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xkcd #3063: Planet Definitions (xkcd.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/xkcd

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Under the 'has cleared its orbital neighborhood' and 'fuses hydrogen into helium' definitions, thanks to human activities Earth technically no longer qualifies as a planet but DOES count as a star.

https://explainxkcd.com/3063/

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[–] CosmicCleric -1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Pluto should never have been lumped in with the planets in the first place. Its orbit is so weird and slanted

You are doing the same thing, judging if a body is a planet by criteria external to the body (it's slanted orbit), and not characteristics of the body itself.

If Earth's orbit was 'weird and slanted', not on the ecliptic, would Earth stop being a planet? No, of course not.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Yes, we would recognise that there is something distinctly different between the Earth and the planets. Being a world is different from being a planet. Otherwise all the moons would be planets. Well, maybe except for the ones that look like potatoes.

Things can get defined separately from themselves. And they can be defined to be several things. I'm a Norwegian and a German because of my parents. If I had different parents my nationality could be defined differently. Doesn't make me less human.

Pluto is still a celestial body, a dwarf planet, a world to explore, a trans-neptunian object, an object in the Kuiper belt, that thing we called planet for a short time. Not being called "planet" doesn't make it any less interesting or special.

[–] CosmicCleric 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

~~Removed duplicate comment.~~

[–] CosmicCleric -4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Things can get defined separately from themselves. And they can be defined to be several things. I’m a Norwegian and a German because of my parents.

Your political nationality doesn't stop classifying you as a human being.

Being a world is different from being a planet.

You completely avoided the point I was making, that a body doesn't stop being a planet because it's neighborhood/orbit is crowded.

If the Moon got too close to Earth so that it broke up (Roche limit), so that now Earth has not cleared the space around it, it would stop being a planet for a million years or more until it "cleared out" it's local space/ orbit, based on the rule that disqualifies a Pluto from being a planet.

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