#Pluto discourse

[spookberry]

I think it’s silly that people think being a dwarf planet means they aren’t “real” planets. It has planet in the name, and honestly I think all of our system’s dwarf planets are really cool and should still be included when people get taught about the planets in our system.

People talk about Pluto and Eris all the time and sometimes bring up Ceres but I didn’t even know there were more than three in our system until I just looked up a list. Haumea and Makemake are equally as cool as the others and all of our dwarf planets should have a separate acronym because they Are different than the other planets but that doesn’t make them lesser (except for I guess literally because they’re smaller)

But also I agree Pluto wasn’t “demoted” to a dwarf planet it’s just Different not Worse.

Thank you! This is always my point too and everyone gets so mad at me for it as if I kicked their dog or something

[katie-the-bug]

It's late I'm tired have some

Unwarranted Opinions on The Solar System

The Sun: solidly middle-of-the-road star. Only really impressive in conjunction with The Moon (see below), but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 5/10.

Mercury: A pretty uninspired start to the planets, all things considered. Venus does the whole "being hot and close to the sun" thing way better, so I don't really see the point. 0/10.

Venus: Hot, bright, instantly recognizable, and a fascinating counterpoint to Earth. 9/10 only because it doesn't have a nice big moon named Cupid or something - I feel like there was a missed opportunity there.

Earth: This might just be four billion years of evolution talking, but this planet is literally perfect. Dry land and oceans constantly changing shape and thus never getting stale; an atmosphere that filters out most dangerous radiation without being too hard to see through; a functioning magnetosphere; the list of its virtues goes on and on. And even if that somehow weren't enough, I've literally never seen another planet with life on it and that's enough to get Earth an automatic 10/10 for originality.

The Moon: THE best satellite in the entire Solar System and if you disagree we WILL fight. It's a beautiful color, its endless tiny details variably highlighted by its phases mean there's always something new to look at, and it's just the right size and distance from Earth to fully eclipse the Sun and leave only its corona and prominences exposed in the most spectacular display in space or anywhere. If you need me to explain why that makes it THE BEST I will be forced to assume you have no brain. Infinity/10, I am in love.

Mars: Basic details out of the way - I love the color and the extreme geography. Having the biggest mountain in the Solar System counts for something. Besides that, it's thematically fascinating, haunted by the ghosts of what would have been had it been able to hold on to its magnetosphere and atmosphere. I'd give it a perfect score but its dust storms have been unkind to the rovers and I neither forget nor forgive. 8/10.

Phobos & Deimos: stupid useless space potatoes. 1/10 only because Mars will have rings when Phobos finally bites it.

The Asteroid Belt: Meh. 0/10.

Ceres: It may be the only dwarf planet inside the orbit of Neptune, but it's still a dwarf planet. 2/10.

Trojans: Asteroid Belt but "artistic." 1/10.

Jupiter: impressive size, tasteful color palette, and the red spot gives it a bit of intrigue. Too many moons though. 7/10.

The Galilean Moons: fascinating orbital resonance. Shame Callisto won't get with the program. 7/10.

All of Jupiter's Other Moons: too many, and they keep finding new ones, none of which are spherical. Quantity isn't everything, guys. 3/10.

Saturn: the boring color palette is more than made up for, and the excessive number of moons justified, by those SPECTACULAR rings. No other planet has rings that beautiful. Why aren't more planets like this? 10/10.

Saturn's Moons: yeah, some of them have fun little gimmicks, but I really only like them inasmuch as they keep the rings in place. 5/10.

Uranus: the massive axial tilt is refreshingly original and the blue color is easy on the eyes. The lack of rings or memorable moons is a bit of a letdown. A lesser reviewer might make base puns but all the astronomers I know pronounce it differently and the jokes no longer land. 8/10.

Neptune: redundant. 2/10.

The Kuiper Belt: mysterious and full of comets. The Asteroid Belt could never. 6/10.

Pluto: I don't have anything against Pluto itself - the fact that it's so tiny and yet has (at least) five moons gives it a certain charm that a body like Mercury simply lacks. It's the fandom I can't stand. There are three criteria for a body to be classified as a planet, Pluto does not meet one of them, and the sentimental value you place on it and its mistaken former classification does not override this. Any appeal to the perceived injustice of Pluto's classification reveals a deep-seated hypocrisy - I don't see any of you going to bat for Eris. All that said, I will not let this nuisance compromise Pluto's rating. 9/10 for being a funny little guy.

Eris: fun fact, Eris is smaller in diameter but more massive than Pluto. Other than that, I'm not sure what it's got going for it. To be fair to Eris though, neither does anybody else. 5/10.

Haumea: It's an egg with two moons and a ring system. What more could you want? 8/10.

Other Dwarf Planets: Eh. 3/10 for mystery.

The Oort Cloud: the most distant extremity of our Solar System, full of comets and possibility. 10/10.

[heightsofmadness]

On the one hand, sure, Pluto's status is and was a mostly-arbitrary categorical distinction. But the only reason it was considered a planet in the first place was because (tldr) they figured there had to be another one out there to account for weirdness in Uranus's orbit; when they found Pluto, they also massively overestimated its, uh, mass, until they found its moon and used that for measurement. In 2005 they found another object out there with greater mass than Pluto; in 2006 they said "okay, we can't keep pretending this belongs on the same tier as the other 8," and demoted it to dwarf planet. Thus, the category changed as a result of new information.

Also, the reason "pluto is a planet" gets lumped in with the other shit is because 9 times out of 10, the people shouting it loudest are doing so because pretending they're smarter than actual experts makes them feel special. There's a good reason Pluto isn't considered a planet anymore, just like there's a good reason people get vaccinated, and there's a good reason the Earth is widely accepted to be round... so it goes with climate change, evolution, the historical existence of trans identities, etc. Denying any of the things I listed means that a person 1) hasn't done the research, 2) ignored or didn't hear from the people who DID do the research, 3) refuse to listen to those people or do the research themselves for a variety of reasons (a few of which are valid, to be fair), and 4) have decided to double-down on their position despite all of the above (which never has a valid reason).

I've noticed something I find somewhat concerning and it's that for a lot of people, 'pluto is a planet' has fallen into the stock list of examples for what one might call 'science denialism', along with things like antivaxx, denying the existence of feathered (non-avian) dinosaurs, and flat earthers

there's a sentiment that goes like 'well, sure, you learned in school that the solar system has nine planets, but Science Marches On and we now know it has eight' and while certainly people should not take what they learned in school to be immutable law they should also like. have a concept of the rather significant difference between 'we've learned something new about the world' and 'we've decided to slice up the world in categories along different lines'

slicing up the world into categories is one of the basic operations of human thought and if you do not understand it well enough that you think 'people used to think the earth flat -> now we know better' and 'astronomers used to call pluto a planet -> now they don't' are analogous processes then you fucked up somewhere.

and if you don't think they are analogous, if you understand the difference i am pointing out and think it does not matter to the quest of listing stock examples of people disagreeing with things scientists say, well. you fucked up in a different place, probably.

[somarysueme]

You’re telling me that Neptunian object is trans?

[scooby-dooby-dooby-doo]

Let’s see what Tumblr thinks about the famous flaw of the Harkness Test.

Let’s look at 3 cartoon dogs.

[catinasink]

everyone say "good job nico!"

[sparkylurkdragon]

Also, like. Everyday language changes as we learn more, too.

There are not a lot of people who will call bats birds these days, for example.

wow pluto reclassification discourse is exhausting. here I thought doing a poll that highlights some of pluto's cool lesser known dwarf planet friends would put things in a context where it can't possibly go in that direction but nope a bunch people really do just hold a hard stance against a classification system entirely out of a sense of nostalgia

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

it has gotten a lot better on tumblr, i should've specified i was talking about tiktok and twitter where they completely misunderstand the characters and recycle the same stupid discourse for years on end

(apparently the "is the cast minors?" discourse is making the rounds on there for the umpteenth time)

YEAH IVE HEARD HORROR STORIES FROM TIKTOK AND TWITTER. Its a nightmare. I stopped use tiktok long before I got into v3 but even before twitter was shot to death and became X I was super careful to limit my fandom interactions on there. Truly wastelands of media illiteracy

[mionghairearracht]

my toxic trait is i hate pluto as a planet discourse not because i think pluto is a planet but because i fucking loath the iau's definition of a planet.

it relies on ambiguous concepts with no agreed setpoint, both "clearing the neighbourhood" and "hydrostatic equilibrium", arbitrarily excludes objects outside a solar system from planethood*, gets extremely weird with things like brown dwarfs, and in general basically assumes our solar system as the default to base things off of and thus gets messed up with anything that doesn't occur in our system

i hate it and i hate that everyone swings so far into "support science" that they end up dismissing the actual debates happening within a field.

*technically rogue planets aren't planets, even if they meet all other criteria and started as planets before being ejected from its system. because planets are defined by being in a solar system.

[thechihuahuasicko]

Jupiter and Pluto are actually incredibly problematic and I can't believe so many people still support them!

[spookberry]

people complaining about pluto being a planet have the same energy as the people crying when there's a picture of a dinosaur with feathers

and how strange they'll argue Pluto is a Planet actually, but they never hold the same passion for the other celestial bodies that should also be classified as planets if we called Pluto one

"All dwarf planets are planets actually" is a wondefully absurd take that I dont agree with but could absolutely get behind if anyone was using it in defense of pluto. Theres only like five of them anyways.

Teaching the dwarf planets alongside the regular planets similar to how we dont seperate rockies from gas or ice giants? Reasonable actually. I wouldn't mind that being what people want. The more knowledgeable the better imo

As it stands my real problem is people disregarding Pluto's status as a Dwarf Planet, because Pluto is what Defines that category. Pluto so special and cool we made it its own category that recognizes that and people be acting like we kicked it out of the solar system or something.

[patricia-taxxon]

i cant get mad about pluto discourse again

[gothwineaunts]

do you guys like meowgic/pluto x duke? how do you feel about rarepairs and crackships and stuff with your characters? 💗

Aww meowgic is such a cute name for them. I want to plead the fifth but like, also. Have you seen them? You already know the answer to that question. As for rarepairs and crackships, I think it's all fun. I think people have really different definitions for ship discourse now than the definitions I grew up knowing, so I hesitate to participate in those conversations. But I think multishipping and rarepair shipping is just pure fun. Smash your favorite little guys together, I support you. Shipping stuff only gets tiresome (and sometimes scary) when people become militant about demanding their ship becomes canon. That I don't really understand, if I'm being honest. Like yeah, I mean, I thought Zutara made more narrative sense than Kataang too but like, that's what fanfic is for? I've probably said too much, lmao.

[maidling]

the "pluto is a planet" discourse is kept going by big disney because they named htat fuck ass dog htat and hteyre losing money on it

[arowitharrows]

I find it quite strange how often people let a label decide for them how much love or importance they can give to something or someone. It demonstrates how often we see things as inherently hierarchical and how attaching labels to these hierarchies stops us from focusing on the thing behind the label, preventing us from exploring our own true feelings and, in the worst case, causing an endless cycle of discourse about labels. In this essay I will talk about how Pluto is still a fascinating and beautiful celestial object, and how people who argue that it should be a planet again are demonstrating their belief that the reclassification automatically implies that Pluto must be loved less, when in fact Pluto itself has not changed and you are free to love Pluto as a dwarf planet just as much as you would love Pluto as a planet planet.

[protoindoeuropean]

Ok so we all know about the "is Pluto a planet?" discourse. As I've stated before, I personally do not care so much about that question as long as the total number of planets you think there are in the Solar System is not 9. In that vein, I am interested in knowing how many of the named planetary bodies (rocky planets, giant planets and dwarf planets) people know—which you can find out through this quiz

Some disclaimers:

For convenience's sake I use "planet" here to refer to "rocky planets", "giant planets" and "dwarf planets", regardless of whether the latter should be a separate category altogether or indeed a sub-category.

The dwarf planets are taken from Wikipedia and they are not all of equal status or certainty. Among the possible dwarf planet candidates for which the data is lacking and are thus not on the list are also two named ones—I added the last option in the poll if you know those two as well by chance.

And if you've scored at least 13: congratulations, you have my blessing to call Pluto a planet 😌 (or if you learned about them after scoring, that's fine too!)