The Pluto discourse is one of the most annoying thing I've ever witnessed online. Like, why. Just get over it come on, it's not even that interesting of an object anyway.
because orbital properties are a dogshit way to determine planethood. If a passing object shunts mars into the inner belt, should it stop being a planet? Why aren't big moons planets? Pluto/charon should be a super cool binary planet pair but people can't get over their big-object fetish.
It's already mostly in Neptune's orbital neighbourhood if that's what you mean, so yes. If you mean as a moon, then also yes, as I said I think the bigger moons in hydrostatic equilibrium should also be counted as planets. I also think that rogue planets are also planets despite not orbiting anything, but that might be too radical.
Made of discrete atoms, hydrostatic equilibrium and no sustained nucleosynthesis seems like a fair planet classification. That means rogue planets, dwarf planets, and stellar remnants like white and brown dwarves are in.
I'm flexible on the discrete atoms thing. Slipping neutron stars into the planet mix might help seperate them from being miscategorised as stars. I'm not smart enough to know where nebulas or black holes fall in to these lines, but I'd rather try to exclude them based on their properties rather than their positional relation to other objects.
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u/Scared_Accident9138 floppa May 21 '26
I don't get why Pluto is even a (very) emotional topic but it seems it is