• Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids sit at Lagrange points. Material found there is not counted in the ‘clearing the orbit’ criteria. They are in stable orbits caused by the mass of the planet in question, not in lieu of a massive enough body.

    • nexguy@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Well of course that was the exception they had to come up with for their contrived rule. The exception is: “whatever it takes to make pluto not a planet”. Since the vote was agenda fueled and not a scientific discussion.

      Once something new is discovered and breaks the rules they will have to modify the contrived rule to keep pluto not a planet.

        • qarbone@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Someone printed out a buncha shirts with only 8 solar orbits in the system. Obviously easier to lobby Pluto off the team than to reprint the shirts.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 days ago

            What is going to be funny is if/when they discover planet 9, and all the apparent Pluto superfans just utterly lose their shit when they attempt to comprehend that there can be another actual planet, and no, pluto still doesn’t count.

          • Klear@quokk.au
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            3 days ago

            And they would have gotten away with it, if not for that one guy arguing about it on Lemmy in 2026.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yes, that’s how science goes. Simple explanations and definitions often fall apart upon further discovery and require caveats that sometimes even reinforce the intention.

        • nexguy@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I agree except in this instance the goal was to keep Earth’s classification important. No other scientific objective. Just seemed very geocentric to me.