Ask Lemmy

You can't help it, hardly anyone including science educators ever really look deep into things.

I will give you this: What the meaning of 'planet' has been has changed over time and shrank and grown until in our modern understanding of astronomy it is hard to rectify our image of the solar system. We used to think our local space was empty except for a handful of traveling lights that moved against the relatively still galactic background and we gave spiritual and mythical importance to those lights because we thought such objects uncommon.

But the truth of it is there's quite a lot of objects that qualify for the original definition of 'planet', as in literally every astronomical body out to the heliopause which includes an obscene amount of mass from the Oort cloud. And even I will consider that ridiculous and worthy of revision.

For the longest time it was just the easiest to see objects, then Lowell predicted the existence of Pluto it made the discovery unusual as it wasn't from direct observation, and personally I think this is the root of astronomers' reason to exclude it. In their minds there is a primacy assigned to the bodies discovered with the naked eye and primitive telescopes as they represent some symbol of the true nature and majesty of the human effort to understand the heavens, and not because excluding Pluto in any way benefits the classification system.

I get that, but it is not a valid reason to downgrade a disproportionately favorite planet for many people. The added requirement is meaningless as it can very well apply to Earth, downgrading our status as well, but of course everyone just makes a silly face and handwaves despite being reminded twice a year in spectacular fashion that Earth has yet to clear its orbital path.