The Lunar Identity Crisis

The statistical distribution of people who think the Moon is a planet is both hilarious and terrifying. Nothing makes an astronomer's eye twitch faster than hearing "the Moon is a planet." It's like calling a bicycle a car because they both have wheels.

For the record: our Moon orbits Earth, not the Sun directly. It's a natural satellite, not a planet. Yet somehow this basic astronomical fact seems to exist in a quantum superposition in the public consciousness.

Poor Anton Petrov (science YouTuber extraordinaire) probably needs therapy after reading his comment section. The bell curve of intelligence strikes again, with the extremes on both sides confidently wrong. And here we are, in the middle, crying into our astronomy textbooks.