Back in school we used to have a book with an illustration of the solar system with all the planets in neat almost circular orbits in a plane around the sun. And there was Pluto with its skewed orbit that was all over the place. My teacher couldn't convince me that it should be lumped in with the rest of the planets.
I felt satisfaction when Jim Carrey's kids in Me, Myself and Irene complained that it shouldn't be a planet. That was the first time I ever heard a person say that.
The rocks, ice, and gas out there doesn't give a shit what we think.
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.
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:
Large enough to become spherical under its own mass.
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.
No. I copied and pasted that. The definition says 'the Sun'. There was a proposal to classify 'exoplanets' but the IAU never accepted it, and so those large masses orbiting other stars remain undefined.
The deal is the weird part where they made a specific point of and big deal out of the new classification not being a type of planet despite having the word planet in the name.
The "big" deal is that a ton of celestial bodies of comparable size to pluto would have to be considered either as planets or as general debris. Finding a clear definition which would include pluto as a planet and not include other stuff would be very impractical and possibly nearly impossible.
But the biggest fuck up was to name a non-planet a "dwarf planet".
I'm well aware of the existence of countless dwarf planets in the solar system, and the naming issues that arose from the discovery.
I don't mind that they called them dwarf planets. But I don't know why everyone got so upset about it. It sounds like just another class of planet to me, which seems quite appropriate.
I agree that they marketed the change about as poorly as they could.
Only USA people are arguing against it be cause of national pride, it's the "planet" they had discovered. Among astronomers the consensus is established.
You overestimate how many of us even know that. It was probably mentioned in school I guess, but this is the first I remember hearing it. I did do kindergarten to 2nd grade in a different country though.
Why do you think you were taught about it? What you learn at school is heavily influenced by the "national myth". It's most visible in your history lessons, but science is also impacted, it will be biased towards your culture's scientists and discoveries. I am observing that in Europe too, I'm not saying the USA are worse on that.