He's also credibly been accused of rape and brought autism speaks on his show an organization that supports the link between vaccines and autism. Autism speaks also supports ABA which many Autistic adults report as feeling like torture when they went through it as kids.
When they invented a definition of planet, they decided there would be three criteria. Dwarf planets like Ceres, Pluto, and Eris only meet two of them.
I teach Astronomy for non-majors and so much of our material is based around the idea that the kids are still mad about Pluto not being a planet, but honestly in the year 2025 nineteen year olds do not give one single fuck anymore.
If Pluto's a planet (which it doesn't meet the definition as it was when it was when we thought it was a planet) then that means we have over 12 planets, considering Eris, Haumea, Charon, & our moon all meet the same definitions as Pluto (Eris actually meets an extra requirement that Pluto doesn't).
2 of the main things required for a planet to be considered a planet, and not a dwarf planet, is that it has cleared its own orbit of most extraneous debris (the rest of the kuiper belt, including Eris and Haumea), and the shared point of rotation for the planet and its moon must be within its circ.
(I realize that I should clarify that Eris and Haumea count as debris that Pluto would have to either absorb or expel to continue it's path to planethood)
I read "how I killed Pluto and why it had it coming" by @plutokiller.com and came out of it with "Pluto is still a planet to me but I accept that I'm wrong."
I've read a lot of science memoir books and yours is my favourite. It made me laugh a lot, it changed my mind about something, and I make quoting parts of it at my friends and students. I think they're all happy I finished it.
This is it; you have it exactly correct. I can simultaneously grasp that Pluto is definitely not a planet while also knowing with my full heart that it absolutely is.
The universe is full of beautiful mysteries! Pluto transcends; Pluto is simply itself. Pluto IS.
Switch around the positions of Earth and Pluto and Earth stops being a planet and Pluto starts being a planet. Even if every other thing about Earth stays the same.
Thats bad science
Lets have planetary scientists decide what a planet is and not a single handful of astronomers selling books do it.
This is not at all how the decision was made for Pluto to be classified as a dwarf planet instead of a true rocky planet like Earth is. It's not about position, it's about size and whether it cleared its orbital neighborhood.
Do we balloon the size of our solar system to be over 100 planets because they all also fit the criteria that we would have to accept for Pluto to be a planet?
Or do we simply accept that Pluto and others are not planets and knock our solar system planet count down to 8?
Arrogant Base-10 creatures deciding how many planets a solar system can have before we arbitrarily stop counting them as planets.
Let's let planetary scientists decide what a planet is, and not if we have to start using our toes to help count how many planets in a system there are.
Restating, the decision to add the 'clearing the immediate neighborhood around a body for it to be a planet' was decided by a few people in a room at the last minute, one (or more?) of which wrote a book about it afterwards, and all of humanity is supposed to abide by that rule.
Yes I'm aware it's not literally about position, but if it's cleared it's neighborhood.
My point of swapping the two was to demonstrate that Earth would now be in a position where it's immediate neighborhood would be busy and not cleared, and hence no longer a planet.
Not for a long time and for that long period of time it would magically not be a planet even if everything else about the planet stays exactly the same.
How does a thing scientifically change the definition of what it is back and forth based on what's going on around it and not itself.
Maybe this definition won't work as we continue to learn, maybe it will. But that's science! I actually love Ceres as an orbital body, same as Pluto. They're both equally cool as other true planets, and they don't have to be planets to be cool
If there were other Earth like planets in the same orbit as Earth I would be okay with saying that earth isn't a planet because it didn't establish orbital dominance.
Planet isn't some magical definition that makes some orbital body more special than another
Just as biologists argue what is or is not alive, as we continue to learn about the universe we'll likely need to continue updating what classifies as a planet
Okay couple things, claiming something is bad science is not a cogent argument, but an opinion. I would say reevaluating your position to account for new information you acquire is good science. So let's stick to the facts at hand.
If Pluto is a planet, fill in the blanks:
Mercury - My
Venus - Very
Earth - Educated
Mars - Mother
Ceres - ???
Jupiter - Just
Saturn - Served
Uranus - Us
Neptune - Nine
Pluto - Pizzas
Haumea - ???
Makemake - ???
Eris - ???
Yes, justice for Ceres! I do astronomy outreach, and I love telling people about when we had more planets named for goddesses than for gods. (The first seven main belt asteroids discovered were called planets until about 1850, and all seven were named for goddesses.) But...
It qualifies too. We can have lots of planets. If it's big enough to be planet-shaped and it's not a moon of something even larger then that's good enough for me.
Idk. Based on Pluto not being able to clear its own orbit and the planet's axis is outside of the planet where it is locked in a dance with its own moon was convincing enough for me. It's just a dwarf planet now. We know more, therefore we change its classification. IMHO not a planet.
But Pluto *is* a planet, it's just that it's a *dwarf* planet. It's smaller than our Moon and shares an orbit with thousands of similarly-sized bodies. It's easier to exclude Pluto from the main set than to include all bodies in its size category. 🤔😜
Anytime I name all the planets, I still name Pluto. Because I feel for Pluto. I think Pluto got kinda ripped off. Even so, when I do mention Pluto with the planets, I always remind people that “that one used to be a planet but isn’t anymore.” So sad, little Pluto
On a procedural level, they didn't follow proper IAU process so the decision wasn't properly binding.
The poorly phrased resolution they came out with also specified that everything classified as a 'planet' has to orbit our sun specifically, which is a ludicrous definition.
They made up a whole new category system, specifically to exclude Pluto.
And it did a horrible thing:
It confirmed, in the minds of millions of people, that the job of the scientist is to sit in their ivory tower all day and think up pointless categories, to make people feel stupid.
The 'discovery' here is the knowledge of hundreds of pluto like bodies in the solar system, so if pluto was to be considered a planet then you must considered including the hundreds more.
We discovered a new type of body that we labeled 'dwarf planet'
LMAO. Scientists changed their description of the world based on new information (AKA they did their jobs) and a bunch of losers went “Nooooo a thing I learned in elementary school is different now!”
It’s not astronomers fault that people are fuckin idiots.
Wrong. That's absolutely NOT what astronomers did. And it's weird that so many people who know nothing about Kuiper Belt objects got so bent out of shape about Pluto being more accurately classified.
In reality, they refined the definition of planet to exclude examples of celestial bodies that are smaller than our moon and, were they closer to the sun, would have a tail. lol If the concept of scientific categories changing sometimes makes people feel stupid, then that's because they ARE stupid.
As a kid when this happened, I couldn't believe the public outcry. People were literally going "I grew up with 9 planets in the solar system and God dammit if that ain't the way it is" lol like it was an attack on family values or something. Always felt like scientists just caved to outrage on this
if people still consider Saturn’s mom, Super Saturn, a planet even if she’s a rouge brown dwarf star then I think it’s not that unreasonable for me to be a planet
Every person who grew up in the 70s and 80s picked their favorite planet. Pluto was mine, along with many other people in that generation. I’m pretty sure the kids of the 90s did the same thing.
It's interesting how the only planet named for one of the Greco-Roman gods that just happened to also be the name of a lovable Disney character is a favourite of people growing up in the 70-90s
Because life is hard and the universe is indifferent to our brief, inconsequential human fetish for categorisation, and also because it is always extremely funny to get mad about dumb things. Mostly the latter.
If I get to the end of the day without treating myself to at least ten different illogical tantrums, I like to tell my dog she's got too many freckles and needs to smarten up and stop being so goddamn wasteful with 'em.
In dark times, glorious absurdity is sometimes all we have, you know?
At Griffith Observatory I encountered a guest who said we need to stop deadnaming Pluto. After I told her how Pluto and Charon orbit, she said, "Pluto. Still queering the Solar System."
I see what you're saying, and you're right. In the case I made, I was going only by size, not taking into account orbital hierarchy.
However people arguing against Pluto being reclassified as a dwarf planet is as bad as arguing that the Earth is flat. And that's something I'm going to stand up to.
I disagree. Pluto is the largest "dwarf planet." The (arbitrary) cutoff point could have been put below the size of Pluto and left Pluto as a planet. It isn't remotely the same as the unscientific flat Earth argument. That's just a strawman.
It's people hanging on to what was written in a book the first time and refusing to change their wording despite a more precise, peer reviewed classification being established.
Check that graph I shared. Eris is almost the same size as Pluto. Why should Pluto get to be a full planet but not Eris?
Why not add planets rather than take planets away? Eris has its own moon. Why not let Eris be a planet? I mean, I realize that a line must be drawn somewhere, and there will always be a point where you must say "this, but not that."
I believe it was Prip in Star Trek Discovery who said "my sister is a planet" along with saying "you have no idea what is possible." Someday humanity will wake up hopefully before it's too late. All those celestial objects are souls.
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Imagine how little self awareness you need to attack philosophy as pointless and then to remake an entire series about the history and philosophy of science.
The question of what is or isn’t a planet is actually fascinating. The ancients used to call any wanderer, even the Sun and Moon, “planets.” By that logic, we actually have forty in our system! Signore Galilei had a video on it. https://youtu.be/dAv6JrTQJw0?si=ZkCQy4Hygn9P9sjt
Technically dwarf planets are planets. And moons or satellite planets are too. But adding all the moons or dwarf planets becomes too much for a kid in elementary school to recognize. So instead of adding 20+ dwarf planets we just said fuck it there's only 8 now. Pluto too short.
Okay, what if we agree to teach kids about the dwarf planets. I feel like this is about keeping Pluto in the solar system diorama from our childhood memories. How about we include the dwarf planets!
Comments
(because it's not a real fight everyone is just having fun)
My Very Extravagant Mother Just Sent Us Ninety Parakeets
??
Of course now I can’t remember the one I learned in school to compare notes
“I don’t care, let’s get to naming”
If you don’t want Pluto to be called a planet, don’t classify it as a dwarf planet.
Classify it as a ‘non-planetary celestial object’ or something.
A dwarf planet is a type of planet (based on how language works)
They both have as good of claim to planet status as Pluto.
The universe is full of beautiful mysteries! Pluto transcends; Pluto is simply itself. Pluto IS.
Thats bad science
Lets have planetary scientists decide what a planet is and not a single handful of astronomers selling books do it.
1/2
Or do we simply accept that Pluto and others are not planets and knock our solar system planet count down to 8?
3/3
Let's let planetary scientists decide what a planet is, and not if we have to start using our toes to help count how many planets in a system there are.
2/3
We use these strange artificial rules to determine what a planet is, instead of letting planetary scientists tell us what a planet is.
A planet should be judged based on what it is, and not where it is.
That's bad science.
My point of swapping the two was to demonstrate that Earth would now be in a position where it's immediate neighborhood would be busy and not cleared, and hence no longer a planet.
How does a thing scientifically change the definition of what it is back and forth based on what's going on around it and not itself.
Bad science
Pluto has other bodies that could also be a planet in its orbit, therefore none of those bodies are dominant and none are planets
Planet isn't some magical definition that makes some orbital body more special than another
https://www.space.com/why-pluto-is-not-a-planet.html
Mercury - My
Venus - Very
Earth - Educated
Mars - Mother
Ceres - ???
Jupiter - Just
Saturn - Served
Uranus - Us
Neptune - Nine
Pluto - Pizzas
Haumea - ???
Makemake - ???
Eris - ???
Plato better watch out!
Putting dwarf in front of something doesn’t make it not that thing. It’s just a dwarf type of that thing.
If you call something a dwarf planet it means it’s a type of planet, not that it’s not a planet.
If y’all mean something else, call it something else.
Next time the IAU votes on some rules they made up they should consider that.
I responded "I used to be into physics and I'm not any more specifically because of that attitude."
?!
Who wants to be Sagan when they’re Tyson?
Be yourselves !!!
Pluto rules
I’m a Sagittarius in Pluto natal chart placement
NICE WHAT? SERVED YOU NICE WHAT? 😭
Also:
The poorly phrased resolution they came out with also specified that everything classified as a 'planet' has to orbit our sun specifically, which is a ludicrous definition.
And it did a horrible thing:
It confirmed, in the minds of millions of people, that the job of the scientist is to sit in their ivory tower all day and think up pointless categories, to make people feel stupid.
I'm not saying Pluto's axing was directly responsible for anti-vaxx movements, etc. But that shit didn't help.
Science should be shown for what it is: DISCOVERY, as opposed to officious bureaucracy.
We discovered a new type of body that we labeled 'dwarf planet'
This is science working as intended
Let me ask you a question: do you have any inkling of how much the average person regards scientists as wasteful, aristocratic, parasitic layabouts?
Just, before even discussing this further. Do you understand that this is a thing?
Nobody says you can’t call a dwarf ficus a ficus. No one says you can’t a a dwarf yellow star a star.
But scientists are like ‘it’s not a planet, it’s a dwarf planet.”
So they’re saying it’s a type of planet.
It’s not astronomers fault that people are fuckin idiots.
Sit down, kiddo. That shit dominated pop culture for month after month.
Your insistence that it has to do with age is a byproduct of your previously mentioned aversion to change
Personally I think pluto is much happier now
In dark times, glorious absurdity is sometimes all we have, you know?
-- Lexx
(And Brother Guy Consolmagno for convincing me that, sadly, Pluto not being a planet IS the right move.)
People are still on this?
#TeamPluto
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan
Side note: you can look things up, too.
You may call me Kuiper Belt-and-suspenders kind of guy.
If Pluto is still a planet then the moons of Saturn, Jupiter, AND EARTH should be considered planets, too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size
Short people are still people, gosh darnit! Who are we, Randy Newman!!?!
However people arguing against Pluto being reclassified as a dwarf planet is as bad as arguing that the Earth is flat. And that's something I'm going to stand up to.
Check that graph I shared. Eris is almost the same size as Pluto. Why should Pluto get to be a full planet but not Eris?
https://youtu.be/dAv6JrTQJw0?si=ZkCQy4Hygn9P9sjt
Thanks for the source :(
It's not rude. You're describing facts.
Pluto is a Dwarf Planet and that's okay.