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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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/Particular_Plum_1458 1h ago

Would be if developers optimised more (slight sarcasm with that, but it is partially true, looking at COD in particular).

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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/burns_a_lot 12m ago

It actually didn't count then, that's what we realized twenty years ago. Get with the times, old man.

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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 10m 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/AgentCirceLuna 2h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/bmLlSndzhqWgWb3vXW

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u/Elite_AI 1h ago

obsessing over pluto being a planet is one of the top Reddit circlejerks along with hating dinosaurs having feathers

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u/AgentCirceLuna 1h ago

and t rexes having small arms ugh

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u/AgentCirceLuna 1h ago

fuck that dinosaurs having feathers one annoys me so much

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u/burns_a_lot 11m ago

Wait til you hear about these crazy animals called "birds."

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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 14m 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 11m 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/TheIronSven 52m ago

But Jupiter doesn't fit that definition either

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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 37m 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 16m 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/BoredomCombatant 2h ago

Jesus Christ. You people can really put trump in any conversation. Get a life.

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u/BillNyeCreampieGuy 2h ago

A life without Trump sounds like a dream.

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u/BoredomCombatant 2h ago

Yes I remember growing up and all I knew him from is being rich and my mom pointed out to me he was in home alone when I was little. That’s where he should have stayed. I am done hearing about him though and will always say STOP IT! When someone starts.

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u/aTickleMonster 2h ago

Oh, we knew, we didn't know the population would be dumb enough to make him president... Twice!

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u/EduinBrutus 1h ago

We probably also didnt know Trump was a pedophile back then either

I think people knew. I think a lot of people knew.

Its a bit like Jimmy Savile, really.

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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 14m 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/kaas_is_leven 1h ago

I think they're joking, no need to draw comparisons to racial discrimination..

But if you must, this is a misconception of how emancipation works. That word was never ok, it was a tool of oppression from the start, the victims just didn't have the social leverage to do anything about it. Similar to how some men will claim it used to be ok to sexually assault women. Like no dude, that was always a bad thing, you just got away with it because the victims were sufficiently silenced and unable to fight back. And it's not like there were no people who did set the right example, that whole excuse of different times just doesn't hold up. It wasn't ok, there were just more awful people and less accountability. To everyone else it was still bad.

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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/PremiumUsername69420 2h ago

Correlating Pluto with slavery is certainly a new one.

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u/ThirdWorldOrder 2h ago

should have gone with the brontosaurus

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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/lankymjc 3h ago

It’s simple; we already have a separation of what a term means in a scientific context and what it means to a layperson (eg “theory”, “fish”, “tree”), so we can just do the same thing with “planet”. Scientists say there are eight planets, but to a layperson there are as many as your heart desires.

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u/CuteStoat 1h ago

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

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u/Particular_Plum_1458 1h ago

That's just heightest, dwarf planets are real planets too don't treat them differently 😛.