If Emilia is a scientist at heart and heard that Pluto was reclassified because we found many more like it, she’d probably be fascinated. Mind blown, even, that we’ve found Sedna, Ceres, Makemake, a bunch of others I’ve forgotten the name of, and a few more that just have a number.
On the other hand, she was just introduced to the concept of things like interstellar travel and aliens, so “someone took away one of our planets” wouldn’t have been all that far-fetched. (Especially since the dialogue in the post doesn’t actually mention Pluto. Maybe she thought it was Venus.)
Pluto is a planet and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.
Pluto was a planet, once. The crown jewel of the Plutonian Empire. But the Plutonians got greedy. They dug too deep in search of plutonium and awoke a terrible horror. Now all that’s left of Pluto is a cloud of asteroids and a celestial dwarf, barren and uninhabitable.
Correct. It is a dwarf planet.
The problem with Pluto being a planet is that we would also have to classify something like thousands of other objects as planets as well. That’s the whole reason it’s not classified as one anymore.
Wow that’s very anti-trans of you
My son’s favorite shirt:
That’s truly amazing!
Omg, you did it again!
<gasp>
I’ll forget Pluto together with the 200+ other dwarf planets in our solar system, thank you very much.
Just need a bigger mnemonic
I understand the rationale for demoting Pluto, and I don’t disagree at all
It’s not even a demotion, it’s just reclassification. There’s no hierarchy of importance of solar system objects. People against a more accurate understanding of reality are dumb.
They took away Pluto’s superior status! We’re supposed to just sit back and let Pluto be relegated to the realms of the peasantry of satellites? I will fight to my dying breath to protect Pluto’s honor!
/s
What’s more fun, demoting pluto or announcing the discovery of a new planet every week for a couple years?
I’ve always said those third graders have it too easy having to learn just 8 planets. Time to really put them in their place!
You’re a monster.
Where can I get this? Lol
I think my wife got it on Amazon
That’s messed up.
Is that Bruton Gaster?
His name is Jazz Hands
The real problem here is the nostalgia factor. A lot of people grew up having the planets ingrained into their brains with various mnemonics. Hard to say goodbye to “pizza”.
There was no scenario where your precious mnemonics got preserved. If Pluto was still a planet, then Ceres would be too and it would fuck them all up.
Mary’s Virgin Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour
My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming
…
Naming what‽
Just chiming in to say nice interrobang, fellow interrobanger
Thanks‽
MEin VEtter ERklärt Mir Jeden Samstag Unsere NEun PLaneten. Is a German mnemonic
Yes, but your language is even weirder than English.
At least English doesn’t have any words like rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.
Compound words make words rather descriptive and precise though, and we German love being precise.
Although to be fair, you have nothing on the Māori of New Zealand. They named a hill Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. That’s even longer than the town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in Wales.
Edit: None of them, though, come close to Ancient Greek’s lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon, “a fictional dish originating from Aristophanes’ 391 B.C. comedy Assemblywomen.”
What happened:
Now I’m curious: How publicised was Pluto’s discovery in 1930? Did the public care? Would Earhart likely have learnt about it before she vanished in 1937?
Angela Collier did a video about the whole fiasco from a physicists prospective which is fun https://youtu.be/TwCbMJmgShg
Iirc she talks about how it’s kinda BS, caused public outrage, and might have harmed science communication in the mind of the public.
They were basically calling it the great American scientific discovery at the time. Which is probably why some people were so loath to accept the “demotion.”
Well, it was definitely in a lot of newspapers: https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=ninth+planet+discovered&tbs=,bkt:s,cdr:1,cd_min:1+jan+1929,cd_max:31+dec+1931&num=100
Kinda silly when ‘dwarf planet’ has planet still in the name.
If you want to include all the dwarf planets then we’ve got more than 9. Pluto was only the latest object to be called a planet and reclassified. No one complains about the others.
Just change the name. Can’t be Pluto, but maybe Gimli will work.
Do we name asteroids after hobbits, then?
No, but we’ve come close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2675_Tolkien
Give it a thousand years, then it’s classical mythology. That’s free game. That’s where we got Mars, Saturn, Jupiter etc.
Even sillier to get pissed on behalf of a giant space rock that doesn’t care what you call it.
