I, for one, welcome our new dwarf planet overlords

[dvandom]

I'm with demiurgent. No outrage at all, here.

Before we had nine planets that were only planets under the "I don't know what (insert thing) is, but I know it when I see it" definition. Now we have a pretty clear definition of what a planet in general is (big enough to be more or less spherical, the focus point of its orbit is in the Sun, and if it also orbits something else, the focus of that orbit is not inside either body), and a split between "classical" and "dwarf" planets. This split is a little fuzzier, but classical planets have removed most of the crud from their own orbits, either flinging them away, absorbing them, or herding them into trojan points. What qualifies as "most" is a bit hazy, but it's clear Pluto and Ceres ain't done it, while Earth or Mercury have. Elliptical orbits crossing Earth orbit don't count, just stuff that would follow more or less the same path.

Yeah, the news will go on about how Pluto has been demoted, or even falsely say it's not a planet anymore. I've even seen what look like significant misinterpretations of the definitions in the news. But once they move on to something else, no one will really care except us geeks...and frankly, we geeks like clearer definitions and classifications anyway, once the initial "we fear change" effect passes.

Besides, the Mi-Go don't give a rat's ass what we classify their outpost on Yuggoth as.

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[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

I just added Demi as a friend because of his posts on "Who Wants to be a Superhero?"