To Finally Settle The 'Planet' Debate

To Finally Settle The 'Planet' Debate
pluto-memes, astronomy-memes, planets-memes, classification-memes, solar-system-memes | ScienceHumor.io

The International Astronomical Union is shaking right now! This chaotic alignment chart completely demolishes the official planetary definition with gleeful scientific anarchy.

For those not deep in astronomical drama: in 2006, astronomers defined planets as objects that 1) orbit the sun, 2) are round from their own gravity, and 3) have "cleared their neighborhood" of other objects. Poor Pluto failed test #3 and got demoted to "dwarf planet."

This chart throws those rules into a black hole by declaring everything from Earth to comets to literal spacecraft as planets. The inclusion of PSR J1719-1438 b (a planet made of diamond orbiting a pulsar) and rogue planets (planetary-mass objects floating through space) shows just how wonderfully unhinged this classification system is.

Justice for Pluto... and apparently for Voyager too!

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