Tell me the truth.
Tell me the truth.
30 comments
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Taxonomists will be the first to tell you the field itself isn't an exact science. I think some people find that to be more exiting.
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and linguists will be first to tell you that languages are living, fluid, and made up for the purpose of communication
and yet people started getting mad at the mere concept of pronouns
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Nice meme. I think this is true of taxonomy in the broadest sense as well. Just look at how mad people get about pronouns for one example.
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Yet it's always the unclassified stuff that makes life fun.
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1400s: Whales are furious sea-gods
1600s: Whales are big fish
1800s: Whales at not fish, they are mammals
2000s: Whales are big fish
2200s?: Whales are furious sea-gods
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2000s: Actually, fish aren't fish
https://www.sciencealert.com/actually-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-fish-say-cladists
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Or, conversely, mammals are fish https://theconversation.com/the-absurdity-of-natural-history-or-why-humans-are-fish-69384
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that's a dumb way to categorise things, like it's an attempt to create a categorisation system that works against how we use language. it's less "either everything is a fish or nothing is a fish" and more "we decided to take the meaningful word "fish" and devoid it of meaning for the purpose of making our graphs make sense", what about the definitions of the word "fish" that aren't based entirely on one specific point of view of a subgroup of scientist?
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I recently read about a living whale that had a late 19th century harpoon stuck through its head. I didn't fact check it, but if true, furious sea gods feels like a valid reinterpretation
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This applies to so very many human endeavors.
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And the IAU got it wrong when they reclassified Pluto. Jupiter and mercury belong in the same category but the moon and mercury don’t? Get the fuck outta here
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You sound like a lunatic traumatised war veteran. The war has been over for a long time, the decisions have been made and there is no going back, my friend.
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And to add,Jupiter and Mercury belong in the same category as in they both orbit a star (the Sun in this case), both have enough mass to be spherical, and both have clear most of their orbits.
But the category of planets has sub-categories. Mercury is a rocky terrestrial planet while Jupiter is a gas giant as the former is smaller and rocky while the latter is large and made of mostly hydrogen and helium gas. Gas giants can also be called “Jovian planet”, but Jove is just an alternate name for Jupiter (the god) so you’re basically calling Jupiter a “Jupiter planet” which I think is a bit ridiculous but whatever it’s fine. Both are still, of course, planets. It’s like a large tree and a sunflower. Both are still considered plants, but certainly in different subclasses of the category of plant.
Dwarf planets, although not proper planets, are still very interesting objects that could even harbour life in oceans below their icy surfaces. Also, Pluto is not alone in the dwarf planets classification. There’s also Eris, Ceres, Makemake, and probably thousands more we haven’t discovered yet!
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There's also plenty of classifications of plants based on form! Non-vascular plants, woody plants, herbaceous plants, algae and lichen...
Most of our "rocky" planets are pretty wet though. Mars is drying out, but Venus is caked with volatile chemicals and Earth is downright infected. Only Mercury is really barren, partly due to it's small size. I could easily see three categories for gravitationally rounded bodies that can't fuse hydrogen: Dry planets (usully smaller), Wet planets (usually larger), and Gaseous planets (gas giants).
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I’m pretty sure Pluto doesn’t orbit a planet, so it’s not a moon. And the Moon, not only is it named a moon, but also orbits a planet, so therefore is a moon. One is a moon and the other is not a moon. Moon, not moon.
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Pluto and Charon orbit each other. The barycentre (the center of mass they both orbit) is far outside of Pluto. The Earth-Moon barycentre is still inside Earth, though this could be changed by moving the Moon further out.
Either way, Earth, the largest rocky planet, could be made into a moon by sending it to Jupiter, so I don't think being a moon should disqualify a celestial body from being a planet.
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Why does the definition involve location? Intrinsic properties make more sense. Who cares what it orbits or what else is is in a similar orbit?
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I've heard (from people who have credentials in this stuff) that the people in the room at the time were mostly orbital mechanics people. The planetary scientists weren't there. That's why you have this "cleared its orbit" rule. If there were more planetary science people in the room, Pluto might still be considered a planet. And it may yet change back.
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30 comments