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.
Sure, people have taken the matter way too personal. That’s mostly people who have a nostalgic relationship to their childhood classes about “the 9 planets”.
As I’ve read, they made the definition in the particular way to remove gray areas of inaccurate meassurements. A celestial body shouldn’t be wrongly classified due to being a few kilometres larger than some limit, then be reclassified later due to better meassurements. Planets need to be somewhat spherical, orbit a star and clear their orbit from significant debris. They made a great system which doesn’t leave big gray areas. A planet is defined in a well thought out way by people way smarter than me.
And then they go and call the non-planets “dwarf planets”.
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.
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.
Sure, people have taken the matter way too personal. That’s mostly people who have a nostalgic relationship to their childhood classes about “the 9 planets”.
As I’ve read, they made the definition in the particular way to remove gray areas of inaccurate meassurements. A celestial body shouldn’t be wrongly classified due to being a few kilometres larger than some limit, then be reclassified later due to better meassurements. Planets need to be somewhat spherical, orbit a star and clear their orbit from significant debris. They made a great system which doesn’t leave big gray areas. A planet is defined in a well thought out way by people way smarter than me.
And then they go and call the non-planets “dwarf planets”.
I’ve heard some push to just call them all “Worlds.” Planets, moons, asteroids, etc. and all, which is also fine by me.
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.