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I'm on team Pluto here but no, the problem was that Mike Brown found like a dozen 'planets' and no one wanted to deal with that. It was closer to preventing som

I'm on team Pluto here but no, the problem was that Mike Brown found like a dozen 'planets' and no one wanted to deal with that. It was closer to preventing someone from making a name for themselves.

hn_submit 16d ago
We could simply define Pluto as the edge of our Solar System and everything beyond its orbit a Kuiper Belt Object. There's nothing wrong with that. Why bother coming up with a pseudo-scientific requirements list for planets when these don't work for a large number of cases.
- bryanlarsen 16d ago
  That would include Ceres, Quaoar and Orcus as planets. It's really hard to come up with a definition of a planet that includes Pluto but doesn't include Orcus. Orcus is very close to a mirror of Pluto that is 120 degrees out of phase. Even in name: Orcus is the Roman name for the Greek god Pluto.
  - hn_submit 16d ago
    What part of "we define it so" did you not understand?!
    - bryanlarsen 16d ago
      The three I listed are inside Pluto's orbit. Part of the time for the latter 2. If you want to say that Pluto is a planet for historical reasons, that's fine. Just don't try to invent pseudo-scientific nonsense to justify it at the same time you are decrying psuedo-scientific nonsense.
- vova_hn2 16d ago
  > We could simply define Pluto as the edge of our Solar System and everything beyond its orbit a Kuiper Belt Object. A Kuiper Belt Object not being a part of Solar System doesn't make any sense. A star system is the star + all objects that orbit it. Why would you arbitrarily exclude some objects that orbit the Sun?
- autoexec 16d ago
  > We could simply define Pluto as the edge of our Solar System and everything beyond its orbit a Kuiper Belt Object. There's nothing wrong with that. There is because Pluto is inside the Kuiper Belt and just as much a part of it as all the other "planets" in there. There's nothing wrong with defining our solar system as having 8 planets plus a bunch of other stuff.

I'm on team Pluto here but no, the problem was that Mike Brown found like a dozen 'planets' and no one wanted to deal with that. It was closer to preventing someone from making a name for themselves.

hn_submit 16d ago

We could simply define Pluto as the edge of our Solar System and everything beyond its orbit a Kuiper Belt Object. There's nothing wrong with that. Why bother coming up with a pseudo-scientific requirements list for planets when these don't work for a large number of cases.

bryanlarsen 16d ago
That would include Ceres, Quaoar and Orcus as planets. It's really hard to come up with a definition of a planet that includes Pluto but doesn't include Orcus. Orcus is very close to a mirror of Pluto that is 120 degrees out of phase. Even in name: Orcus is the Roman name for the Greek god Pluto.
- hn_submit 16d ago
  What part of "we define it so" did you not understand?!
  - bryanlarsen 16d ago
    The three I listed are inside Pluto's orbit. Part of the time for the latter 2. If you want to say that Pluto is a planet for historical reasons, that's fine. Just don't try to invent pseudo-scientific nonsense to justify it at the same time you are decrying psuedo-scientific nonsense.
vova_hn2 16d ago
> We could simply define Pluto as the edge of our Solar System and everything beyond its orbit a Kuiper Belt Object. A Kuiper Belt Object not being a part of Solar System doesn't make any sense. A star system is the star + all objects that orbit it. Why would you arbitrarily exclude some objects that orbit the Sun?
autoexec 16d ago
> We could simply define Pluto as the edge of our Solar System and everything beyond its orbit a Kuiper Belt Object. There's nothing wrong with that. There is because Pluto is inside the Kuiper Belt and just as much a part of it as all the other "planets" in there. There's nothing wrong with defining our solar system as having 8 planets plus a bunch of other stuff.