211–220 of 255 posts
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>What logical rule would you propose that allows Pluto to be a planet without also bringing in a bunch of others? The rule would be: pluto is a planet, stay mad nerds
I don't have a dog in this fight, but the real rule appears to be "that's the way I learned it in school".
In case anyone was curious, the Moon is bigger than Pluto. Pluto's 2/3 the size of the Moon. If any dwarf planet should be upgraded to a planet, it's Eris. Eris's diameter is over 600km bigger than Pluto's.
Pluto's diameter is 2376.6±1.6 km, while Eris' diameter is 2326±12 km. Perhaps you're thinking of mass instead of size?
The actual problem here is weirdly aggressive nerds who are incapable of nuance, and insist that an astronomical classification (Pluto is not a planet by the IAU definition) should be used in non-astronomical contexts. Historically and culturally, Pluto is considered a planet. An IAU classification shouldn't be used to try and retroactively change that, because the IAU does not have control over history and culture.…
> Historically and culturally, Pluto is considered a planet. A very brief period of history. Give it 50 years and the number of people who will call it a planet will be close to 0. Let's not overstate Pluto's significance in culture. People call it a planet only because that's what they were taught in school. Not because of other (very few) cultural references. As it has been dropped from the curriculum, so shall it…
I truly don't get why people have so much reverence for Pluto. And, unlike something like "fruit," which has a botanical and culinary definition which serve different purposes, I really don't get why anyone would care about the non-scientific definition of planet. Maybe I'm just ignorant here: what's the cultural significance of some celestial object being considered a planet?
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> Historically and culturally, Pluto is considered a planet. A very brief period of history. Give it 50 years and the number of people who will call it a planet will be close to 0. Let's not overstate Pluto's significance in culture. People call it a planet only because that's what they were taught in school. Not because of other (very few) cultural references. As it has been dropped from the curriculum, so shall it…
This is not insignificant. The period of Pluto's planethood represents just about 0.76% of recorded human history, but that does cover around 7% of the total number of people who have ever lived, about 10x the 'average'. Of course a lot of culture comes out of that. I think the 20th century will be important to historians for a very very long time.
It's an odd way to analyze it. Plenty of things have been known for longer and it doesn't bother us if they're not taught in school, etc.
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?
Asteroid belt in between and the second asteroid belt (the Kuiper belt) on the outside.
Then the Oort cloud surrounding the whole thing as a shield to protect the system from alien incursion.
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Why would a change today be such a violation of a sacred concept, when Pluto was added not even a century ago? If anything, it seems like the scientists back then had a god complex, and this would be rectifying their mistake.
Scientists can do whatever they like. The problem is when they try to exert control over other scientists and members of the general public. We have both freedom of speech and freedom of association, which means the IAU has no authority to govern my own speech, and it’s irritating that so many people seem gleeful to tell me otherwise.
And more importantly, why does the incredibly recent addition of Pluto to the list of planets not fall under scientists "try[ing] to exert control over other scientists and members of the general public"? You'd have a point if the planets were set in stone for hundreds of years, but as-is I can't follow your logic why one is okay and the other is not.
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Pluto is a dwarf planet. It feels like less of a "is and is not" situation, and more of an "isn't, but was once thought to be" situation. Some people remember being told that it was a planet when they were kids and they cling to that even though we've learned that it doesn't make sense to call it a planet anymore. Apart from that it shows up as a planet in literature, almost all of which was written before we knew be…
A geocentric model is observably incorrect. The word “planet” is neither true nor false. Different people use it to refer to different things. Kind of like the word “tree.” Some things are trees and some things are not — and it really depends on whom you ask and when you ask them. Most people are able to get along and allow people to refer to whatever trees they want to, because it’s a free country and it really does…
No one is trying to control you by defining what words mean. In fact, you're still fully free to call anything you like whatever you want. You risk being misunderstood in certain contexts or assumed to be ignorant in others, but no one will stop you. My guess is that what you personally call a planet or not wont come up very often and will matter very little to anyone else.
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In a sense you're right, the need to classify things is really for our convenience. Those classifications can be extremely helpful though and it's for that reason that we try to come up with good systems of classification and re-evaluate what goes where as we learn more. The universe doesn’t care about our arbitrary stamp-collection-style classification of objects, anymore than it cares about where elements sit on th…
Your point is valid - we do need to classify things for our own mental convenience - but I don't think the Pluto case is an example of it. In many ways, the Pluto situation is an example of the Buddhist metaphor about the finger pointing at the moon. The finger is not the moon. Obsessing over the definition of "planet" to that degree doesn't actually achieve anything useful - it's a classic example of confusing label…
There are people who feel that it's worth classifying all the objects in our solar system and that doing so is useful. It's pretty much always been that way. The original definition of "planet" was used to classify things visible in the sky and the criteria was simply "stars that moved". The Sun and Moon were "planets". Asteroids were "planets". We've been constantly updating our classifications ever since as new information became available (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_planets).
Pluto was discovered in 1930 after a pair of photographs showed another light in the sky had moved. Until the 1990s we thought Pluto was alone out there at the edge of our solar system, but then we discovered 15760 Albion, followed by another new "planet" named (181708) 1993 FW followed by the discovery of hundreds of other tiny objects until it was realized that Pluto wasn't alone at all. There was a massive belt containing a vast number of small objects past Neptune and Pluto was just one of those small objects (see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Kuiper_b...). The discovery of a bunch of objects of similar size and composition to Pluto, Eris in particular, made it clear that Pluto just wasn't like the other planets in our system. We had 8 large planets that acted similarly and one tiny planet that was unlike the others because it was just part of a much larger system of smaller objects.
It made perfect sense to refine our definition of what a planet was taking our new understanding into account. It's also reasonable that the job of doing that wouldn't fall to one person to decide on their own. The International Astronomical Union was already responsible for maintaining a set of astronomical naming conventions from the names of stars to the names of specific planetary features like craters. Since we wanted to have a standardized distinction between planets, moons, asteroids and comets and all the other objects in space who else do you think should do that? Having a committee of experts from all over the world seems as close to an ideal as you can get.
As for the definition they settled on being "bad science", it was debated and voted on. There were alternatives proposed, but none of them won out. If somebody ever comes up with something that is clearly better, especially as we learn more about objects outside of our solar system, that option can also be considered and voted on. What other process should we have for those kinds of decisions?
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Scientists can do whatever they like. The problem is when they try to exert control over other scientists and members of the general public. We have both freedom of speech and freedom of association, which means the IAU has no authority to govern my own speech, and it’s irritating that so many people seem gleeful to tell me otherwise.
How is the IAU trying to exert control or asserting any authority to govern your speech? I'm really having trouble seeing how the IAUs actions are in any way unusual for this kind of scientific organization, so please be specific about the consequences you expect to suffer for not following along. And more importantly, why does the incredibly recent addition of Pluto to the list of planets not fall under scientists "…
We don’t have a problem with armchair scientists correcting people about the 1930s discovery of Pluto and how it was discussed at the time, we have a problem with armchair scientists being aggravating when people want to engage with the idea of Pluto today and refer to it as a planet.
