1198
Water
(sh.itjust.works)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Apparently not though:
And if you want more, check out what I said last time this meme was posted.
As someone who worked as an astrophysicist for 9 years, I assure you that the question of "what is a planet?" is a nuanced discussion with a lot of diverse opinions and no clear answer that gets endlessly debated by students as they learn that these definitions aren't as cut and dry as irresponsible science communicators made it seem during the disastrous and highly politically motivated demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet.
IAU is well known for coming up with shitty arbitrary classifications about nomenclature that many astronomers don't agree with. They are wrong here because they don't take into account post-Cassini/Juno understanding of gas giant morphology. The IAU definition is outdated and highly misleading.
Copied from another reply I gave in this thread:
Ok, that's interesting! I didn't realize there was controversy around this definition.
The planet definition that excluded pluto was decided upon at the end of an IAU conference after most planetary scientists had left. As a result, only dynamicists are happy with it. Planetary geologists in particular HATE it and have always vocally pushed back.