- 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.
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He’s mixed up the first two diagrams - Pluto should be coloured in for the first and not for the second.
He fixed it. They’re swapped now.
Ultratraditionalist is messed up too. The sun and moon were considered planets when geocentrism was king.
It comes from the fact that the word planet comes from the Greek and means wanderer. Any celestial body that wandered around compared to the stars was considered a planet.
This is really really frustrating to me, very unlike Randal.
What’s worse is he’s got Neptune’s moon highlighted in the first row
The judgemental one has 7 coloured instead of 6 too.
Laughed at the alt text, you have to be careful with definitions!
Yeah, I hope I find opportunities to mention that in casual conversations.
Atheist: Only planets that were discovered before God created the universe 6000 years ago are planets.
(Earth, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_discovery_of_Solar_System_planets_and_their_moons
I still want it to be called an honorary planet. I feel like that’s the best solution.
The solution is that milleanials and older should be allowed to call it a planet, while everyone else doesn’t really care. This way the problem solves itself once we all die.
This solution applies to many things, like using neo pronouns, using new versions of grammar, etc. Make it opt-in for old dogs.
do we have a saturn moon with surface oceans? thats very cool!
We do. Titan is the only other body in the solar system with surface seas and lakes. They are made of hydrocarbons like ethane and methane however, not water.
I think the diagrams for 1 and 2 are swapped.
For some reason this subject always hits a nerve, but I found this take pretty funny. Almost like when you experiment with regex matching randomly and find everything but what you really want to get.
It also wouldn’t be a joke or topic if the definition had been clarified better than it was initially. They should have used the term “dynamical dominance”, implying whether or not a body is the primary object left in its orbital area after formation. And this has its own issues, as solar systems change over time.
For some reason this subject always hits a nerve
Always bothers the hell out of me because of the politics that went into defining an arbitrary rule that makes no sense for identifying something that the rest of humanity has to obey, as well as that planetary scientists did not make the decision astronomers did, as well as that just a small subset of the international governing body voted the rule in, and not most/all of them.
Scientists should know better. They should not ‘just call it a day’ then make money by arrogantly selling books on the subject.
It’s bad Science.
They should have used the term “dynamical dominance”, implying whether or not a body is the primary object left in its orbital area after formation. And this has its own issues, as solar systems change over time.
What does the environment around a body have anything to do with classifying the body itself? How would the body magically change if the area around it became crowded? It’s a nonsensical criteria.
That’s a good question. Is being hydrostatic equilibrium the only physical attribute we should use for classification? Should Ceres be a planet?
Should Ceres be a planet?
I honestly don’t know. I tend to say no, as it seems to just be a lifeless rock with no geological activity. I’d love to have rules to identify that, made by planetary geologists.
But I wouldn’t want to disqualify a body with planetary characteristics like geological activity just because the space around it is busy, or it’s orbit is not in the ecliptic plain, etc.
Ceres does appear to be active in some form with cryovolcanoes, based on the 2015 Dawn mission.
I think focus ought to be more on what the qualifications are for the minor label. What does it mean to be minor?
Ceres does appear to be active in some form with cryovolcanoes, based on the 2015 Dawn mission.
Then It’s say that it was a planet, though IANAPG.
I think focus ought to be more on what the qualifications are for the minor label. What does it mean to be minor?
There shouldn’t be a ‘minor’ nomenclature, it’s a contrivance. It’s a planet, or not
Also, to reiterate, the issue being discussed is one of disqualification, and not what qualifies. Identifying a body as a planet or not should not be done based on the criteria of the crowded or not nature of the space around it.
I guess I’m spiteful
Really love this comic
I realize the comic is good natured, but I feel the need to be serious for a moment, and say something…
Any rule that would disqualify Earth as a planet, if Earth and the other planet switched places, it’s a bad rule, and should not be used.
Humans don’t stop being humans, if they are standing alone one day, and are surrounded/crowded by other people the next day.
Also, having a single handful of people decide for the species what the definition of a planet is, and then some of them sell books about it, it’s not good science.
Planetary Scientists really need to step up, and decide this.
Pluto should never have been lumped in with the planets in the first place. Its orbit is so weird and slanted it’s discovery should have been celebrated as the new type of celestial body that it is.
Pluto should never have been lumped in with the planets in the first place. Its orbit is so weird and slanted
You are doing the same thing, judging if a body is a planet by criteria external to the body (it’s slanted orbit), and not characteristics of the body itself.
If Earth’s orbit was ‘weird and slanted’, not on the ecliptic, would Earth stop being a planet? No, of course not.
Yes, we would recognise that there is something distinctly different between the Earth and the planets. Being a world is different from being a planet. Otherwise all the moons would be planets. Well, maybe except for the ones that look like potatoes.
Things can get defined separately from themselves. And they can be defined to be several things. I’m a Norwegian and a German because of my parents. If I had different parents my nationality could be defined differently. Doesn’t make me less human.
Pluto is still a celestial body, a dwarf planet, a world to explore, a trans-neptunian object, an object in the Kuiper belt, that thing we called planet for a short time. Not being called “planet” doesn’t make it any less interesting or special.
Removed duplicate comment.Things can get defined separately from themselves. And they can be defined to be several things. I’m a Norwegian and a German because of my parents.
Your political nationality doesn’t stop classifying you as a human being.
Being a world is different from being a planet.
You completely avoided the point I was making, that a body doesn’t stop being a planet because it’s neighborhood/orbit is crowded.
If the Moon got too close to Earth so that it broke up (Roche limit), so that now Earth has not cleared the space around it, it would stop being a planet for a million years or more until it “cleared out” it’s local space/ orbit, based on the rule that disqualifies a Pluto from being a planet.
I don’t think that can work. If you pick a random Earth-sized lump of the Sun as a potential planet, and swap its place with Earth, Earth would quickly get mixed in with the rest of the Sun and stop being a distinct entity, so be very silly to still call a planet, and without the Sun’s huge gravity to keep it held together, the lump of Sun would spread out into a gas cloud and then just become part of the interplanetary dust. Location makes some difference to whether or not something’s a planet.
If you pick a random Earth-sized lump of the Sun as a potential planet, and swap its place with Earth, Earth would quickly get mixed in with the rest of the Sun and stop being a distinct entity, so be very silly to still call a planet,
Why? Everything about Earth is still the same, skies, oceans, etc. Only difference is that it’s crowded in by other bodies now.
Trying to scientifically judge if a body is a planet by something external to it, if it’s being crowded in our not, it’s not logical, and doesn’t change the body itself.
What does a body clearing is orbit or not have anything to do with the body itself?
Location makes some difference to whether or not something’s a planet.
Only because a very few human beings astronomers illogically/arbitrarily decided that’s so. The reality on the ground for the body is that its still Earth, the planet we live on.
Planetary Scientists should be deciding the rules, and not solely Astronomers.
I personally don’t think they can be counted as skies and oceans etc. anymore when they’re being mixed in with multi-thousand-degree hydrogen/helium plasma. On a cosmological timescale, the Earth is converted to just more plasma in an instant. The reality on the ground of the body is that the ground’s gone and everything living there is gone and so’s the mantle under the ground. Things are defined partially by their interactions with their surroundings and the state they’re currently in, not how they used to be. Theia is not a planet, even if the theory where it once was turns out to be right. It stopped being a planet when it collided with the Earth, disintegrated, and re-accreted into parts of the Earth and the Moon.
I personally don’t think they can be counted as skies and oceans etc. anymore when they’re being mixed in with multi-thousand-degree hydrogen/helium plasma.
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?
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.
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.
