• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Pluto is a dwarf planet, which is still a planet.

    Also, they absolutely should have just made an exception for Pluto so science teachers everywhere could have used that as a fun teaching point.

    • Small_Quasar@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Considering it’s in a double tidally locked orbit with its own moon Charon and the point that both rotate around is outside Pluto’s volume I would argue that the Pluto/Charon system is actually a dwarf-binary-planet.

    • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Also they shouldn’t have called the category of “things that aren’t planets despite being in some ways planet-like” “dwarf planet,” they should have called them “planetoids.” Star Trek had been referring to small planet-like objects as planetoids for decades, so the work in the popular consciousness had already been done. Dwarf planet not being a planet makes it sound like they’re saying dwarf people don’t count as people, and I don’t care for that at all.

    • nexguy@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      You would think this is the case but they specifically decided through a vote that a dwarf planet is NOT a planet but a completely separate type of object. The whole vote was ridiculous and done at the very end of the conference so that only a fraction of the members were there to vote on pluto.

      Edit: I’m down voted but every word of what I wrote is true. Dig into it and you will find out the same.