pluto

Me, who misread the caption at first, who knows Plato is a philosopher

I thought it was a kind of modeling clay.
- No, you're thinking of play doh, a type of starchy tuber.

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.

It you class it as a planet you can have to do it for all the others

And who wants to memorize more than eight or nine planets.
I will

Pluto isn't a planet but Phobos is still a moon. Seems unfair.

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.

Well said. This is my take on it too. It's really the only reasonable approach.
Our moon would be a planet under that definition
- Yes that's right. It would also be a moon. I see no reason why it can't be both.

The stupidest consequence of the definition is not the classification of Pluto, but that there are only eight planets in the entire universe.

a planet is a celestial body that:
is in orbit around the Sun

*a sun
- 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.
  Exoplanets are addressed in a 2003 position statement issued by a now-defunct IAU Working Group on Extrasolar Planets. However, this position statement was never proposed as an official IAU resolution and was never voted on by IAU members.

new planet definition is dumb and i don’t subscribe to it. pluto is always a planet as far as im concerned

Then you must accept at least 5 more and up to a couple hundred. Are you prepared?
- the more the merrier

Me who knows Pluto is a manga

Always "Pluto, Pluto, Pluto". Why does no one ever remember Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake? They're each as much of a "planet" as Pluto is.

Yeah, dwarfs.

Are dwarf stars not stars?

No, because they aren't undergoing hydrogen fusion due to their insufficient mass.
- TIL the Sun is not a star.
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_star
  That doesn't seem to be entirely accurate.

Gas giant planets, ice giant planets, rocky planets, dwarf planets.

I don't see what the big deal is.

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.
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.

Seems to be an appropriate thread for this absolute banger: https://youtu.be/EuRjmzz6qL0

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.

What a weird take.
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.
Instead of being proud of having discovered the first of a new type of celestial body so far out.