The rocks, ice, and gas out there doesn’t give a shit what we think.
Arguing that a planet must have cleared its orbit of other major bodies invokes an arbitrary size and location judgement for what constitutes a planets orbital space and what constitutes a major body.
The argument that the inclusion of Pluto would require the inclusion of a lot of other planets and that that is obviously bad/wrong is absurd. Why can’t a system have a whole lot of planets?
I propose an unoriginal definition of a planet:
Large enough to become spherical under its own mass.
Too small to fuse hydrogen, regardless of its presence.
I think we should really consider the term “planet” to be somewhat vague, and use the term “proper planet” when referring to all the things that match my proposed definition. The proposed definition includes things we have other names for and that’s okay; we just use those other names when we need the extra specificity, like moon, rouge planet, dwarf planet, etc.
The rocks, ice, and gas out there doesn’t give a shit what we think.
Arguing that a planet must have cleared its orbit of other major bodies invokes an arbitrary size and location judgement for what constitutes a planets orbital space and what constitutes a major body.
The argument that the inclusion of Pluto would require the inclusion of a lot of other planets and that that is obviously bad/wrong is absurd. Why can’t a system have a whole lot of planets?
I propose an unoriginal definition of a planet:
Large enough to become spherical under its own mass.
Too small to fuse hydrogen, regardless of its presence.
I think we should really consider the term “planet” to be somewhat vague, and use the term “proper planet” when referring to all the things that match my proposed definition. The proposed definition includes things we have other names for and that’s okay; we just use those other names when we need the extra specificity, like moon, rouge planet, dwarf planet, etc.
Well said. This is my take on it too. It’s really the only reasonable approach.
Our moon would be a planet under that definition
Yes that’s right. It would also be a moon. I see no reason why it can’t be both.