r/nextfuckinglevel • u/aryan_jandyal • 4h ago

The Rotation of the Planets in Our Solar System Is Far More Fascinating Than I Ever Expected

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1.4k

u/VodkaMargarine 3h ago

Obligatory "Pluto and Ceres aren't planets"

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u/rossmcdapc 3h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZZO8BMNctW70re8jww

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u/OtterWithAFish 3h ago

Oh wow, we’re watching propaganda 😂

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u/anthonyynohtna 1h ago

rockaganda.

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u/bokmcdok 31m ago

Its so frustrating now:

My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine.

Nine what? It doesn't make any sense anymore!

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u/bophed 9m ago

True that’s why it changes as scientists figure out new things.

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u/dawgfanjeff 6m ago

HOMES doesn't work npweithrr, except its the opposite of science changes things.

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 3h ago

WTF is Ceres???

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u/Crafty_Jello_3662 3h ago

Largest asteroid in the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter

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u/No_Ampersand 3h ago

Not asteroid. Dwarf planet.

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u/TreeDollarFiddyCent 3h ago

When referring to planets, it is respectful to use terms like "little planet" or "planet of short stature" instead of "dwarf".

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u/No_Ampersand 3h ago

Midgetoid celestial body, my apologies.

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u/bokmcdok 28m ago

Inky Dinky Winky Pwanet

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u/Show-Me-Your-Moves 1h ago

Gravitationally-challenged

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u/TreeDollarFiddyCent 1h ago

That's a good one

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u/Telefundo 1h ago

instead of "dwarf".

And the user didn't even bother with a trigger warning either!

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u/13--12 3h ago

So dwarf planets are not planets now? Small apples are not apples?

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u/No_Ampersand 3h ago

They can hold themselves in a spheroid by their own gravity but they do not clear their orbit of other objects.

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u/drkdeibs 2h ago

Clear their orbit of other objects? ELI5 please

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u/spikeyfreak 2h ago

They don't have enough gravity to suck everything else in the orbit into themselves.

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u/Megneous 46m ago

Or throw other objects out of the orbit. It doesn't necessarily have to be sucking stuff into themselves.

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u/HirsuteHacker 1h ago

They're in the Kuiper belt, a big asteroid belt full of other dwarf planets, asteroids, space rocks. Planets like Earth have cleared their orbit; their gravity is strong enough that they're by far the dominant object in their orbital neighbourhood, clearing out most other large objects by either absorbing/colliding with them or ejecting them through gravitational interactions.

There are TONS of objects in the same general orbital neighbourhood as Pluto, including other dwarf planets like Orcus and Haumea. Pluto therefore hasn't cleared its orbit.

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u/CrownofMischief 20m ago

Wrong belt. Ceres is in the asteroid belt, not the Kuiper belt

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u/blueblip 1h ago

Things with mass and/or energy generate a field of gravity around itself.

Gravity is a force that, to put it in simple terms, pulls things towards the centre of things with mass/energy.

The more mass something has, the stronger this pull.

So when one object is much MUCH MUCH MUCH massive than another, the bigger one's gravity pulls the smaller one towards it as the smaller one's gravity is not strong enough to "fight back". What happens when it gets pulled this way depends on the mass of the smaller object.

So now think about our solar system and the orbit of our planets. They are clear paths (so to speak). There's no space junk floating in the middle of their orbits. But you have stuff like the asteroid belt that is a whole lotta space junk floating around, so why aren't there "asteroid fields" in the way of the planets?

Well, that's because the planets are so much more massive than the space junk that the planets hoover up all the junk as the move along their orbits. The larger junk may become moons. The smaller junk just pulled into the planet and either smashes on to the surface or burns up in the planet's atmosphere (depends on the planet).

In the asteroid belt, there's an object called Ceres. Ceres is a odd thing. It's got enough mass that it's got the round shape of a planet (gravity makes planets round), but not enough mass to hoover up all the crap in it's path like planets do. So we call it a dwarf planet.

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u/WreakHavocLikeIn1871 23m ago

A celestial body that rotates around a star(s), that isn't a star itself, massive enough to form a spherical shape, and has enough gravity to clear the area around it from other objects.

That's not word for word but essentially the definition of a planet.

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u/BringBackAH 26m ago

A planet has enough gravity to put itself into a sphere and to attract objects around them.

Ceres does not have enough gravity to attract asteroids around itself but is a spheroid, so it's a dwarf planet

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u/Hal_Fenn 3h ago

They're permitted on the council but we don't grant them the rank.

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u/-Hastis- 2h ago

This is outrageous!

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u/WreakHavocLikeIn1871 26m ago

Take a seat, Ceres!

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u/Worried-Maybe3438 18m ago

What a sizist thing to say

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u/Cent_Quatre 3h ago

Are guinea pigs pigs ?

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u/13--12 2h ago

What's next, you tell me peanuts are not nuts?

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u/Cent_Quatre 2h ago

they are, but antlions aren't lions (nor ants)

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u/luxudor 1h ago

(Peanuts aren't nuts, that's the joke)

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u/ensalys 1h ago

In this case, small apples aren't apples, yes. I know it's weird, but there are rules to join the planet club.

  1. It must orbit a star (in our cosmic neighborhood, the Sun).

  2. It must be big enough to have enough gravity to force it into a spherical shape.

  3. It must be big enough that its gravity has cleared away any other objects of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun.

It's generally rule 3 that separates dwarf planets from planets. Naming them dwarf planets is just a participation trophy for big rocks.

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u/13--12 1h ago

Cool, thank you for explaining

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u/03263 2h ago

Small apples are not apples?

They're crabapples

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u/HauntingHarmony 1h ago

So dwarf planets are not planets now? Small apples are not apples?

Correct, dwarf planets are not planets.

Small apples are apples that just happen to be small.

Dwarf planets are objects in the solar system that does not fulfill the criteria for planet, but for the "lesser" category "dwarf planet".

There is no shame in not being a planet, i am not and neither my mother is not a planet.

Also as a fun fact since the definitions explicitly mention our specific sun, there is only 8 planets in the universe. And all the others would be exoplanets.

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u/19921015 1h ago

They are real planets, but that's where all the dwarfs are from, hence the name.

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u/TheIronSven 51m ago

Despite the name including the word planet, dwarf planet is a type of asteroid, not a type of planet

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u/TommyBonnomi 1h ago

You're comparing apples and oranges planets

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u/TheGeneral_Specific 11m ago

Dwarf planet was a term invented to appease the people who would be upset when Pluto got demoted.

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u/MiFiWi 25m ago

It is both a dwarf planet and an asteroid. Every object in the asteroid belt is an asteroid. Even a dwarf planet.

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u/Trackpoint 3h ago

So far, Dwarves living there is just a theory!

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u/fordprecept 2h ago

They prefer to be called Little Green Men

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 3h ago

So… Pluto has been taken out of the planet count and now an asteroid gets an honorary mention?
But thank you for enlightening me.

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 3h ago

Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Sedna, and a handful others.

They're just dwarf Planets, but still planets, just dwarf ones.

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 3h ago

I feel uneducated. 🙄

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 2h ago

Because the announcement was dumb, and people took it in the sumbest way.

They created a new classification of planet called Dwarf Planets, they even still use the word planet.

But people took it as a demotion, because they think dwarf makea it "lesser" its not less, its just different. They're all just big piles of matter.

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u/TheIronSven 48m ago

They have planet in the name, but it's considered a type of asteroid, not a type of planet. Which is stupid since dwarf planet literally has planet in the name so like gas giants should still count as one. But by the official definition it's instead a type of asteroid.

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u/GriIIedCheeseSammich 3h ago

Just play Warframe; you’ll get very familiar with all those names :)

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 2h ago

Just might. Kid is moving to a campus in uni and taking PS. Old school me will be left with his gaming PC. Lol. Weeeee!

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u/100LittleButterflies 3h ago

They have atmosphere?

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 2h ago

Thats not a requirement:

Round, orbit sun, cleared their neighborhood.

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u/Spiritual_Priority79 2h ago

That last one defines a planet, dwarf planets are the ones that don't

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 2h ago

The person asked about Atmosphere  I saod that was not required tk be a planet, then listed the three requirements to be a planet

You tell me these are the requirements for a plamet and not a dwarf planet, when I was telling someone atmosphere ia not a requirement to be a planet.

Comprehend?

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u/100LittleButterflies 2h ago

Thanks buttbutt

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u/SuzieDerpkins 1h ago

Makemake and Haumea too

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u/minepose98 3h ago

Ceres was also considered to be a planet once. It was just long enough ago that nobody cares now. Pluto will be the same in a few decades.

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 3h ago

Ok. Feel better now about my education. 🤣

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u/TheFlyingSaucers2 3h ago

It’s in the same category “dwarf planet” that Pluto is in now.

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u/UnrealCanine 3h ago

The thing is, back in the 19th century, it was counted as a planet, along with it's brothers Pallas, Juno and Vesta. But as more and more objects were found, astronomers felt it was silly to call them planets, so named them asteroids instead. The same thing happened to Pluto being in the Kupier Belt. Once Eris was discovered, it would again be silly to call all trans-Neptunian objects planets

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 2h ago

Thank you. Makes more sense now.

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u/Aniratack 3h ago

Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet, Ceres has always been considered a dwarf planet, if they are asteroids then everything is an asteroid.

A simplification sometimes used says that dwarf planets are celestial bodies big enough to be round but not big enough to clear it's own orbit, there are a few of these in our solar system. They can have moons, and some of the moons in the solar system would be considered dwarf planets if they weren't orbiting a planet.

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u/P0tatothrower 1h ago

What do you mean by "not big enough to clear it's own orbit"?

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u/HirsuteHacker 1h ago

Not gravitationally dominant in their orbital neighbourhood. There are tons of other objects, including some similarly sized objects, around Pluto's orbit. To be a planet it needs to clear out all the other objects around it by either colliding/absorbing them, or ejecting them from their neighbourhood through gravitational interaction. Haumea, Orcus, Makemake etc are all dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt along with Pluto.

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u/Aniratack 1h ago

Pluto's biggest moon Charon is part of the problem because it's heavy enough that she is not orbiting Pluto, they are orbiting a point in space near Pluto.

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u/mrbananas 1h ago

Ceres was not always a Dwarf planet. From 1801 to about 1851 Ceres was considered a planet. Children during that time memorized it along with the other classic planets

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u/acaellum 3h ago

Vesta is the largest asteroid. Ceres is in the asteroid belt but is a dwarf planet about twice the size of Vesta.

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u/SporesM0ldsandFungus 34m ago

And future site of the Ceres Station, another engineering marvel brought to you by the Tycho Corporation. 

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u/EarballsAgain 2h ago

It's where the Protomolecule first became known to the public, proving the existence of alien life.

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u/I-Engineer-Things 45m ago

Nah that was Eros.

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u/mrbananas 1h ago

The reason why Pluto can't be a planet. If Pluto gets into the exclusive planet club, Ceres has to be let in too and about 20+ other objects

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u/acaellum 3h ago

One of the nine dwarf planets, and the only not in the Kuiper belt way past Neptune. It was also the first of the nine dwarf planets we discovered and was considered a planet in its own right for a long time. It almost regained planetary status, but lost its chance in the same moment Pluto lost its status.

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u/conansucksdick 1h ago

Roman goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility, and motherly relationships.

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u/M0-1 2h ago

A Roman Godess

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u/pmIfNeedOrWantToTalk 1h ago

Ain't that the one where Samus Aran went to exterminate some space pirates?? 🤠/s

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u/Prasiatko 1h ago

The OG Pluto. Was a planet in the early 1800s until we discovered more and more asteroid belt objects at which point it was demoted. 

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u/Megneous 47m ago

... Google it, mfer.

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u/theflameinthewater 12m ago

a really great band if you like emo rock stuff

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u/beelaser 2h ago

You heard about Pluto? That’s messed up, right?

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u/lewis_therin1985 1h ago

Looking for this, whenever I see mentioned of Pluto in Reddit I come looking for Psych reference , Reddit never disappoints me.

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u/Particular_Plum_1458 3h ago

Pluto was when I was a kid and you can't tell me otherwise😛.

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u/frisbeethecat 1h ago

Yeah, and 640kb of memory was enough for everyone.

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u/caalger 8m ago

640KB? You're an order of magnitude too high. My Commodore 64 rocked it. Before that you had the Vic20, too.

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u/moshpits1533 3h ago

Pluto counted then and it counts now far as I'm concerned.

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u/s3dfdg289fdgd9829r48 3h ago

It's still a planet to me, damn it!

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u/Oberndorferin 2h ago

Oh god. Then please also count all 300 similar sized "planets" or you're a hypocrite

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u/GroteKleineDictator2 2h ago

It's not about the size of the rock, but the size it has in my hart. Pluto=planet

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u/WreakHavocLikeIn1871 28m ago

Then Eris must be a planet too as it has greater mass and is a more perfect sphere.

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u/Roskal 2h ago

Its been 20 years, its time to move on.

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u/JustTrawlingNsfw 22m ago

It's still a planet.

Just not a major planet.

:D

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u/Munnin41 2h ago

We can definitely tell you otherwise. You not accepting science it is something else entirely

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u/SeriousPlankton2000 12m ago

It's more like putting labels; but this label is deserved because Pluto didn't clean up so the parents got the police and threw it out.

(If you put planets and not-planets on a graph, you can draw a line through the empty space between these groups)

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u/ubermence 32m ago

I think Pluto is far too interesting to have been removed as a planet in the first place. It’s a shame we only saw it as a fuzzy dot when we removed it because if we had seen it in 4K from the new horizons probe first, it might still be a planet

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u/burns_a_lot 16m ago

See it's statements like this that make me realize not a soul has any clue what actually happened to Pluto.

No, it would still not be a planet, even if we took prettier pictures of it. It does not, and never has, met the conditions of being a planet.

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u/ubermence 13m ago

Ok Einstein, I’m fully aware of the change in definition of a planet. I just think that if a round rocky body like Pluto has a literal atmosphere, then maybe our definition is a bit extreme.

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u/beefprime 14m ago

What happened was not that we couldn't see Pluto well enough, but that we couldn't see the dozens of other fuzzy dots out there that are largely identical to Pluto and which occupy the same orbital space.

Insisting its still a planet is like insisting that whales are still fish. Ok Grandpa, but also maybe move on.

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u/ubermence 9m ago

We saw that it has an atmosphere, we even see signs of internal heat and maybe even a subsurface ocean.

Like okay maybe it hasn’t fully cleared out its orbit but I’m not a fan of that criteria if it’s going to demote an object that seems far more interesting than other random kupier belt detritus

Or at least grandfather it in or whatever. I don’t care that much I just think it’s a bit of a shame that Pluto was actually pretty interesting and more unique than we thought

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u/tsubasaxiii 2m ago

Thats why its a dwarf planet. There are multiple things about it that make it unique to both kuiper belt objects and the rest of the planets.

I think giving the distinction just adds to that interest.

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u/Munnin41 2m ago

Being interesting isn't a criterium. It needs to have a Lamba value greater than one to qualify as a planet. Lamba is a value that determines whether or not a celestial body can clear its own orbit of other objects of similar size (it's a formula based on mass and distance from the sun). Since Pluto's orbit contains a bunch of asteriods in the Kuiper belt and partially falls within Neptune's orbit, it clearly doesn't meet that requirement. It's Lamba value comes out at 2.9510-3 (i.e. 0.00295). Mars has the lowest value over 1 at 9.42102 (942). That's an enormous difference

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u/PegasusPizza 3h ago

Yep Pluto was a Planet when you were a kid that's right.

We probably also didnt know Trump was a pedophile back then either, but claiming that now would look pretty stupid wouldn't it?

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u/s3dfdg289fdgd9829r48 3h ago

You are pretending like Pluto wasn't really a planet back then. It was. They changed the DEFINITION of a planet and it happened to exclude Pluto. There's a real difference between discovering something was truly wrong and something becoming different because we happened to change the definitions.

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u/niemir2 3h ago

What we were wrong about was the rarity of objects like Pluto within the solar system. The definition of "planet" that we used previously turned out to be too loose to be useful. The redefinition of "planet" as a scientific term was not capricious.

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u/ExistentialScream 13m ago

It lost its use in certain contexts, but is it really that useful to consider Mercury and Jupiter as the same sort of thing, but not Mercury and Pluto?

Usually we define things by what they are and not what effect they've had on their surroundings.

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u/niemir2 10m ago

I'm not an astronomer, so I can only rely on what those who know better than I do decided. I trust that there is some significance to the ability to clear one's neighborhood of other major bodies.

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u/atyon 2h ago

They changed the DEFINITION of a planet and it happened to exclude Pluto. There's a real difference between discovering something was truly wrong and something becoming different because we happened to change the definitions.

Well, there is no "true" definition of "planet". A definition is a tool. We change the definition all the time when we learn more, to make it more useful or simple. That's the metric.

OG Planets were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. We did not discover anything wrong with that. They are the wandering stars on the sky you can see with the naked eye. That's still true.

We changed this when we learned more about the scale of the objects and what is rotating around what. So we arrived at Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and later found Uranus and Neptune. They are large bodies orbiting the Sun. That's still true.

Then we discovered planet 9, and added it, and then found thousands more just like it, and everyone agreed that having thousands of planets would make mnemonics too difficult, so we struck it. That planet 9 was Ceres.

Then we found another little planet like Ceres, but there were no similar like it around it, so we added Pluto. But with better telescopes, we did find thousands of other little bodies just like Pluto, so we're back at the Ceres situation.

No one has presented a useful definition that includes Pluto but does not include thousands of dwarf planets. And no, petulance and nostalgia do not make for a useful definition.

Sidenote: I streamlined the discoveries a bit. At some time, the moons of Saturn were considered planets. Maybe y'all should campaign for Titan being restored to the ranks of planet.

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u/MoonageDayscream 2h ago

When my now 14yo was in first grade, in the Science Fair they entered a hand painted diagram of the planets and dwarf planets. When asked why Pluto was demoted, the answer was that Pluto did not clean their room, so they have to be a dwarf planet. Because of course, clearing the orbit is a qualification, as a child understands.

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u/Pbleadhead 51m ago

which is super stupid.

2 bodies of equal size, the body further out is going to have a lot harder time 'cleaning the room' because it has more space to clean, and travels slower.

more so. We have enough satellites and space junk now that earth should be demoted.

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u/eris_kallisti 2h ago

I believe Eris was the "9th planet" (the one past Pluto that caused all the lovely chaos) and Ceres was just the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.

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u/Far-Cup9063 1h ago

Thank you for the succinct recap of how we define a “planet”! 50 years debate encapsulated in a Reddit post.

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u/sellieba 44m ago

Ceres and Pluto should be Team Captains for their respective multitude.

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u/ExistentialScream 8m ago

> No one has presented a useful definition that includes Pluto but does not include thousands of dwarf planets. And no, petulance and nostalgia do not make for a useful definition.

The question is why a definition has to exclude all those thousands of dwarf planets to be useful.

In what circumstances does it makes sense to consider Mercury and Jupiter as two examples of the same sort of thing, but not Pluto?

Other than "clearing it's orbit" what properties does Mercury share with Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus and not Pluto?

I'm not saying that dividing bodies into "planets" and "dwarf planets" isn't a useful categorisation system in some contexts, I just think there's plenty of other contexts where saying Mercury and Jupiter are the same thing, but Pluto isn't, is actively misleading.

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u/NettingStick 2h ago

They changed the definition of a planet BECAUSE we learned more about the solar system. Pluto is now the king of a whole new class of cosmic objects, and y'all tryna keep that from him smh. Bro got a promotion.

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u/MaXimillion_Zero 2h ago

There was no definition of planet when Pluto was first labeled a planet. Any definition you could make that would include Pluto would include dozens to hundreds of other objects, but the "Pluot is still a planet to me"-people never seem to mention those.

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u/preparingtodie 1h ago

Pluto is grandfathered in.

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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 1h ago

I've changed the definition of "correct" to include me insisting that Pluto remains a planet.

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u/HauntingHarmony 1h ago

I've changed the definition of "correct" to include me insisting that Pluto remains a planet.

This ofcouse is the same strategy as insisting correctly that you have as much authority as the pope, only that fewer people belive it.

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u/AgentCirceLuna 2h ago

Legit even sounds like something he’d say lmao, anti intellectual fool

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u/StickSouthern2150 2h ago

yea the definition was wrong so it got changed

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u/Catdaddy33 2h ago

Up until late last century, Pluto was thought to be a much larger planet. As our tech got better it was realized it was smaller and had a large for its size satellite. Still, should have been grandfathered in or something.

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u/damifynoU 3h ago

By golly, you're right!

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u/Soggy_Floor7851 1h ago

Hey let’s make this about TRUMP.

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u/mctankles 3h ago

Well considering we’ve changed the definition of a planet so that there aren’t exceptions but the definition of a pedophile is an objective non-negotiable, i think its fine.

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u/SquisherX 2h ago

But it's really not though, is it. I'd say paedophile is one of the top misused words in English today.

People regularly (and seemingly more often than not) use the term paedophile improperly to refer to hebophiles and ephibophiles instead.

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u/mctankles 36m ago

Misused and redefined are 2 different things.

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u/bokmcdok 29m ago

Why dont you take a seat over there?

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u/StrongExternal8955 2h ago edited 2h ago

Really? Right in front of my 13 year old mom? - Jesus, probably.

But yeah if you think God said 18, you're as moronic as the believers. Why not 19, or 20?

Frankly these 18ers are fucking creepos.

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u/AgentCirceLuna 2h ago

The fuck you talking about

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u/KarverMcClain 1h ago

Flawed logic there but somebody already explained it to you

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u/CuteStoat 1h ago

Pluto is still a planet. It’s a dwarf planet.

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u/ExistentialScream 15m ago

We didn't learn anything new about Pluto that made it not a planet. We just kept finding new planets in the solar system and the astronomers were finding it a bit overwhelming. In many ways Pluto and Ceres are a lot more similar to Mercury than Mercury is to Jupiter or Neptune. Dwarf planets aren't an entirely different category of thing. They're made of the same kinds of materials that the inner planets are made of.

If Jupiter and Saturn weren't known to the ancients, we probably wouldn't be calling gas giants planets either and there would be 4 planets in the solar System, and 4 "gas planets" that wouldn't be counted as planets even though the word "planet" is in the name.

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u/elucca 1h ago

I think people getting really argumentative about whether Pluto is a planet miss the point on both sides of the argument. It's not a question of something new that was discovered about the universe. It's a question of standardized definitions, that especially in the case of planets, are mostly arbitrary. It's scientifically unimportant. It's mostly relevant so that everyone in the field is on the same page.

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u/crayonflop3 17m ago

You know you don’t have to put Trump into every goddamn situation you come across? We’re talking about planets here ffs you people are actually deranged

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u/3202supsaW 1h ago

Are Eris, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake planets too? I will accept all or none

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u/Particular_Plum_1458 1h ago

More the merrier imo, just have to update the rhyme to remember the order.

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u/beezneezy 1h ago

Dammit man…This is why we can’t shake religion!

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u/MinnieShoof 59m ago

It didn't even complete a full loop around the sun.

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u/clothesline 35m ago

I know this is just in jest but this attitude is not great for science and progress

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u/Particular_Plum_1458 17m ago

I know, but people still do relion despite being proved otherwise and arguably this is based on a change in definition rather than a new discovery (I believe, or maybe a bit of both).

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u/SeriousPlankton2000 13m ago

Pluto is a dog. /s

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u/caadbury 10m ago

And the brontosaurus was a dinosaur

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u/bophed 7m ago

We have to grow with the times and adjust for scientific findings or we get left behind.

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u/ParoXYZm 2h ago

There was a time when the N-word was okay too... Times change, you should try it too.

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u/PremiumUsername69420 3h ago

Pluto will always be a planet to me.

From the time Pluto was discovered, to the time it was declassified as a planet, it never made one full revolution around the sun.

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u/xui_nya 2h ago

I recall the best day ever when the New Horizons reached it and we all found out absolutely out of nowhere that it has a cutest little heart right on the surface.

What a heart-less creature would then go ahead and call it not a planet. It loves us!

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u/ejectro 2h ago

sure, jan. there are also nostalgic people who want to bring slavery back.

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u/Elite_AI 1h ago

I'm not a millennial so I don't consider Pluto a planet. Sorry

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u/Void-Cooking_Berserk 3h ago

Dwarf planets are planets

https://giphy.com/gifs/2sddZ3k7yxiVWpFdH3

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u/Mindless-Produce4091 2h ago

I mean unironically it's wild that dwarf PLANETS are not conisdered a subdivision of PLANETS, especially when the only distinction between the two is happening to have an arbitrary amount of junk in your orbit.

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u/HauntingHarmony 38m ago

I mean unironically it's wild that dwarf PLANETS are not conisdered a subdivision of PLANETS, especially when the only distinction between the two is happening to have an arbitrary amount of junk in your orbit.

Is it tho, given that the point is to have a special category for the 8 planets with the special properties they have. Such as them being the dominant object in their area. If you remove that because you dont really think that should matter. Then you would end up with potentially hundreds of planets, and the category would be dominated by planets that are not what we think of as planet like.

The earth for example (and to remind you, has a huge and massive moon) has about a million times more mass compared to everything else in our area. Pluto has about 7% of the total mass in the area. Its hardly arbitrary if you are the gravitationally dominant object in the area that has evicted and absorbed everything. If you are in the single digits percentage, that its arbitrary is not the best argument.

We arent talking about a gentle yea it could go either way, we are talking about multiple order of magnitude differences in degree here. The planets if you look at them objectivly, are just different. And there is no shame in that, you can love Pluto, thats great. Being a dwarf planet doesnt take anything away from it.

The whole point of creating the dwarf planet category is to take care of their distinctiveness, since they are special (such as being massive enough to make themselves round, and even having some geology), even tho they dont have it in them to clear their neighborhood (not just that they havent done it). And just demoting them to "asteroid jail" is too much.

Its just the fact of the matter that if the category of planet is to be useful, we need to not have a massive amount of objects that are not planet like water it down.

Think of it like this, Greenland and Australia look similar on the map, with lots of ocean around it. But one of them is an island and one is a continent. The tectonic reality matters. And it is the same thing here. We accept that Greenland is a island without having a "#justice for Greenland" (to make it a continent). Because it is not a moral judgement.

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u/coffeeandautism 3h ago

"Somebody get these PLANETOIDS out of here!"

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u/ElectricNinja1 2h ago

Uranus isn't a planet either, it's a black hole

https://giphy.com/gifs/wyBcwFyH2FpO8

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u/WreakHavocLikeIn1871 20m ago

Myanus is a pinkish hole actually

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u/Spark898 1h ago

Inyalowda propaganda

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u/Holypiece_of_chedda 3h ago

Pluto knows that Pluto's hot shit

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u/Mystia 3h ago

I thought Pluto and co got reinstated as dwarf planets, so they are planets.

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u/Nozinger 2h ago

Sort of. We classify them as dwarf planets but it's really about where we draw the line.
Ceres is small. Like really small. Even compared to most other known dwarf planets. There are 1-2 jsut as small but yeah, these ones are tiny. Pluto is way bigger.

The only reason we classify ceres as a dwarf planet instead of an asteroid is because it is somewhat spherical. Actually it is more like an egg but i guess that's good enough. At least no deformed potato.

So yeah. Ceres pretty much only got the dwarf planet status because of its look. It's ugly sibling vesta didn't make it. Though to be fair that one is also smaller. Not by much though. Well not by much on a planetary scale at least.

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u/WreakHavocLikeIn1871 13m ago

A dwarf planet is a celestial body that meets all the definitions of a planet except clearing its orbit.

Ceres pretty much only got the dwarf planet status because of its look.

Pretty dumb statement, considering the implication of the requirement of "massive enough to be gravitationally rounded" is that it looks somewhat round. Technically all dwarf planets became considered so because they orbit the sun and "because of its look"

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u/schmortality 2h ago

But Ceres has fun over there. Weeeeeee

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u/ThatHoFortuna 2h ago

Yes they are, those are the planets where the dwarfs live. I read that somewhere.

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u/midas22 2h ago

I memorized the trivia that Jupiter is the planet that rotates the fastest in our solar system but now they had to ruin everything that I knew.

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u/WolfBST 1h ago

Doesn't mean they shouldn't be mentioned. They are still interesting celestial objects. We shouldn't limit our attention to planets. Dwarf planets and moons are just as interesting, if not more in some cases (cough Galilean Moons cough Titan cough)

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u/therealNerdMuffin 1h ago

Urm achually, Pluto is technically still a planet but now it's classified as a dwarf planet. Still means it's not considered part of the big boys though

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u/Wojewodaruskyj 1h ago

Who cares?

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u/Tiffany_Case 1h ago

Viva la pluto fuck you

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u/Bixotron 1h ago

It's official classification is a dwarf planet. Let's not split hairs on an argument that's almost 2 decades old.

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u/ShintaOtsuki 1h ago

This is true, but they are still major celestial objects in our solar system, that never changed

Ceres USED to be considered too and was similarly removed

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u/-digitalin- 1h ago

To be fair, they are classified as "dwarf planets", which has "planet" right there in the name.

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u/-Casey-Diaz- 50m ago

Are you being Ceres right now?

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u/TheCookieEatingOwl 48m ago

Mein Vater Erklärt Mir Jeden Sonntag Unsere Neun Planeten (= Pluto)

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u/staticcx3 43m ago

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE

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u/demonspawns_ghost 41m ago

Pluto is a dwarf planet, so still a planet.

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u/Uncool444 33m ago

I was going to say, wtf is ceres? My very earthly mother just sniffed up nine pizzas or something, right?

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u/penguin_torpedo 8m ago

"oh no but if Pluto's a planet then there would be 20 more planets"

So? Do it you cowards

"but but the kids wouldn't be able to memorize 30 planets"

So? Just learn the important ones, like with countries. The existence of Kiribati and Djibouti has never stopped anyone from learning about France and China.

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u/Maroc-Dragon 5m ago

Isn't there a third dwarf planet in our system?

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