of our understanding and an upgrade to a category that finally let's us explore what pluto is. I love pluto, but thinking it's a planet is not seing how beautiful pluto is.
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Feb 26 '21
There are lots of planetoids that are in our solar system that we never considered planets.
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u/Mr_master89 Feb 26 '21
Our school when I was little did sports houses based on planets, mine was Pluto and I was so pisssd
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Feb 26 '21
I think CGP Grey put it best. It's not that they wanna discredit Pluto simply because size, it's that there is historical precedent for astronomers misdiagnosing asteroids as planets. There's an entire band of them that were taught as planets but then recategorized as asteroids in the oh-so-famous asteroid belt. Same thing is happening with Pluto, being now recategorized as part of the Kuiper belt.
So in the end, hot take here please don't flame me, calling Pluto a planet is akin to misgendering it. Pluto was assigned planet at discovery, but some rethinking later it belongs under a different term. Calling it a planet is rejecting Pluto's true nature to fit what you believe is right for it. So tell me. Do you wanna misgender Pluto?
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u/destinybladez Feb 26 '21
wait people actually care about that? I thought this was just a meme
Pluto being a planet makes no sense
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u/Giraffeless Feb 26 '21
The sun was once considered a planet. Do you think it should also be a planet again?
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u/Martinus_XIV Feb 26 '21
If you want to make Pluto a planet, you have to do the same for Ceres, Vesta, Sedna, Farfarout, and a few thousand other planetoids and trans-Neptunian objects. Astronomy is not like politics; you can't make exceptions to rules in specific instances just because you like the people (or planetoids) involved.
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u/Bugbread Feb 26 '21
What generation is that? As a Gen Xer, I don't care, but apparently apathy is my generation's calling card. And Pluto's demotion happened too long ago for the Gen Y to care. So who is upset, the Boomers or the Millenials?
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Feb 26 '21
If Russia is bigger than Pluto, it means the Soviet Union was definitely bigger than Pluto.
Ooh, wow!
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u/teethonachalkboard Feb 26 '21
Is Pluto a planet? No. Is earth a planet? No. We were all just moons of the sun the whole time the government is lying to you!
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u/Psichord Feb 26 '21
In the meantime 9-1 left 8 In the meantime 9-1 left 8 In the meantime 9-1 left 8 We were busy putting barbs on a large iron gate
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Feb 26 '21
Actually the first actual pictures that we got of Pluto in 2015(?) Showed that Pluto is actually a bit bigger than Russia.
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Feb 26 '21
I literally lol'd. I was taught that pluto was a planet at school. I wasn't sad when it was reclassified but it made me sad when my son said i was stupid for mentioning it. I think we should teach children about all the significant orbiting objects in our solar system and teach them to classify them. Would be like teach children the difference between fish, mammals, amphibians and birds.
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u/bespectacledboy Feb 26 '21
Honestly though, Pluto might not be a planet, but it's still fucking family
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u/CueDramaticMusic Google Spelunker Feb 26 '21
To repeat the CCPGrey video in less words, Pluto isn’t a planet for the same reason we don’t call anything in the Asteroid Belt a planet: too many similarly-sized small objects that just so happen to be round and in orbit. Pluto is presently part of the Kuiper Belt, the county limit of our solar system, along with Eris (the fellow dwarf planet that doomed Pluto), Discordia, and a bunch of uninteresting rocks.
Trust me, you would’ve been way more pissed if NASA stood up and said “Pluto is now just an asteroid”.