- cross-posted to:
- comicstrips@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- comicstrips@lemmy.world
Under the ‘has cleared its orbital neighborhood’ and ‘fuses hydrogen into helium’ definitions, thanks to human activities Earth technically no longer qualifies as a planet but DOES count as a star.
So Mars never had oceans? Or an atmosphere?
So Saturn’s moon Titan doesn’t have lakes? Or an atmosphere?
What happens if a body is found in the Oort Cloud that has an internal heat source so that it has a internal ocean like Europa? It’s it still not a planet because the space around it is busy?
This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
One of the idea with “has the space around it cleared” is that the body has the right size and gravitational pull. The theoretical object in the Oort Cloud would relative fast clear the space around himself if it had the size to have a stable and long living internal heat source (that would either need lots of decaying nuclear material or would need to be at least about earth size to have enough stored energy to have a molten core).
So if you put earth into the Oort Cloud it would still be a planet, because we know that earth has the potential to clean it’s neighborhood. Not that our definition would be relevant, because Earth in the Oort Cloud would be a lifeless rock very fast, with nobody left to care about definitions.
Your original idea only holds if it’s still valid to claim Mars still has oceans, even though they’re all gone. When things stop existing, it changes their properties.
My latest point was to counter your latest point that things like bodies of water or atmosphere should not be considered criteria for identifying a planet or not,
Also, Mars may still have water, under the surface.
This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0