Back in school I learned the acronym:
My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets
And it was so convenient! Does anyone know a good alternate now that the P is gone?
Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
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Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#12Back in school I learned the acronym: My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets And it was so convenient! Does anyone know a good alternate now that the P is gone?
> Does anyone know a good alternate now that the P is gone?
My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming
Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#13It seems as though Pluto's primary problem is "clearing the neighbourhood." Given Pluto's orbit travels closer and further from the sun than Neptune, does Neptune also have the neighborhood clearing problem since it has not cleared Pluto? In celestial mechanics, "clearing the neighbourhood" (or dynamical dominance) around a celestial body's orbit describes the body becoming gravitationally dominant such that there ar…
Trans-neptunian objects, including Pluto, are in orbital resonance. They owe their stable orbits to the existence of Neptune.
It’s like saying Jupiter is not a planet because the Trojans exist.
Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#14[deleted]
Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#15I'm in the same camp. I believe the classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet was arbitrary and inconsistent. I mean, it's been known as a planet for almost 80 years and suddenly we demote it? I believe someone was trying to make a name for themselves here and ignoring the history of Pluto and its discovery.
The issue is that when we discovered Pluto we thought it was much bigger than it turned out to be. If it was as big as they thought then sure it would be a planet. As it is it isn’t even the most massive dwarf planet
Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#16Bring back Pluto!
As the article explains, if you bring back Pluto you must include Eris too, and perhaps Makemake and Haumea if you ignore is not as round as expected, and who know how many other undiscovered small object near them. (And Ceres? I like Ceres.) Anyway, 9 is not an option, you must choose 8 or 10+.
no you don't. just because some nerds say it doesn't make it true. just bring back pluto and nothing else
Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#17> “One of the biggest flaws with the IAU definition is that you can have the same object in two different orbits,” says Kornfeld. “In one, it’s considered a planet, and in the other, it’s not considered a planet.”
No, there is no flaw in this, and moreover there is nothing new in this. This is how it has always been, it is not something invented recently.
In the Solar System, there are 3 Mercury-sized satellites and other 3 Moon-sized satellites, besides the Moon. If they had not been in their orbits as satellites, they might have very well been planets. Therefore the old definition of "planet" also depended on the orbit of the body, not only on the size and shape of the body.
Most of those satellites are bigger than Pluto. Triton, the biggest satellite of Neptune, had been in the distant past another planet with an orbit close to Pluto, but it was captured by Neptune and it has become a satellite. Otherwise it would have remained a "dwarf planet", orbiting close to Pluto. So Triton was demoted from "planet" to "satellite", by Nature, not by a human organization.
The current definition of "planets" and "dwarf planets" is fine.
If anything, there are too few planet classes, not too many. A more useful classification is into big planets, medium planets and small or dwarf planets, where the Solar system has 4 big planets, 4 medium planets, and a lot of small planets.
The big planets, i.e. which are big enough to retain the volatile chemical elements, like hydrogen and noble gases, not only the refractory elements, have a very different chemical composition from the medium planets, and this difference will also exist in any other stellar system that has condensed from gases like those at the origin of the Solar System, with more oxygen than carbon (there exists the possibility of stellar systems with a different chemical composition than the Solar System, formed by condensing from gas mixtures with more carbon than oxygen).
Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#18I'm in the same camp. I believe the classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet was arbitrary and inconsistent. I mean, it's been known as a planet for almost 80 years and suddenly we demote it? I believe someone was trying to make a name for themselves here and ignoring the history of Pluto and its discovery.
How to keep Pluto as a planet but say larger objects than it that also orbit the sun aren't planets, is the question I guess?
Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#19You know, this is really just a fantastic opportunity to realize the phenomenal psychological power of "headcanon". Who cares if Pluto is or is not tagged with the word "planet" by some organization you know effectively nothing about, have no control over, has no control over you, and couldn't so much as move a pebble on the planetary body in question any time in the next 20 years, if not more?
Have whatever emotional relationship you like with "Pluto" and don't wait around for others to validate it. It's fine. Nobody can stop you. I'm a bit fond of Ceres myself. Nobody can stop me. Nobody needs to approve it. Take control. Write your own headcanon.
Re: Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting
#20It's been renamed to Planet America, thank you for your attention on this matter.
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