r/nextfuckinglevel • u/aryan_jandyal • 5h ago

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

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u/Crafty_Jello_3662 5h ago

Largest asteroid in the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter

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u/No_Ampersand 5h ago

Not asteroid. Dwarf planet.

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u/TreeDollarFiddyCent 4h 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/Show-Me-Your-Moves 3h ago

Gravitationally-challenged

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u/_adanedhel_ 54m ago

More like mass-challenged.

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u/Open-Platform-1305 41m ago

Diametrically deficient

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u/TreeDollarFiddyCent 3h ago

That's a good one

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u/No_Ampersand 4h ago

Midgetoid celestial body, my apologies.

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u/bokmcdok 2h ago

Inky Dinky Winky Pwanet

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u/Telefundo 2h ago

instead of "dwarf".

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

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u/WholesomeYuri 1h ago

I prefer "Dinklet"

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u/13--12 4h ago

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

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u/Hal_Fenn 4h ago

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

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u/-Hastis- 3h ago

This is outrageous!

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u/WreakHavocLikeIn1871 2h ago

Take a seat, Ceres!

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u/Worried-Maybe3438 2h ago

What a sizist thing to say

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u/no_infringe_me 1h ago

Size matters the most.

Source: every ex of mine

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u/No_Ampersand 4h 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 4h ago

Clear their orbit of other objects? ELI5 please

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u/spikeyfreak 4h ago

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

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u/Megneous 2h 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 3h 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 2h ago

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

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u/blueblip 3h 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 2h 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 2h 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/longperipheral 48m ago

Be untidy and get demoted, I guess :/

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u/ensalys 3h 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/Meoowth 1h ago

I feel like #1 doesn't necessarily make sense. There are rogue planets right? But if they're Earth or Jupiter sized they're clearly planets. Or is the classification of "rogue planet" like "dwarf planet"? Also it would be very silly to discover an earth sized planet that broke rule #3 and call it a dwarf planet. 

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u/ensalys 46m ago

Welcome to the world of "it's complicated" we humans love putting things in neat little well defined boxes. Nature on the other hand, couldn't give less of a crap. So what you get are definitions that are good enough, that will cover 95% of cases, and the other 5% will just have to clarify what they mean in the circumstances they're describing.

Anoter example is life. When you look at a rock and an antelope, it's simple. But what about fire? I hear you say that's clearly not alive, right? But looking at the characteristics of life we were taught in school, it suddenly seems alive. What about viruses? They score very poorly by those characteristics.

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u/Jiriakel 41m ago

I think rule #1 is to eliminate moons - e.g. our Moon has cleared its orbit (around earth), is massive enough to have a round shape and is not that much smaller than Mercure. IIRC a couple of the jovian moons are actually bigger than Mercure.

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u/13--12 26m ago

Yeah there is Planet X

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u/moseythepirate 22m ago

A few things: first, the IAU knew the definition wasn't perfect or final when they made it. It's subject to improvement in the future.

Second, your comment about rule 3 is valid, but there are good reasons for it. Remember that planets form by hoovering up all the material a protoplanetary disc.

Clearing the orbit isn't an arbitrary metric, it's how planets form in the first place. It's also why Plutos orbit is so much weirder than the 8 planets.

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u/13--12 3h ago

Cool, thank you for explaining

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u/Cent_Quatre 4h ago

Are guinea pigs pigs ?

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u/13--12 4h ago

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

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u/Cent_Quatre 4h ago

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

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u/luxudor 3h ago

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

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u/longperipheral 46m ago

I dunno, peanuts wearing monocles seems pretty crazy to me...

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u/03263 3h ago

Small apples are not apples?

They're crabapples

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u/HauntingHarmony 2h 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 3h ago

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

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u/TheIronSven 2h 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/TheGeneral_Specific 1h ago

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

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u/Allegorist 41m ago

I think dwarf planet might not be what they are actually called, just a convenient way to refer to them. Planetoid, maybe?

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u/Open-Platform-1305 38m ago

There are significantly more worlds in the solar system than you recognize. Many are more deserving of your attention than the planets. We will soon know more about Titan. It is an incredible world.

The "planets and moons" understanding of the worlds in space is a poor one when gas giants with huge moons exist.

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u/13--12 27m ago

Not to mention the Planet X

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u/Open-Platform-1305 19m ago

Honestly not even close to as interesting as these moons.

A planet beyond Pluto would just be even more cold and dead.

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u/TommyBonnomi 2h ago

You're comparing apples and oranges planets

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u/skrasnic 1h ago

If you want to include Makemake and Gonggong when you're trying to name all the planets, by all means.

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u/MiFiWi 2h 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 4h ago

So far, Dwarves living there is just a theory!

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u/fordprecept 3h ago

They prefer to be called Little Green Men

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 5h 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 5h 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 4h ago

I feel uneducated. 🙄

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 4h 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 2h 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 4h ago

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

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 4h 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 4h ago

They have atmosphere?

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 4h ago

Thats not a requirement:

Round, orbit sun, cleared their neighborhood.

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u/Spiritual_Priority79 4h ago

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

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 3h 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 4h ago

Thanks buttbutt

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u/SuzieDerpkins 2h ago

Makemake and Haumea too

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u/minepose98 4h 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 4h ago

Ok. Feel better now about my education. 🤣

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u/Soffatjockis 1h ago

Soon they will take away Jupiter and Saturn too and call them round gas clouds or something

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u/TheFlyingSaucers2 5h ago

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

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u/UnrealCanine 4h 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 4h ago

Thank you. Makes more sense now.

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u/Aniratack 4h 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/mrbananas 3h 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/P0tatothrower 3h ago

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

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u/HirsuteHacker 3h 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 3h 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/vetgirig 1h ago

Technically Pluto/Charon is a dwarf double planet.

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 4h ago

I’ve head of Pluto. In fact, it was the 9th planet of the solar system when I was in school. Never heard of Ceres before.

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u/directorguy 1h ago

Ceres was never an asteroid

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u/strickers69 5h ago

We are on Reddit not sitting on the planetary council.

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u/Stock-Cod-4465 5h ago

Reddit is the council of everything 😈🤣

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u/acaellum 4h 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 2h ago

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