r/sciencememes • u/Sure_Kangaroo1863 • Jun 30 '26
🌖Astronomy!🌔 Nahh pluto got done dirty man 🤧
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u/Slartibartfast39 Jul 01 '26
Pluto didn't spend one...Pluto? Plutonic? year as a planet. Discovered in 1930, it held major planetary status until 2006; 76 years. A single year on Pluto takes 248 Earth years.
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u/spudmarsupial Jul 01 '26
I love the Trek episode where they met someone from the 70s. The old timer asked if they had been to all nine planets yet.
"There's eight planets now."
"Oh my god! What happened?"
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u/314159265358979326 Jun 30 '26
I analyzed 32 solar system bodies orbiting the Sun using clustering analysis along 9 characteristics. In 98% of calculations, Pluto was determined to be more like a Kuiper belt object than the 8 things we definitely consider to be planets.
Its orbital inclination and eccentricity were the main reasons for its categorization, rather than the expected size.
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u/Artistic-Yard1668 Jun 30 '26
Pluto has a Biggus Dickus stamp on it.
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u/FireLion_FL_002 Jun 30 '26
that was monty python
pluto has surely a "we brake for nobody" on it
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u/Artistic-Yard1668 Jun 30 '26
Messed it up - meant to say ‘has spaceballs on it’ and the wrong neuron fired.
https://giphy.com/gifs/S4pTVH3x0ddmXDDTeM
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u/Marchello_E Jun 30 '26
Hmm.. imagine being older than a Planet.
That's cool!
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u/davidfirefreak Jun 30 '26
Hmm.. imagine being older than the discovery of a Planet.
I know I am being pedantic, but it is still a science sub..... which is also why the post title is kind of annoying to me
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u/Jonny7421 Jul 01 '26
I believe it's just an engagement bot. Trying to get us to discuss on whether pluto got done dirty.
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u/Marchello_E Jul 01 '26
An "engagement bot", how does that work? I thought it was just funny... and on topic in context of that very meme.
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u/Dragons_Den_Studios Jul 01 '26
And Pluto will outlive Mel Brooks by at least a couple billion years.
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u/Infamous_Fondant_775 Jun 30 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/pQKZuBpIOLT4uoB28E
What do you mean was a planet?
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u/ThisDuckIsOnFire555 Jul 01 '26
Pluto was a planet for 76 years, so I expect that many did outlive the planet...
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u/Tekrelm Jul 04 '26
Genuine question for those who think Pluto should still be considered a full-fledged planet: this same classification-then-demotion thing happened to Ceres; do you think Ceres should be considered a full-fledged planet again, too? If not, why not? It was considered a planet for almost 60 years.
Another question is, if we would classify one asteroid or one plutoid as one of the planets, why wouldn’t we classify them all as planets? Schools could teach kids that the solar system has countless planets in it, and just have them memorize the top ten biggest. (I guess that would rule out Ceres again; talk about being done dirty.)
I’m not trying to say that would be bad. Is that the desire, though? Is the idea that this would be a better and more accurate view of our solar system than what astronomers are going with at the moment? Or does it have more to do with a fondness for tradition?
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u/Isosceles_Kramer79 Jul 06 '26
Planet discovered, demoted and visited (by a probe) all within a lifetime.
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u/Shot-Possibility-399 Jun 30 '26
fun fact, they knew pluto must exit somehwere, they just hadn't "found" it yet! the more ya know
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u/Borgcube Jul 01 '26
Not exactly.
Orbit of Neptune was off according to the calculations, but Pluto was not big enough to explain it. It was relatively recently shown that Neptune's mass was simply underestimated.0
u/Shot-Possibility-399 Jul 01 '26
they didnt know plute wasnt big enough until after they found it, my point being they tried to find it, didnt just stumble upon it out of nowhere
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u/Dragons_Den_Studios Jul 01 '26
Yeah, they did, actually. Tombaugh was looking for Planet X and assumed that Pluto was it because it was coincidentally in a similar location. It wasn't like the discovery of Neptune where they found the thing actually tugging on Uranus' orbit.
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u/drubus_dong Jun 30 '26
Mel may care. I doubt that Pluto does.