Subj : Re: Mothers Day
To   : Blue White
From : Adept
Date : Tue May 23 2023 09:35:35

 BW> The demotion of Pluto is actually one of the reasons I now question
 BW> "scientists" more.  The original demotion reasoning included the bit

Eh, science is messy, and people argue theories and whatnot all the time.

And this is definitely an area where reality doesn't care about our definitions, so fundamentally it doesn't matter. Just a way of categorizing the knowledge we have.

 BW> So instead of coming up with a theory and then proving it, they developed
 BW> a theory to specifically prove what they wanted it to (Pluto is not a
 BW> planet) while not proving anything they didn't want to (other planets are
 BW> not planets).

I think that's... an incorrect view of what they were doing.

They had a problem: they had discovered a bunch of new dwarf planets, and wanted a way to not massively expand the amount of planets. So they drew a line, and any moderately-sensible line, by necessity, excluded Pluto.

Because the option wasn't, "have Pluto be a planet or not be a planet", it's, "have Pluto and Sedna and possibly five or six others be a planet, or all of them not be a planet".

Basically, I guess I'm objecting on the focus on Pluto. The problem was the other newly-discovered things.

And, that said, I _still_ disagree with them, because, yeah, clearing the neighborhood, while more sensible than it seems at first, is an odd dividing line.

Still, saying that Earth hasn't cleared its neighborhood is... misleading.

From https://gizmodo.com/should-earth-get-demoted-from-planet-status-just-like-p-577
5229

"let's instead consider those objects relative to the planets themselves. Pluto, for instance, is just .077 times the mass of all the other objects in its orbit, meaning it makes up roughly 8% of the mass found in its orbit. Earth, on the other hand, is 1.7 million times the mass of all the other objects in its orbit"

"None of the dwarf planets - which currently includes Ceres, Eris, Pluto, Makemake, and Haumea - have discriminants greater than 1."

"As it happens, Neptune has the smallest discriminant, at just 24,000."

The IAU didn't set a cut-off, but all the dwarf planets are less than 1, all the major planets are at least 24,000.

Though it's still weird to me to be defending it. Despite it being a pretty clear dividing line, I agree that it still seems like a non-useful distinction.

But, regardless, at least this discussion is just the definitions. Pluto is there, in its orbit, rounded by gravity, etc., regardless of what we call it. And it holds a special place in our imagination for a variety of reasons.

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