Poll of the Day > Do you think Pluto is a planet?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Do you think Pluto is a planet?

Pluto is a planet regardless of whether or not you think it is. The real question is whether or not it's a full planet, or just a dwarf planet.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Pluto is a planet regardless of whether or not you think it is. The real question is whether or not it's a full planet, or just a dwarf planet.

This Its a planet no matter what

And in my heart, it will always be a full planet And one of my favorites

Hes done nothing wrong, so there is no need to demote him. Pluto is forever a planet.

I stand with Neil on this one.

Fight me.

dwarf planet.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OaKGfS7n2Ik

I was thinking the other day, why do we consider gas giants to be "planets" if we don't consider something like pluto or ceres? gas giants really do seem like a categorically different thing.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Pluto is a planet regardless of whether or not you think it is. The real question is whether or not it's a full planet, or just a dwarf planet.

Not sure why size should matter. Not like it's a penis.

jsb0714 posted...

Not sure why size should matter. Not like it's a penis.

Its exactly like a penis

LinkPizza posted...

Its exactly like a penis

not Uranus

To me, Pluto is a planet, especially when I learned in school for years that it is a planet.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Pluto is a planet regardless of whether or not you think it is. The real question is whether or not it's a full planet, or just a dwarf planet.

Sahuagin posted...

I was thinking the other day, why do we consider gas giants to be "planets" if we don't consider something like pluto or ceres? gas giants really do seem like a categorically different thing.

Well, since they still have Atmospheres, Magnetic Fields, etc I think they fall into the Category of 'Planet'...whereas Brown Dwarfs, Suns, Nebulas, etc all have different properties

Basically Brown Dwarfs are usually the divide between Planets/Stars

For those that say Pluto is a full planet, what about Eris and Ceres?

NASA has determined that in order to be considered a planet...
1) It must orbit a star.
What about rogue planets?

2) It must be big enough to have enough gravity to force it into a spherical shape.
What about gas planets?

3) It must be big enough that its gravity cleared away any other objects of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun.
Pluto and Neptune cross orbit, though Neptune is much larger.

Archgoat posted...

For those that say Pluto is a full planet, what about Eris and Ceres?

Ceres is cool, I guess. Thats said, Pluto is the biggest out of them. Plus, they already have him planet status. Its mean to take it away. He did nothing wrong

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

What about rogue planets?

This is true. But maybe thats why they gave it a different name, I guess. Though, I think they believe that most, if not all, rogue planet use to orbit a star

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

What about gas planets?

Technically, they do have gravity that make them round And I think a solid core Well, possibly

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Pluto and Neptune cross orbit, though Neptune is much larger.

Technically, while the orbits cross, they could never actually collide or whatever

That said, I do agree that they have all these rules, which lots of exceptions. Id rather just always believe in Pluto

I'm more interested in knowing why we, as a species, are so interested in the term used. It's a big rock in space: what we call it makes no difference.

Maybe it's just our recent training to avoid hurting anyone's (or anyTHING's potential) feelings. The change could be perceived as "downgrading" and it might hurt the rock's feelings...on the small chance it has any.

wpot posted...

I'm more interested in knowing why we, as a species, are so interested in the term used. It's a big rock in space: what we call it makes no difference.

Maybe it's just our recent training to avoid hurting anyone's (or anyTHING's potential) feelings. The change could be perceived as "downgrading" and it might hurt the rock's feelings...on the small chance it has any.

Pluto's status was changed years before that was ever a thing.

If I remember correctly, those who actually deal with space consider it a planet. It was some arbitrary board decision to change the definition (people who don't actually deal with planets).

No, people were feeling bad for Pluto at the time it was downgraded. Its a form of rooting for the small guy thats been around for a long time (but peaking now) I think.

Isn't he either a disney cow or a dog (forget which).

I did a project on this in school that keeps going from an A to an F and back because the experts cant make up their minds.

pionear posted...

Well, since they still have Atmospheres, Magnetic Fields, etc I think they fall into the Category of 'Planet'...whereas Brown Dwarfs, Suns, Nebulas, etc all have different properties

I feel like a "planet" should be something I can land on and get out and walk around on, at least in principle. something with a surface. a giant ball of gas is something else.

this makes me wonder about liquid planets though... you could have an oceanic planet, but you could also have a nearly entirely liquid planet.

I guess the question always is, where do you draw the line? a planet with so much atmosphere and so little "ground" that the atmosphere itself is eventually solid?

I guess to me, it has to be a "world". there has to be something that it is like to be on it. I can stand on the surface and experience its surface. or I can at least swim in its surface. a gas giant is so far removed from that it's not the same thing.

I guess we want hard categories with clear distinctions, but in reality everything is in a very granular spectrum and the more we explore the less clear the distinctions become.

Sahuagin posted...

I feel like a "planet" should be something I can land on and get out and walk around on, at least in principle. something with a surface. a giant ball of gas is something else.

this makes me wonder about liquid planets though... you could have an oceanic planet, but you could also have a nearly entirely liquid planet.

I guess the question always is, where do you draw the line? a planet with so much atmosphere and so little "ground" that the atmosphere itself is eventually solid?

I guess to me, it has to be a "world". there has to be something that it is like to be on it. I can stand on the surface and experience its surface. or I can at least swim in its surface. a gas giant is so far removed from that it's not the same thing.

I guess we want hard categories with clear distinctions, but in reality everything is in a very granular spectrum and the more we explore the less clear the distinctions become.

I doubt something made entirely out of liquid would work. It would need a core at the very least.

wolfy42 posted...

Isn't he either a disney cow or a dog (forget which).

Mickey's dog.

If science says it isn't, no.

wolfy42 posted...

Isn't he either a disney cow or a dog (forget which).

dog.

and goofy is a dog too

Krazy_Kirby posted...

and goofy is a dog too

Highlighting the weird class systems that exist in the Disney universe; Goofy gets to have autonomy over his self as a person, but Pluto is a pet that is Mickey's property. It's not even a matter of intelligence, just whether or not they have opposable thumbs.

Anyone watch Anton Petrov's channel? He made a video about this recently. The gist is that the current classification of what constitutes a planet isn't a very scientific one and scientists have been using a different classification in which even moons are considered planets.

https://youtu.be/8-2HxrgqUnM

Anton's great, he really knows how to explain the subject to the audience, and the animations help.

I've been off Youtube since the beginning of the pandemic, so the last I heard from him was about him needing to find a new place to live; glad he's doing okay and still making videos for us beautiful people.

kind9 posted...

Anyone watch Anton Petrov's channel? He made a video about this recently. The gist is that the current classification of what constitutes a planet isn't a very scientific one and scientists have been using a different classification in which even moons are considered planets.

https://youtu.be/8-2HxrgqUnM

Not really impressed when the basis of his initial argument is wrong. Neptune and Pluto don't share an orbital path and Neptune has nothing to do with Pluto's declassification as a planet. The issue is that Pluto's orbit is part of the Kuiper belt, and amounts to a fraction of the mass of the belt. It's the same issue that Ceres has with the asteroid belt. Whether the criteria is justified in the first place or not is another argument, but his analogy is terrible and doesn't work. At that point I quit watching.

sveksii posted...

Neptune and Pluto don't share an orbital path

That's not what he said. He was explaining how Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit in a way that brings it closer to the sun then Neptune (at certain points in Pluto's orbit) and because of that reasoning, the IAU downgraded Pluto.

sveksii posted...

his analogy is terrible and doesn't work.

Try again. He is comparing the exclusion of Pluto as a planet to a scenario where there is a narrow definition of mammals to the point that it excludes water based, or solitary animals.

sveksii posted...

At that point I quit watching.

Before he even got to the point of the video....

KodyKeir posted...

That's not what he said. He was explaining how Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit in a way that brings it closer to the sun then Neptune (at certain points in Pluto's orbit) and because of that reasoning, the IAU downgraded Pluto.

Not only do Pluto and Neptune not share the same orbit, they don't even intersect. He's wrong. And it has nothing to do with why Pluto's classification was changed to a dwarf planet (Pluto's orbit is in the Kuiper belt, and was downgraded to a dwarf planet because its mass is a fraction of the overall belt; compare it to Ceres and the asteroid belt). Why should I bother watching something when he can't even get the basic facts right?

You must have watched the video on mute... First of all he didn't say Pluto and Neptune share the same orbit, so where the hell you got that is beyond me. Second, he didn't even say their orbits intersect. His exact words were, "once in a while it does actually kind of cross the orbit of Neptune, that is if you look at it in 3D." Because he is aware that Pluto's orbit takes it higher above the Sun's orbital plane.

sveksii posted...

Why should I bother watching something when he can't even get the basic facts right?

...

Neil deGrasse Tyson is constantly explaining the concept of "clearing one's own orbit," which is what Anton is setting up in the first couple minutes of the video, on a two dimensional plane, the orbits of Pluto and Neptune cross twice; if you kept watching you would have seen Anton explain why this is a ridiculous way to classify a planet, and why on a three dimensional plane, it is innaccurate.

sveksii posted...

Pluto's orbit is in the Kuiper belt, and was downgraded to a dwarf planet because its mass is a fraction of the overall belt; compare it to Ceres and the asteroid belt

An ex post facto argument that is not the reason the IAU downgraded Pluto. The IAU came up with three criteria for planethood:

1)It has to orbit a star
2) It has to be in hydrostatic equilibrium
3) it has to clear it's own orbit.

That's it. Pluto was downgraded because of number three, clearing the neighbourhood of it's own orbit.

Once you get past the IAU's reasoning for downgrading Pluto, Anton outlines the theory put forward in "Moons are planets: Scientific usefulness versus cultural teleology in the taxonomy of planetary science" [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103521004206] where the authors ultimately argue that a planet should be defined as such, so long as it has its own complex internal geological processes.

The reasoning is sound, (though I'm not sure how gas giants would fit into that taxonomy) enough so that I am willing to say the Neil deGrasse Tyson is wrong, and Pluto should be considered a planet, along with the nearly one hundred fifty other dwarf planets and satellites.

KodyKeir posted...

(though I'm not sure how gas giants would fit into that taxonomy)

(I've been up all night and am getting tired) hydrostatic equilibrium explains how it fits in this model.

Of course not!

pluto is a DOG!

dont you people know anything. Sheesh.

this was tedious 15 years ago and its frankly pitiful now

Technically, the Sun was once considered a planet, and stars were too.

the word planet comes from ancient greek meaning "wanderer": everything that wanders in the universe is a planet according to the original definition

KodyKeir posted...

An ex post facto argument that is not the reason the IAU downgraded Pluto. The IAU came up with three criteria for planethood:

1)It has to orbit a star
2) It has to be in hydrostatic equilibrium
3) it has to clear it's own orbit.

That's it. Pluto was downgraded because of number three, clearing the neighbourhood of it's own orbit.

KodyKeir posted...

That's not what he said. He was explaining how Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit in a way that brings it closer to the sun then Neptune (at certain points in Pluto's orbit) and because of that reasoning, the IAU downgraded Pluto.

Pluto's orbit is part of the Kuiper belt. As Pluto consists of only a fraction of the Kuiper belt's mass, it has failed to clear its orbit. The initial crux of his argument is a red herring. Neptune and Pluto's orbital relationship with each other has nothing to do with Pluto not clearing its own orbit.

They considered reclassifying Pluto when they kept discovering objects in the Kuiper belt and realized that it was in a similar position to Ceres, who was reclassified from a planet back in the day when they released it was a part of the asteroid belt and was in a different category of objects than any of the other planets that they had discovered to that point.

Whether the classification is good is another argument that I might of paid attention to if he had a valid starting point.

Is a Oompa Loompa still a human

ArvTheGreat posted...

Is a Oompa Loompa still a human

Until they want to form a union, and then they end up the secret ingredient in a Wonka bar.

Pluto is just kinky

Pluto is a god.