blogs_blog_1497

Except by all knowledge in 1930, unless I'm severely mistaken, there were no other known planets outside the solar system. It would have been an arbitrary and meaningless decision at the time.

ow my childhood

 

which coincidentally existed for a good portion of the duration Pluto was actually considered a planet

I was like eight or nine, IIRC, when I learned that Pluto was no longer considered a planet.

 

I was so mad.

It totally ruins The Magic Schoolbus.

 

"We searched for Mr. Frizzle on all 8 of the planets and didn't find her; where else could she be??"

 

You take that back!

 

#LeavePlutoAlone

You're opinion is bad and you should feel bad because MUH PLUTO!

viva la pluto

 

 

(tbh because no image-only replies, I have no strong feelings so yeah)

Am I the only person in the world who doesn't care whatsoever whether or not Pluto is technically a planet or not?

Am I the only person in the world who doesn't care whatsoever whether or not Pluto is technically a planet or not?

Nope.

To be fair, when it was first discovered, we had every reason to think it was a planet. It seemed far larger than it really was (since it and its moon Charon were difficult to differentiate at first), and we didn't know a thing about the Kuiper Belt that occupies its orbital region.

 

It's basically the same as how we thought Ceres was a planet until the asteroid belt was discovered (coincident with Pluto's demotion, Ceres was promoted from "the largest of the asteroids" to dwarf planet status, since like Pluto it is large enough to have shaped itself into a sphere).

 

So with perfect knowledge, no, we might not have considered Pluto a planet to begin with. But because of our imperfect knowledge of Pluto and objects like it, it was hard to classify from the get-go.

 

Overall, there were strong scientific grounds for Pluto's demotion, and it shouldn't have been anywhere near as controversial as it was. Though I sometimes joke that instead of dwarfism, a better diagnosis would be "Accretion-Deficit Kuiperactivity Disorder". Still haven't gotten a single laugh out of that one. :/