/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #11290220

248KiB, 6000x4000, planet size comparison.png

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Anonymous Fri 10 Jan 01:59:24 2020 No.11290220 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>11290300

Should Pluto be classified as a planet?

Bear in mind that Pluto's volume is less than a third of the Moon's, and it has only 17.7% as much mass as the Moon.

https://www.strawpoll.me/19198263

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 10 Jan 2020 02:05:40 No.11290239 Report

Quoted By:

Planet is a pretty arbitrary term and it doesn't matter.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 10 Jan 2020 02:20:53 No.11290269 Report

Quoted By:

No, it can't clear up debris from its orbital area

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 10 Jan 2020 02:24:10 No.11290274 Report

Quoted By:

It is a amusing that astronomy had pretty much this same debate back in the 1800s. When Ceres was discovered in 1801, it was widely considered to be a planet, listed as one in astronomy texts, and so on. But as astronomers found objects in its vicinity, they decided some reclassification was in order, and came up with the term asteroid. Dwarf planet seems like a perfectly reasonable name for objects that are big enough to be interesting, but still on the smaller side.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 10 Jan 2020 02:35:07 No.11290300 Report

Quoted By: >>11290318

>>11290220

By the current definition, Earth wouldnt be considered a planet if it were in the Kuiper belt.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 10 Jan 2020 02:42:50 No.11290318 Report

Quoted By:

>>11290300
The whole orbit clearing thing is silly to me too. I propose we just draw an arbitrary line at having a 4000 km diamater. (Mercury is 4880 km, Pluto 2370 km) That gives us a nice round number, and our solar system doesn't seem to have any edge cases that would cause an issue there. Well, none that we have discovered, there could very well be Kuiper belt objects whose error bars on the size estimate straddle that 4000km mark, but should be good for now.

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