this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
804 points (98.2% liked)

Science Memes

10905 readers
1607 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)
  1. The rocks, ice, and gas out there doesn't give a shit what we think.

  2. Arguing that a planet must have cleared its orbit of other major bodies invokes an arbitrary size and location judgement for what constitutes a planets orbital space and what constitutes a major body.

  3. The argument that the inclusion of Pluto would require the inclusion of a lot of other planets and that that is obviously bad/wrong is absurd. Why can't a system have a whole lot of planets?

I propose an unoriginal definition of a planet:

  1. Large enough to become spherical under its own mass.

  2. Too small to fuse hydrogen, regardless of its presence.

I think we should really consider the term "planet" to be somewhat vague, and use the term "proper planet" when referring to all the things that match my proposed definition. The proposed definition includes things we have other names for and that's okay; we just use those other names when we need the extra specificity, like moon, rouge planet, dwarf planet, etc.

[–] magnusrufus 3 points 6 months ago

Well said. This is my take on it too. It's really the only reasonable approach.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Our moon would be a planet under that definition

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Yes that's right. It would also be a moon. I see no reason why it can't be both.