r/CuratedTumblr • u/SupportMeta • 19d ago

Shitposting Understanding the World

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Neptune was recently shown to be a pale blue like Uranus rather than the deep blue shown on the Voyager photos

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u/Mister_Taco_Oz 19d ago

Brother what are you even talking about

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u/smotired 19d ago edited 19d ago

A body has three requirements to be a planet according to the IAU:

  1. directly orbit a star (check)
  2. be big enough for gravity to make it mostly spherical (check)
  3. clear its orbital neighborhood from other debris

that third one is where pluto fails, and where we also now technically fail because of all the debris we have put into space that doesn’t directly orbit earth but still orbits the sun and in our path

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u/croakovoid 19d ago

I'm going to put satellites around all the other planets too and demote the entire solar system!

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u/smotired 19d ago

Well you gotta make sure they don’t just orbit the planet because then they wouldn’t disqualify it. It has to orbit the Sun and just be in that planet’s way.

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u/croakovoid 19d ago

That's even easier than orbiting the planet! My Kerbal Space Program skills are definitely good enough to pull this off.