Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Do they orbit on the general plane of the other planets in the system? COOL! Add them to the list!
IDGAF if we have hundreds of planets, it's always been an arbitrary number and the only reason to keep it small is so kids can memorize the list and that isn't good enough to DISRESPECT motherfucking PLUTO
The only reason pluto was listed as a planet is because it was thought to be bigger than it actually was. And noone bothered challanging it until the dwarf planet category was created.
Do you also get upset when animals change families in taxonomy?
DNA gives us insight into ancestry that has no parallel in astronomy. When we finally sequence a creature, we pretty much know right on the tree where it goes and stupid fucking crabs and everything that look like them can all get placed in their proper relations when previously purely dissection and observation misled those taxonomy pioneers.
you can't have that kind of bait and switch on celestial objects because what we see is what we see.
The reason that Pluto was smaller than predicted was the fact that the mass calculations assumed a single central object when the perturbations were made by the PLANET/moon system. That doesn't change the fact that it has enough mass to deform into a spheroid and orbits within 20% of the orbital plane.
DNA has made it a lot easier to deterimine ancestry yes. But most of of taxonomy has been created on nothing but observational data.
For example, rabbits, hares, and pika used to be classed as Rodentia until they were placed in their own order, Lagomorpha, in 1912.
Also, the other dwarf planets were considered large asteroids until they were upgraded to dwarf planet status... so if you wanna be upset, you should be upset pluto isnt an asteroid.