Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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I wonder if there exists people who aggressively believe mushrooms are plants, similar to people who defend Pluto as a planet. (slrpnk.net)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/showerthoughts

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It was only in 1969 (nice) that fungi officially became its own separate kingdom.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 month ago (14 children)

I think an issue here is that taxonomic and colloquial definitions don't always agree.

Spiders are colloquially bugs, but they're not taxonomically "true bugs" (which is itself a colloquialism for Hemiptera). Tomatos are colloquially vegetables but taxonomically fruits...but afaik vegetable is a purely colloquial term anyway.

And as someone else in the thread mentioned, colloquial berries are not always taxonomic berries.

So...colloquially, "plants" sorta means, "macroscopic multicellular living non-animal thing," but taxonomically it's something else.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Similarly, “a planet” can be understood in technical or colloquial context which changes the meaning. It can have a specific meaning or a vague flexible meaning, just like with berries.

BTW raspberries are my favorite berries… sort of. Watermelons are pretty good too.

[–] CheeseNoodle 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Actually planet doesn't have any hard set definition, we kind of just do it case by case because its damn near impossible to come up with a rigid definition that doesn't suddenly classify some planets as moons or some moons as planets or create weird situations in which an object can switch between the two.

[–] wanderer 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined in August 2006 that, in the Solar System, a planet is a celestial body that:

is in orbit around the Sun,

has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and

has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet

[–] CheeseNoodle 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And in that same article:

It has been argued that the definition is problematic because it depends on the location of the body: if a Mars-sized body were discovered in the inner Oort cloud, it would not have enough mass to clear out a neighbourhood that size and meet criterion 3. The requirement for hydrostatic equilibrium (criterion 2) is also universally treated loosely as simply a requirement for roundedness; Mercury is not actually in hydrostatic equilibrium, but is explicitly included by the IAU definition as a planet

[–] Draconic_NEO 2 points 1 month ago

That's not even addressing the issue of rogue planets which were ejected from their star system. Many estimates say they outnumber the stars. Obviously when a planet is ejected it doesn't just disintegrate but by that poor definition it's no longer a ""planet"", so it's clearly a problematic definition.

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