Arenyou gonna start calling Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Orcus planets?
We went through this 150 years ago ehen the asteroid belt was discovered. Every astronomer wanted credit for discovering a new planet, so at one point there were 15 before all the astronomers got together and said it was untenable.
You know, this post made me realize something. Some people are viewing it in terms of "rank", instead of an arbitrary scientific classification designed to efficiently communicate ideas in a clear and concise way.
It's like ... mythology or something, and the planet(oid) being anthropomorphized.
Do people also view kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species as "ranks" of some sort, with some intrinsically greater value being given to some over others?
It’s like … mythology or something, and the planet(oid) being anthropomorphized.
I mean, the planet(oid)s are named after gods.
The personification of its classification is probably related to the exclusivity of the title and “bigger is better” mentality. Since every life form has a taxonomy for domain to species, there’s not really an exclusivity to each echelon. I don’t imagine anybody really thinks like this meme below, for example:
This makes me want to devise a tiered, inclusive classification scheme for space objects.
We could start with orbital objects, any object that normally experiences regular, periodic orbits with minimal deviation. So, everything in the galaxy would be one except potentially Sag A, and the galaxy itself. Perhaps the next branching subsets could be things undergoing continuous fusion somewhere in their body or not?
I think it'll matter a bit more once (if) we get to explore our solar system for real. I feel like right now the concept of "planet" is still rather distant in our minds and a lot of people just base it on vibes
Pluto is the celestial body your Wife tells you not to worry about because “Oh, don’t worry it’s just Pluto coming over when you are out of town, and Pluto isn’t a planet so there is nothing for you to get anxious or jealous about”.
They found more evidence for its existence recently, but no. Nobody has ever seen it or even found out in which direction to look.
The evidence is that the other planets move in ways that only makes sense if there is some mass somewhere pulling their orbits.
Sort of like having to discover the moon from watching the tides in the sea.
this method is how we discovered Neptune and Pluto and many exoplanets. Kepler's laws are extremely specific about orbits, so once you pin down the disturbances the planet makes you significantly narrow down the places it can be.
Ceres was considered a planet in the first half of the 1800's, along with a bunch of things in the asteroid belt. There was a point where there were 64 planets.
In the present state of knowledge astronomers give us the following list:
Sixty-four "primary planets" revolving round the Sun as our Earth does.
Twenty satellites, including our Moon.
Of the sixty-four primary planets fifty-six are asteroids, comparatively small bodies, all of which were discovered in this century, and fifty-two since the year 1844.]
I believe there was a mathematical constant to find the space ( km/ lightyaers from the sun ) where a planet should be. Do'nt remember the name tho. Is pluto on the next 'free space' ?