I think we all sleep on the fact Ceres got an upgrade from "Asteroid" to "Dwarf Planet." And it is visible in a 4 inch telescope, which was preaty cool, when I found it one night. It resolved as a neat little circle in the eyepiece. (Neptune and Uranus generally resolve as little blue pinprick dots if you find them- and really need a bit of a bigger telescope)
@accelerationquanta5816 Well since I was one of the people responsible for the criteria required (2006 IAU resolution) I think I might know this. To be considered a planet the object has to have cleared its orbit - Ceres has not done that. The definition is: A "planet" is a celestial body inside the Solar System that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
"Planetoid" is the only fitting name, because they are tiny planets; I think that is the name I was taught in Astronomy in college (I was taught it somewhere), and now I know why. We have two very different kinds of planets, and so there is nothing wrong with two very different kinds of planetoids.
In 1987 in the 6th grade I said I didn't think Pluto was a planet. We hadn't discovered the Kuiper Belt yet, but science knew comets came from the outer solar system. That there were a bunch of ice chunks out there and occasionally one got bumped toward the inner solar system and became a comet. I think it was called the ice belt. I thought it was like the asteroid belt, just ice instead of rock. I said Pluto was just an above average size ice chunk. The teacher said it was a planet because it had an atmosphere and a moon. I said comets have atmospheres and if it came closer to the sun it would have a tail. And I said there are asteroids with other asteroids orbiting them, they aren't planets. Pluto even has an off plane elliptical orbit like a comet. Not the best technical definition, but I was 11 and had just thought this up 2 minutes earlier. The teacher said "That is the stupidest thing I have heard in my entire life." So I was thrilled in 2006 when Pluto got demoted. I hope my 6th grade teacher was still alive and remembered calling me stupid.
@@WinVisten Yes america schools. The same teacher once said the Earth's inner core was molten metal. I corrected her and said the outer core was liquid, but the inner core was a solid. She said I was stupid because the core was like 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit so the Iron would be melted. I said melting temperature increases with pressure. At that point she told me to go to the principal's office "for being a smart ass".
@@RideAcrossTheRiver No, we try to simplify reality to reduce complexity, but nature is just inherently complex. That's why semantics will always be debated.
I do really wish people would stop insisting that the boxes themselves are some sort of objective truth, and I am sad that he stooped to doing that at the end of the video.
I've always wanted to see a near complete model of the solar system. With features like the kuiper belt, the oort cloud, hills cloud, all of the planetoids, all of jupiter's moons, the trans-neptunian objects like Sedna and Haumea, to name a couple, the asteroid belt and the significantly sized asteroids that we've named. Plus the usual details like planets etc.
@@el-verdadero_mordecai-456 There are probably a ton more models in a large open sandbox type game like Breath of the Wild, GTA V, or something else I haven't played. Sorry, not big on gaming. I've often wondered how people deal with tasks like that. Not as complicated as modeling large amounts of objects, that's way beyond me. But just entering information into a massive database. Like say, you want to start a dictionary site. You'd need a database with all of your words in it for the website to consult whenever somebody searches. Sorry if this is too simplistic I just don't want to assume any prior knowledge and cause confusion. And I just think about how many tens of thousands of UNIQUE entries they have in each entry in the database. And every one of them had to be entered by a person. Again, I'm no expert, but I'm sure they have ways to automate it to a degree. For example to digitize books, I found an app where you just point your camera at a page in a book and it turns it into a pdf document. But aside from hiring people at slave wages to do data entry for you, I dunno how they would fill even a database with 10k entries. And yeah, then you get into video games you suddenly you have databases of objects that have to be called in a very specific manner at very specific events. The database itself may have just as many items, but the way they're interacted with is way more complex than just a user searching for one at a time. And nevermind actually making the maps for these games. Like Breath of the Wild's map is apparently about the size of Manhatten! Give or take, of course. But looking at other games, that's about the size of the maps for some of these large ones. You've gotta think about a game like GTA V where they had to recreate large parts of LA, although I guess a good bit of the groundwork was already done in San Andreas. But they still basically had to start from a vague template. Not to mention, as big as San Andreas' map was, V's dwarfs it. I'm curious how big VI's will be.
@@VoidHalo Nope, Not even close, the amount of KBOs is staggering Universe Sandbox only renders the important ones, and all others are just a generic dust cloud
We totally need to move all mining operations out there asap. No need to mine on Earth for Space-based equipment / resources beyond the first few generations.
@@TechRyze -- That might not be as useful for resources though. Ceres is mostly Rock, Ice, Salt, and Clay. There's some graphite and sulphur too. The heavier elements may have sank to the core over billions of years of cryovolcanism. All that water is great for a station though. Lots of propellant for rockets, lots of water for easy shielding from radiation, and lots of drinks for the monkeys! Asteroids for mining could be towed into orbit, and the refining equipment kept near the (relative) comfort of a full station.
Dude, I really have to say that you're an exceptional TH-camr. The effort you put into your videos has gone to the point where you have taken some of the first steps to properly visualize and render what has previously been abstract and distant into something tangible and clear. You painstakingly rendered like over 20 celestial objects, many of which have never been rendered to the level of detail you've done here. I've been with you on Atlas Pro since before 100k and I'm so excited to see what you do on this channel.
Now I understand Pluto's demotion even better. What I find pretty silly however is the reasoning behind their choice to make it simple for kids in school. I understand that too, but just because you want to make it simpler, that doesn't mean there is just 8 planets in the solar system. I was in 2nd grade in 2005, so Pluto was among the planets we kids worked on. Can't remember what planet I worked on.. could have been Mercury? Regardless, I would have LOVED to have even more planets to read about in school! Space is so fascinating!
To make it simpler, they could’ve just chosen to only teach the classical nine planets while still recognizing there are more out there. You can have your cake and eat it too. Voting to change scientific facts is not science, nor is the motivation behind it valid.
@@ulfrinn8783 Yeah, I don’t know why people think the IAU has the final word of this subject. It’s clear that they don’t and many people already ignore their definition, myself included.
Yeah, it's crazy that we argue about the smallest particles to the biggest galaxies, but also kind of impressive that we have the means to do that at all. Sorry if I'm taking this too seriously and you were just making an exaggeration, but you went a bit far there. The planets are several to dozens of astronomical units away. A light year is used for interstellar distances where rogue planets and stars would inhabit, and is many thousands of times further away.
Keep in mind that with Sedna, there should be many similarly-sized objects on super long orbits like that. And perhaps even Mars-sized or even Earth-sized objects scattered among them as well. Finding Sedna really opens the door to the possibility of vast amounts of stuff on highly eccentric orbit.
I have a theory that the long awaited planet 9 might be an object so distant that it takes hundreds of thousands of years to complete it's orbit arround the sun, maybe a former rogue planet ? Do i have anything to support this ? No lol, but it's cool to theorize.
If such an object were to be discovered, I assume the IAU will change their definitions again. It seems weird to have a Kuiper belt object the size of Mars or the Earth that isn't classified as a planet.
A couple of corrections: 9:14 Piazzi did not join the search, his find of Ceres was actually a huge concidence! 31:03 there has never actually been an anomaly in Neptune's orbit, we have long found out that our estimates of the mass of Neptune were slightly off (by taking actual measurements when Voyager 2 passed right next to it). The hypothesis for another big boy planet this time is based on the orbits of kuiper belt objects that are too far to be affected by Neptune, Sedna included other than that, great video, people who complain about Pluto clearly have never heard about the story of the asteroid belt so I'm glad you took the time to explain how it shows that this was just a repeat of history 👍
I know people say Piazzi finding Ceres was a coincidence but I really doubt it. My guess is the celestial police didn’t ask him to look for it, so when he heard about it anyway and actually found it, the police lied and said his letter “must’ve gotten lost,” which remains the official story. I find it almost impossible to believe he found Ceres without knowing where to look first.
@@astropro1 I guess it is possible yeah. But "officially" he was not part of the group and just so happened to be systematically surveying that part of the sky correcting star charts he was in possession of 🤔
Also if im not wrong there was some measurement whose calculated value (as per the newtonian model) wasnt aligned with the observed value; but what it turned out to be was that that newtonian model was fundamentally flawed in the sense that the main gravitational equation was "incorrect", and that when people used Einstein's theory of general relativity to calculate the aforementioned value they got something that lined up with the observed value.
Very good way to explain the history of planet naming. This really put a great context on it, that at one time we had even more than 9 planets and how that was trimmed down to 9, and now down to 8. That is until Planet 9 is discovered.
I'm a presenter/educator/communicator at a planetarium, and here are my thoughts on the subject. I think a lot of the controversy comes from the lack of teaching about the dwarf planets. I think that term is fine and describes what they are, similar to planets but smaller. It's just that when people talk about the Solar System and exclude the dwarf planets, of which Pluto is the one everyone knows, it doesn't satisfy peoples curiosity and desire to understand. I know this because I was in that position, being an elementary school kid in 2006 during the IAU scandal, and had read about Eris and other unnamed objects discovered beyond Pluto and wanted people to tell me more about them. By teaching people about the biggest of the dwarf planets (Ceres in the asteroid belt, Pluto in the Kuiper Belt, and Eris in the scattered disc, maybe a few of the others like Haumea) it explains that there are other significant objects orbiting the Sun that are worth exploring. This can also be said of the major moons of the Solar System; if someone is going to learn about Pluto and Eris then they should also learn about the Galilean moons, the large moons of Saturn, Triton, along with the familiar moon of Earth. By acknowledging Pluto and the other dwarf planets, separate still from the asteroids, planetoids, and tiny objects around the Solar System, even if in a separate category than the major planets, people will be satisfied to know that they exist and are interesting little worlds in their own right. It's ok to call them dwarf planets; it's not ok to call them nothing at all, and ommit them from existence.
This I can agree with. Pluto, Eris, and large round moons are just as interesting as planets, sometimes even more so (Titan is a lot more awesome than Mercury). Omitting them from Solar System models does them a great injustice as despite being called “dwarf” planets, these are very large objects, thousands of times larger than asteroids.
Nobody loses interest in a celestial obeject because it's called a dwarf. Just to acknowledge that means that you are interested in astronomy to begin with. Most people couldn't care less. The real argument is on a precise definition of a planet.
the 3 seconds after Uranus's introduction and then the subtle piano when the audience is waiting for the punchline that's never coming is the best thing that has happened to me this week.
He didn't need a punchline, the audience knows the joke and the silence was just enough time to think of it and laugh before the content resumes. (We are all children)
On the other hand by creating the concept of dwarf planet it raised Ceres from asteroid to dwarf planet. So that's cool. Ceres is an amazing celestial object, complex and dynamic, so to be classified as an asteroid would had been a diservice. I also think the name Dwarf Planet is a cool name. Smaller doesnt mean less interesting or lesser. Peter Dinklage is no lesser of an actor despite being very short, is he?
Ceres was initially classified as a planet, but there wasn't a huge uproar when it was downgraded to asteroid. I guess because there was no internet back then.
@@Dulcimerist Asteroids were a subset of planets back then (as with pretty much everything that's not either stars or comets). It wasn't until Kuiper's papers in 1950s that argued about asteroids' distinct physical differences from larger planets that they stopped being considered planets. I think the reason for the lack of uproar was probably because Ceres was never really as popular as Pluto.
@@AstroChara Ceres is still very much a planet. Math isnt wrong the IAU is as ussual. No one in Astronmy agrees with that UN board of Selected politicians.
I remember hearing about Quaoar being discovered while I was in grade school, so for a while I included it as the 10th planet in the solar system. Which really highlights the main reason why Pluto had to be excluded: Because any division between Pluto and the other Kuiper Belt objects would be far more arbitrary than a division between Pluto and the gas giants. Also, seeing that table of planets with their mass/neighborhood ratio really cements the drastic difference between them and the objects in the Asteroid and Kuiper Belts.
Well, no. Pluto would stay a planet and Quaoar would get added. Also, Pluto’s mass in comparison to its orbit is so minuscule because it’s so far away, hence why Earth’s mass is greater than Jupiter’s shown on that graph. If Earth were moved to Pluto’s distance from the sun, it would suddenly not be a planet.
@accelerationquanta5816 Apparently astronomers couldn’t cope with the existence of more planets. They’re fine with billions of stars and galaxies, but planets reaching double digits is “too much”. Our solar system has hundreds of planets, they need to get used to it.
@@Jellyman1129Star” and “galaxy” are quite simply more general terms than “planet”. There are so many objects orbiting the sun that to say “well over a quintillion” wouldn’t even be an understatement, but only 8 of them are planets.
Atleast star-like makes sense in the context of being a point of light in the sky. But obviously we now know that is about the only similarity between asteroids and stars. (Tiny rocks vs giant perpetual nuclear explosions)
to be fair we still use the words galaxy and galactic, so asteroid honestly isn't that big of a deal considering that most people nowadays think of a big space rock when they hear asteroid and not something star-like
@@Mahlak_Mriuani_Anatman in this case, science doesn't like using identical terms for very different things if possible. Especially not when we're using classifying words. The entire point of classification is to maximally delineate as definitively as possible.
The idea that Planet X could be a fairly close, but still way further away than Pluto, black hole is terrifying to me.(Some theories suggest that one or several ones orbit our sun) Like this seems like a straight irrational phobia, since it's pretty clear that it poses no danger to our system, but I just get the panic jabics, the heebie jeebies, the AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!. I love black holes, but they are one of the few things in life that give me that deep, instinctual feeling of panic I have so much respect for the part at 24:40, that's more effort put in trying to learn a completely foreign pronunciation than I've ever seen any other american do. And this is insane compared to trying to pronounce spanish, german and french, he did it right
Black hole orbits our sun? Are you high? Black hole are way more massive and they are center of masses of the galaxies. So, in fact, it's other way around, the sun is orbiting a black hole, just like all the other stars in our galaxy.
@@rakhatthenut3815 You may be right, as insane as your comment sounds. This comparably tiny black hole would definitely change our sun's orbit around the galactic core, even if it has less than 2 solar masses
I'll rate this as second best lecture on planetary classification I've heard. I went to one in college (I think presented by either Trujillo or Brown but I honestly don't remember) called "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" that's always stuck with me. Partly for the fantastic name, partly because prior to that lecture actually explaining the why behind Pluto's reclassification in an accessible way I was staunchly pro-planet-Pluto.
@@astropro1 Brown and his co-author have a good paper from last year predicting the orbit of a massive trans-neptunian body "Planet Nine". ~6.2x Earth Mass at >300AU!
@@alexreustle I'm betting if Planet Nine exists it has not cleared it's orbit (the further out an object is the more massive it has to be to "clear it's orbit") and so Brown is either going to have to give up the clear it's orbit thing or admit it is not a "planet" even though it would be an ice giant.
While I agree with the science behind classifying Pluto, Ceres, Eris & co. as "dwarf planets" I've always sorta longed for a separate classification for those larger Asteroid / Kuiper Belt objects. I think they deserve a bit more distinction from the little scraps of rock their regions are known for. Ceres, Pluto and Eris are better described as "proto-planets" as they really do display all the characteristics of regular planets, just not as developed as their larger cousins. I think Haumea could be included in this as well, with its own little ring system. Great video!
very good video! a couple things: 1: as others have pointed out, the anomalies in Neptune's orbit were actually due to a mathematical error. once the correct values were punched in, the discrepancy between its predicted orbit and its actual orbit disappeared completely. i can't remember the details, and i'm too lazy to search rn, but if you harass me i might go look it up. 2: the search for Planet 9 has recently been renewed, as some astronomers have noticed a strange clustering of Kuiper Belt objects with highly elliptical orbits that all point roughly in the same direction, which suggests another planet may exist with an elliptical orbit in the opposite direction. 3: there is also the story of the planet Vulcan, which was hypothesized to orbit extremely close to the Sun to explain anomalies in Mercury's orbit. it later turned out that these anomalies were due to the incomplete nature of Newtonian physics, and were resolved with the introduction of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
Search for planet 8* I don't know why they're pretending Earth fits in the definition of planet when there are two "uncleared" asteroids swinging around us lol
@@SoftBreadSoft because, as Caelan pointed out in the video, its about the proportion between the planet's mass and the mass all of the things in its orbital path (because every planet - even Jupiter - is going to have stuff in its orbital path. hell, larger planets LIKE Jupiter are going to actually corral stuff into those places, which is why we get Trojans) and since Earth's mass dominates it's orbit, it is considered a planet. in fact, if a planet's orbit had to be totally clear all the time, the number of planets in our system would be a whopping 0.
@@4orks976 Earth's mass does not dominate its orbit, neither does Neptune now that you reminded me (hello Pluto) It is much easier to retroactively move goalposts, make ammendmemts and special exceptions than to admit the semantics are not rigorous and change the diction, which is what they should have done in 2014-15 instead of the aforementioned damage control.
@@SoftBreadSoft ok can you maybe come back here after you actually watch the goddamn video and maybe learn a bit about basic astrophysics before you try to pass yourself off as someone who knows astrophysics
Stellar first video and breakdown of our solar system's planetary history. I remember doing a school report on Pluto shortly before its demotion from planethood. Seems like the information we gather on the cosmos grows exponentially and I am excited about all the things we still have to learn and all the imagery that will come from our curiosity for the night sky. Can't wait to see what topics you decide to tackle and share with us next! 🌌
Best description or example of why Pluto was reclassified. I was at one time thinking on becoming an astronomer back in 1975. The dean of astronomy at the University of Washington sat me down and gave me information about what it takes and a lot of other information about astronomy that I opted out of that route. LOL My math was a bit lacking, He he. However I thought I was pretty much up on astronomy except now with this much more concise, informative video I realize I really didn't know that answer, but now I do. Thank you. 👨🎓
Or we could just teach kids at a young age that there's more than just planets and moons to our solar system off the bat. Kids are pretty smart and retain a lot of information, as long as the information is interesting to them and not just a memory test like most school is. I'm pretty sure it would help them as adults too, having already grasped a basic concept of the known solar system and everything that entails. There are a lot of physics that can come easier by knowing how orbits and gravity works. Edit: I think it's kind of cruel to teach kids that life is simple, only for them to grow up and be overwhelmed with how complex reality is. It feels like lying by omission.
@accelerationquanta5816HARD AGREE. I'm totally teaching kids that there are dozens of planets. You don't need to memorize them, just like you don't need to memorize the 50 nearest stars, just some important ones. We already often group Uranus and Neptune together, so grouping all the generic iceballs together isn't really all that different. And of course, we may discover rings, odd shapes/colors or geological features etc as our knowledge increases.
Sometimes kind of shocking to watch a good TH-cam video made by someone that more effectively explains a subject I spent years learning about in school. Like "why did no one else think of explaining it this way before? "
*IAU* : There would be far too many planets. And more keep being found with increasingly awkward names. No kids would ever be able to learn from this ever growing list. *Pokemon Company* : we started with 150 but now we're nearing 1,000 and we've increased the letter count in new names.
*Dinosaurs* : There’s over 1,000 species of us. Kids love it! Yeah, it was a stupid decision for the IAU to limit the number. I guess we have to go back to eight states and eight elements. 🙄
Dude I had fallen asleep watching something about a telescope. This played while I was half dozing. I recognized you from your Atlas channel, and assumed this was from that channel for some reason. At the end of the video I saw this was a new channel. I'm absolutely on board, what a great video that was.
Honestly, I'd rather they'd have named it planetoid instead of dwarf planet because from a cursory search that doesn't seem to be an official naming convention yet. I feel like that wouldn't have caused as much backlash because it is kinda obvious once you compare the other "plutoids" out there that a name similar to asteroids could make sense.
I absolutely loved this video. It was so well done and I learned a lot about planetary classification in only 30 minutes!! I hope your channel keeps growing and keep up the great work!!
There is a noticable size difference between Pluto and Eris compared to the rest of the smaller objects. Maybe they aren't planets however I think in the future it might be helpful to classify them as something different.
somehow it's not being discussed that Pluto-Charon is actually closer to a binary PLanet system, ala the Centaurus system (3 stars in in orbital resonance), since the gravitational barycenter is well outside of Pluto's surface. Earth-Luna was the largest example of size relation of planet-satellite, until the details about Charon became better known. Add in the fact that both Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other, and it's a slam dunk.
My complaint isn't that they made Pluto not in the club, it's that a dwarf PLANET is a planet due to the name and then continued to say "not a planet". I think they should admit they are planets, and call them Planets/Planetoids or Major and Minor Planets. This preserves a simple list of important ones while acknowledging the other significant bodies are similar and relevant without confusing people as much..
What's the difference between dwarf planet and Minor planet? The only difference I see is that you prefer the word minor to dwarf. I don't buy your argument
@@enadegheeghaghe6369 The term “minor planet” was used a long time ago when we thought there were “major planets” (Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, etc.) and “minor planets” (Juno, Vesta, Pallas, etc.). Once we determined that these “minor planets” are less massive and geophysically different than the planets we were familiar with, we realized they weren’t “planets” at all, but asteroids. So the term “minor planet” was dropped, but some people at the Minor Planet Center still continue to use the term for some reason. I caution against using it because it doesn’t make sense to call an asteroid a planet when it’s not. “Asteroid” replaced “minor planet”. Dwarf planet is a different can of worms. It was a term coined by planetary scientists in the early 90s to mean “small planet”, like how the sun is called a dwarf star to mean “small star”. This term does NOT refer to asteroids, but objects that are actually spherical and planetary like Pluto, Eris, Makamake, Sedna, and more. This term get far more mileage because it actually makes sense. Some people call them “minor planets” because they’re lower mass and gravitationally minuscule compared to the eight “major planets”, but that can get confusing. I’d just stick with terrestrial planets, giant planets, and dwarf planets.
I was initially skeptical if this really was Atlas Pro, or worse if someone was stealing his videos and posting on this channel. Then thankfully I watched until the end and there he was explaining he is also Astro Pro! Let's gooooooo!
I remember when I was a kid, they announced Sedna in the newspaper and I cut that piece out because I was so excited for a new planet! I was really into space back then and space still interests me now!
I like the term proto planet. I've slowly been memorising the names of the dwarf planets. I'm intrigued by them. But the moons which are as large or larger than Pluto are curious too. I'm fascinated by all the discoveries in and out of our solar system. Which is why I name my pets after astronomical objects. (4 birds and 3 cats. Psyche, Pandora, Vega, Sojourn, Sola, Lunas, Aster. Eris and Callisto have flown to the bright bird cage in the sky.) Anyway, space and all its wonders are entrancing to observe and think about. Thanks for the video!
It's funny -- as a kid I accepted that Pluto wasn't a planet right away because I assumed we had just learned more about our surroundings and were updating everyone on that. My first love was dinosaurs and science documentaries, so maybe I was just more comfortable with the idea that scientists were frequently revising things as we learned more and understood our findings in better ways
same thing here, to be honest, i don't even remember pluto being a planet itself, maybe i am too young. but, I've always heard about pluto being "no longer a planet" and accepted as an update on our conceptions, or new discoveries. i was also a dino and documentary kid, up to the conception that science is not constant, since it is a way of creating knowledge, not the knowledge itself, so things we classify today as something will be classified as others as our understanding and classifications grow. maybe one day, pluto and other similar bodies will be once again planets.
I was in elementary school when the change happened and was also a nature/science documentary kid. Blue planet was awesome as a kid, and "Life" was really cool when it first came out. I just accepted the change as the newest documentaries always had more info and corrections over older ones. One thing that is really cool in the age of streaming is you can find a documentary series like "How the Universe Works" and watch season 1 through season 10, but its really cool to watch the season 1 episode on black holes and then watch the season 10 episode on the same topic. Both episodes are made with the same good faith and most up to date information but its hilarious how different they are, because newer data supports a different theory.
@@Jellyman1129 The 'research' in question was realizing that newer information from reputable sources all agreed it wasn't, and that when newer information is in agreement when it comes to science, it is usually more correct than the old information. That kind of critical thought is frankly pretty impressive for an elementary-age kid (or heck, even in most adults I would say); what else would you expect a kid to be able to do (or even the general public in this kind of situation, most people don't have private access to multi-million telescopes!
@@Fernietheplantso you can name them all, without any external help, or spelling. Bc yeah I can name 500 of them, but not off the top of my head. Humans can’t remember more than 250 faces/names at a time, so it’ll take help
I loved your statements of "Our ability to observe the universe briefly exceeded our own our understanding of the universe." and the ending of "[Science] is about receiving new information and updating your understanding." Too many people think science is proving stuff right, when in fact science is doing something over and over and over to prove itself wrong. Then figuring out what is wrong with it. It reminds me of all the many aspects of sciences that people act like are 100% concrete at all times. These things though constantly change and adapt like our understanding of Atoms. Even going beyond the Natural Sciences of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology if we look at the Social Sciences things are changing constantly! Sociology, Anthropology, Criminology, Economics, Linguistics, etc. We look at the way that people in the past thought about things and update the terms and ideas to match our increased understandings. However since Natural sciences are a lot easier to prove because you can just throw math at the arguments... social sciences are happening all around us and affect how we view ourselves and our place in the world. My favorite aspects of the Social Sciences is Philosophy with things like Metaphysics, Social Constructs, and Intersectionality.
Ummm…retired lecturer in Philosophy here. Philosophy isn’t a social science. It isn’t any kind of science, but an exploration of fundamental questions by use of reason. The main divisions are metaphysics (what is the nature of reality) epistemology (how do we know anything) and axiology (study of values - right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, cool and uncool). Social constructs and intersectionality (awful word!) are concepts from social science. Social science isn’t really science either.
I like the term planetoid, an object that has some but not all the characteristics of a planet. It’s something that could be used to describe some of the moons in our solar system too. Even our moon has many things in common with Pluto or Eris. But our moon isn’t a planet, so therefore planetoid.
On a serious note you mentioned our moon, which is moving away from us every second, about 4cm a year. At one epoch no longer will eclipses happen as we see today, but the earths gravitational force will be superceded by another force centrifugal(¿) And be thrown into a different orbit. Maybe stable enough around the sun that it meets all the criteria for the planet. The new name for Luna To Jänus?
You have to be one of my favorite TH-camrs, and this video shows why. The stories you weave are just so well told. Looking forward to more great Space content like this one! (BTW, congrats on the new house. And your new hair style at the end is fantastic!)
Also, what is the definition of a moon? Luna, about 380,000 km from Earth, orbits the Sun in almost exactly the same shape as Earth, is orders of magnitude closer to the ratio of the Earth than just about anything else in the Solar System other than Charon and Pluto, is also just as round as the Earth and is in hydrostatic equilibrium, and the Sun exerts much more force on it than the Earth does in fact, about twice as much. That would suggest that Luna is a planet too, and certainly I imagine that if we made a bunch of colonies on it, for which we have a number of ideas as to how to do it and have actually physically been there, if they raised people there, they would probably think of their home to be just as important as Earth, Mars, Mercury, and others. Hell, Mercury even looks a lot like Luna.
Earth-Moon are a binary system. It is difficult to visualize because of the center of gravity of the system being so near earth, and because we are viewing it from the larger body, and because the binary system 'wobbles' through its orbit once every 28 days.
@@12cat123 Does the Moon really orbit the Earth? The gravitational force on the Moon from the Sun is twice that of Earth's pull. And what other body in the Solar system is even remotely close to being able to swing around the bigger body with such strength? Charon around Pluto is the only other rounded body in the Solar System that does this in addition to the Moon. The Moon can get the barycentre to about ⅔ the difference from the core to the surface. Not even Callisto, Ganymede, or Titan can do that with Jupiter and Saturn and they are bigger than Mercury. The shape of the Moon's orbit around the Sun is essentially a circle, and this is not true of any other rounded body in the solar system except for Charon, and the planets both dwarf and major.
Atlas Pro made a channel _just_ for astronomy? Instantly subbed. Also, I finally have an excuse to rewatch all the old astronomy videos from the Atlas Pro channel. I'm going to start with the video on Areography since that's one of my all-time favourite videos from the channel. I look forward to all your future videos!
Back then as a kid in the early 2000s I was very interested in space and astronomy, and i remember hearing the news that a 10th (Sedna) and 11th (Eris) planet were discovered. I remember Eris was originally called "Xena" back then, and somehow I thought for years that it was officially called Xena until I learned that it was renamed to Eris already soon after its discovery.
@@lordearthblood Ha ha... Yea I know about her too.... But I also remember Eris was called Xena in the beginning.... and it is kind of a cool name for some reason.... And the warrior princess didn't make the name worse ;-)
It's interesting to see this perspective, because I was just about to graduate high school when the announcement came out, and we took several weeks off from other material in my physics class to talk about the whole thing and calculate out some related things using what we'd been learning in physics (def very basic stuff, but as a teacher you gotta take what real life application moments you get!). So like, was probably the ideal age to just be fully informed about the decision, since adults not in the field could easily avoid looking up the context, and kids of a younger age probably weren't ready to get into the stuff about it all in their science classes. But also, our entire way of classifying objects in our solar system probably should be adjusted. Maybe talk about our "ten orbital ranges" to kids, one named for each of our eight planets and one for the astroid belt and one for the kuiper belt, since those groupings are still easily teachable without trying to group disparate objects weirdly. Each orbital range is rather unique, and that would give a good stepping stone to talk about all the smaller, less charismatic orbital bodies in the ranges of the inner planets too!
This is such a good video. I watch a lot of space content and nothing is managed, coordinated and explained in such an organised timeline. 5 star video 📹 ✨️
I think the part where you talk about how our ability to observe the universe exceeded our understanding of it is interesting because we're basically there again with dark matter
I think planet should be a large category for all bodies in hydrostatic equilibrium that are not stars (including the large moons). If you want a short list for the kids, you can still call the terrestrial planets, gas giants, and ice giants the 8 major planets.
I couldn’t agree more! I use the geophysical planet definition as it’s far less ambiguous. Instead of kids learning the names of every single planet, just have them learn the types. There’s terrestrial planets (like Earth), giant planets (like Jupiter), dwarf planets (like Pluto) and satellite planets (like Titan).
@@Jellyman1129 @Jellyman Thank you. Oh, I didn't know that the sun is a dwarf star. I just disagree with the notion that Pluto is not anymore a planet. Its characteristics are like a planet except that it's small. But some satellites are also too small but there's no dwarf satellite category 😅 Anyway, I agree to your categories and it can be truly considered.
I was not sure from the title if this was going to be solar planets or exo-planets, but having watched the whole video you did an excellent job of explaining why Pluto is no longer classified as a planet. I was surprised that you did not mention the KBO known as Zena and it's moon Gabriel given its size.
I had forgotten that those two had initially been named after two characters from a television series, until they finally came up with the official names.
Every single video of yours manages to blow me away. Your attention to detail and dedication to your work is spectacular. Keep up the good work. You're by far my favorite content creator on TH-cam.
First of all, I absolutely loved this video. Your research, editing, presentation, humor, and narration are fantastic for such a young channel!! The one MAJOR thing I think you miss in this video is who the IAU is... They're made up of ASTRONOMERS. I was always convinced by the definition change here until I read Alan Stern's book about the New Horizon's mission to Pluto. There's a whole chapter in there about how the IAU had no business defining what a planet is because astronomers don't study planets internally so much as they study how celestial bodies behave, interact, and form. According to Stern, a planetary scientist and the leader of the New Horizon's mission, the people who should get to define what a planet is are PLANETARY SCIENTISTS. Pluto has an atmosphere, glaciers, active volcanos; it is incredibly geologically active. To Stern, not calling these planets is like saying dwarf stars aren't stars. To try to come up with a new classification just so that it's easier to remember the planets is a PR nightmare to him. Plus, the IAU definition is sloppy since it says it must orbit "the sun". It literally excludes exo-planets. And for bodies floating in interstellar space that have no accretion disk to compare to, you can't say it has or hasn't "cleared it's neighborhood". for more: pswscience.org/meeting/is-pluto-a-planet/ Anyway, I'm not incredibly convinced either way, they're just definitions. Definitions are just there to help us communicate, and if that's what the astronomers and planetary scientists are doing effectively, then let them have their way. It's ultimately a linguistic problem and not a science problem. Thanks for so eloquently bringing out this discussion!! You should totally make a patreon, I'd sign up in a heartbeat... Excited to see what comes next, subscribed!!!
Fantastic comment, I couldn’t agree more! I was convinced at a young age that Pluto wasn’t a planet (mostly due to its small size) until I heard about New Horizons and Alan Stern. I saw his analysis of the IAU definition as well as the process of the vote and immediately switched sides to his definition. The EXPERTS of the field should define what they study, NOT an outside organization (especially by unscientific vote). So I’m with Stern on this, his definition makes way more sense from a scientific and principle standpoint.
Huh, I never knew about the new classification of "plutoid"; I think that makes a lot of sense. If we had to start changing names like asteroids due to not matching what they are, then we'd also lose out on the word "nova" (new star), which means we'd also lose out on supernova and hypernova, etc. and I would prefer to keep those cool sounding names. Plutoid also rolls off the tongue better than dwarf planet or proto-planet; less syllables lol
I like your proposed names, but I would also specifically like to keep Proto-planet as a name. Specifically for those space rocks whose mass and spin give it a regular smooth outline like Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Haumea, etc.
I am a student astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Labs, and I thought I knew it all!! Turns out there is so much more rich history and politics involved in our astronomical discoveries than I thought. So cool man; I subscribed and hope to see more.
The first two criteria of the definition of "planet" makes sense as it excludes all of the asteroids except for Ceres. An argument could also be made for the third part of the definition, too though I wonder how useful that distinction really is when it comes to studying the objects in our solar system. It has also been pointed out that But I think this does a great disservice to the vast complexity of the solar system. Pluto may not be big, but its geology is remarkably complex, active, and potentially capable of harboring life. (It's funny how "size" and "developed" are assumed to be one and the same thing in this comment section.) Pluto's characteristics actually puts it in good company with other bodies that also aren't considered planets at all, such, such as Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter's moons Io and Europa. I would like to also point out that some of these moons and Kuiper Belt Objects and the rocky inner planets Earth through Mars have more in common with each other than they do with the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (Someone from Jupiter might look at our solar system and conclude that there are only four planets). A strong argument could also be made that while distinguishing between planets and satellites is useful when looking at planetary systems (particularly complex systems such as Jupiter's and Saturn's) the distinction says next to nothing about other characteristics of the satellite. For example, Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos are much more like asteroids, whereas the the likes of Titan and Io are more complex and might better described as planets that just happen to be have been captured into the orbit of another planet. I find it noteworthy that "dwarf planets" and "minor planets" (asteroids) have the word "planet" in their name even though they aren't supposed to be called planets. For the purpose of teaching people about our solar system, might it not make more sense to call all them planets and then talk about the subclassifications rather than focusing extensively on individual planet names? That certainly would teach a child a lot more about our solar system than just memorizing the names of planets. We can talk about our four gas giants and our four inner rock planets, both which could be a sub-categories of planets that orbit on the planetary plane--essentially what we now call planets. Asteroids could be asteroids, which is important for us understanding potentially dangerous Near Earth objects (though I'm not sure if objects two meters wide and 800 km wide should be in the same "asteroid" category). Kuiper Belt Objects could be Kuiper Belt Objects. Comets could be comets. Geologically active bodies, like Pluto, Titan, Io, etc., could be their own category. Some of these might be free-floating planets, some of them might become satellites of other planets, and some of them might become Trojans or co-orbit in other ways. Some of these may change their status along the way--for example, the Moon will eventually leave Earth's orbit. I think history will show the IAU classification to be horribly limited and not very useful for our understanding of planets. Now that we are discovering planets orbiting other star systems, we will find it necessary to develop better categories and classifications in order to better understand our universe.
DING DING DING!! You hit the nail on the head! I don’t think creating an arbitrary dividing line for planets just to help memorize their names is a scientific concept. And like you said, it does a massive disservice to the complexity of the solar system. Many places like Enceladus or Europa May harbor life! They’re certainly better candidates for life than Mars, but Mars gets more attention because it’s a “planet”. Planetary experts signed a petition to reject the 2006 vote immediately after it was made. To this day, they continue to ignore the IAU vote and use a better definition called the geophysical planet definition. It says a planet is any object in space large enough to be round by its own gravity (hydrostatic equilibrium), but not so large that it ignites in nuclear fusion (because then it would be a star). Short, sweet, and simple. It’s about the physical characteristics of the object, regardless of the orbit or location. So Earth, Jupiter, Pluto, Sedna, Ceres, and even Titan, Io, Enceladus, and many more are ALL planets! And like you said, Titan and Io are more similar to other planets than Phobos and Deimos. They’re still moons, but “moon” just means satellite. It doesn’t tell you ABOUT the satellite. Io is a planetary satellite and Phobos is an asteroidal satellite. So they’re still moons IN ADDITION to being planets/asteroids. Large round moons are just planets that orbit other planets. You can divide planets by orbit. Planets that orbit the sun are solar planets (like Venus). Planets that orbit other stars that aren’t the sun are extrasolar planets (like Dragur). Planets that orbit other planets are satellite planets (like Titan). Planets that orbit nothing are rogue planets (like OGLE-2016-BLG-1928). Or you can divide them by composition and size. Medium-sized planets with rocky crusts and metal cores are terrestrial planets (like Earth). Large planets made of gas are gas giant planets (like Jupiter). Small planets with icy crusts and rocky cores are dwarf planets (like Pluto). There’s also solar system regions. The inner zone (the Sun to the Asteroid Belt), the middle zone (Jupiter to Neptune) and the outer zone (the Kuiper Belt to the Oort Cloud). So astronomers can have their cake and eat it too. They can divide objects by their differences using different metrics AND have ALL of them STILL BE PLANETS because of their unified similarities. I don’t know why they felt like they had to remove objects from planet-hood. Pluto is different from the terrestrial planets, but the terrestrial planets are VERY different from the gas giants. And yes, the giant planets may think there are only four planets in the solar system, since they’re in a league of their own. The terrestrial planets look like specs of debris by comparison, so we shouldn’t shame Pluto for its size. “Minor planet” got replaced with “asteroid” once we found out these “minor planets” weren’t planets at all. They aren’t large enough to be a spherical shape, so they became a distinct object. So I wouldn’t use the term “minor planet” since it gets confusing and isn’t used anymore for that reason. And as we discover more planets around other stars, it makes the IAU definition look more and more idiotic with the first criterion stating planets must orbit the Sun and only THE SUN. So the IAU definition sucks and you have the right mindset! Well said! 👍🏻👍🏻
I know you briefly touched on it but the notion of Planet X still existing fascinates me. I’m not really sure what else there is to say on the topic but a video on where/what Planet X might be like would be cool.
It might exist or it might not, some people think it’s the solar system’s missing “super-Earth” others say it could be a completely transparent gas giant
It just doesn't exist, What they where looking for was found out to be failed math, they expected a near Jupiter mass object to explain the anomaly, but the discovery of general relativity fixed the math Planet 9 is a completely different theory than the Planet X theory, and theoretically it could be possible, as the math for it only puts it at around 3-4 Earth masses, but even then, it's also likely based on incorrect math
Astronomy unfortunately will be confusing for awhile. I like your idea for the use of protoplanet but that already seems to be a classification so there's gonna be a lot of change lol That could also bring the other Ceres sized objects in the outer reaches of the solar system into the dwarf planet category Edit: after doing a bit more research on the solar system I feel as if dwarf planet is currently the best way to describe these planets as they are dwarf in comparison to the rest of the terrestrial planets
I think what we should do is have a name for all spherical objects directly orbiting the sun, which "planet" or "planetoid" would work well as. And then a distinction between the tiny ones like Ceres and Pluto which should be "dwarf planets" (following the naming convention of dwarf stars), and then "main planets" could cover the large ones with a distinction between terrestrial/rocky main planets and the Gas/Ice Giants. The unfortunate reality is that like most things in nature this is a spectrum and we are applying arbitrary categories. Categories are still useful but at the edges the distinction is often irrelevant. (Red and orange are distinct colors, but if i give you a laser at 621nm and one at 619nm i doubt you could tell that the first is technically red and the second is technically orange. Sorting anything in nature is the same way, usually the exact distinction is pretty arbitrary but the category is useful in some way.)
0:24 'dwarf planet.....something literally no-one had heard of before' - errr what? The term was being used in my english astronomy books in the early 80's, to describe ceres and other large asteroids. It was first defined in 2000 by Stern. It didnt get voted on by the IAU until 2006. So any astronomer in the english-speaking world with an interest in the solar system would know the term by 2000.
Alan Stern coined “dwarf planet” in 1991, but it meant “small planet”, analogous to “dwarf star” and “dwarf galaxy”. The IAU completely botched the term to mean something completely different.
I learned the nine planets as a kid. When I studied astronomy in college I found out about Ceres and I was angry we didn't learn about it as kids. I think "planet" should be an umbrella term for everything with hydrostatic equilibrium, including major moons. We don't have to memorize 420 planets, but we shouldn't omit teaching about all but 8. How cool would it have been to know there was a little planet in the asteroid belt??? For how much of a space nerd I was, it's so sad I never knew about Ceres.
I feel like planet should be your term and the ones we currently teach should be called major planets or something similar, that way they can all be planets but we can teach the smaller set to young kids.
Agreed, Ceres and the gas giant moons often get overlooked just because they are not called planets, even though Ganymede and Titan are even bigger than Mercury, and some of them are very interesting in regards to liquid water and possible life under their crusts, and possible exploration and human settlement in the further future. 18th and 19th century german astronomers actually sometimes called large moons "Nebenplaneten", meaning by-planets or side-planets, which I think is a fitting word for the planet-sized ones.
I agree that all round bodies orbiting the sun should be considered planets - just as we classify the 8 major planets into terrestrial and gas giants we can easily classify ceres and any other round asteroids into inner belt planets and Pluto and eris and any other round kuiper belt objects as outer belt planets Irregular or oblong objects are merely space rocks - I agree that asteroid is not a good name (they used to be called planetoids or planetesimals) but I think the term is too popular to change now
I agree, although it is worth noting that makes Luna a planet too and brings the number of planets up to around 36 with the "plutoids" of Varda and Salacia being the most controversial.
I heard about Ceres from a friend who was into Astrology. This was before the whole Pluto fiasco. The reason Pluto was demoted was because at the time they thought the asteroids were shards of a planet that had exploded. So Ceres and the others were demoted. Later it was determined that this was not the case. That's just where a bunch of solar system rocks had collected. But they also found out of all the other objects in the belt, Ceres was, in fact, round. Even so, the mistake was not acknowledged and Ceres was not reinstated as a planet. But when this dwarf planet classification came about, they threw it in there. Because dwarf planets are important too, right. Separate but kinda equal, right? Well, I do space outreach. We set up information booths about space discoveries and stuff. I had found a solar system graphic that included the dwarf planets. A twelve year old girl walked up and stared at the map. She pointed to the small circle between Mars and Jupiter inside the asteroid belt. "What's this?" She asked. So I told her it was dwarf planet Ceres. "Why didn't anyone tell me about this!" She said with that same astonished anger those of us have to the suppression of the glory that us our solar system. So we had a little talk. Point being, the varsity team is the one that gets all the press. The minimum is what gets taught, and because dwarf planets aren't "important" enough to be planets, they aren't important enough to be taught as key prices of our solar system. That's sad... Not for Pluto or Ceres, but what it means for the imagination of our kids living in a bigger solar system than they thought
Regarding the term "asteroid": It wasn't because the astronomers thought that they were small stars, it was because they were too small to resolve them in their telescopes as disks, like the planets. They could only see them as dots, like stars, hence star-like.
I only remember August 24th, 2006 because it was the day I was born, it's quite interesting to know Pluto became a dwarf planet on the same day. Funnily enough I never knew Pluto had become a "dwarf planet" until I was like 10 or 11, I was very confused at why Pluto suddenly got demoted.
@@Jymboslicx When one “scientist” (Brian Marsden) leads the IAU vote with only 4% of the total membership in attendance because he wants to tarnish the career of his rival (Clyde Tombaugh) and another “scientist” (Mike Brown) goes along with it for an ego boost, it’s a political battle.
@@Jymboslicx When one “scientist” (Brian Marsden) leads the IAU vote with only 4% of the total members in attendance because he wants to tarnish the career of his rival (Clyde Tombaugh), and another “scientist” (Mike Brown) goes along with it for an ego boost, it’s a political battle.
Great video. The only thing that bothers me is the use of expressions like 'demoted', 'downgraded' to refer to Pluto. I believe this further helps feeding the controversy, because it implies there is ranking / hierarchy among celestial bodies. Unfortunately, many science communicators do this. In fact, as explained in this video, Pluto was *reclassified* due to better data. That's it. No need to attach antropomorphic feelings or social status among its 'peers'. Thanks for all the information and clear message.
I wish you talked about Pluto's active geology which has sustained itself for billions of years through mostly its own radioactive decay in its rocks like Earth, rather than through tidal forces such as the Galilean moons. Pluto is just as planet-like as Mercury, Venus, and Mars. A lonely cryovolcano has been discovered on Ceres, indicating that this king of the asteroid belt is right on the line between a geologically active body orbiting the sun (a planet), and one which isn't. Triton is especially interesting, because it's the only large moon in our solar system which geologically makes sense to be a captured planet, and the only large moon with a retrograde orbit. Geologically, out of any body in the system currently known, Triton has the best case for being the tenth planet with anything less planet-like than Triton orbiting the sun but still being spherical, a dwarf planet, but has essentially been entrapped by Neptune, rendering only nine planets :)
what’s your thought on the alternate classification that considers the moon a planet? basically instead of one planet, there’s a separate gas and rocky planet classification, since earth is more similar to the moon or pluto or mars than to jupiter, but i don’t remember the specifics of the theory. if you pulled the moon off of earth and made it orbit the sun it would have been considered a planet in antiquity and probably still now.
That’s the definition I prefer, called the geophysical planet definition. It classifies planets based on WHAT they are, not WHERE they are. By definition, the moon is a planet and so are other round moons.
6:33 I realy don't want to correct you but Wilhelm Herschel was a German. Yes he lived in England, but he was born in my Hometown of Hannover and many important things are named after him, like a school or a Observatory. For comparison too Einstein lived in America but was born and raised in Germany. And nobody calls him Americas greatest Scientist or do they? With all do respect Wilhelm Herschel was a German Astronomer, who lived a long time in England. So far Im realy enjoying your new channel and wish you all the best so this channel too reaches the one million mark.
I consider dwarf planets to be planets, however, i feel like a lot of objects that somehow manage hydrostatic equilibrium with low mass should be considered planetoids. In all, Makemake is barely dwarf planet Also, speaking of dwarf planets, it’s been argued that Charon is actually a dwarf planet as well, and it and Pluto are a dual-planetary system, which does have merit. Technically, Pluto doesn’t orbit around the sun, it orbits around a point just above its atmosphere, which Charon also orbits, and said point is what orbits the sun. Lastly, the two bodies are tidally locked to each other, and all 4 other moons orbit both of them
I like planetoids as an umbrella term for geasteroids and cryasteriods. I've always thought that "clearing their orbital region" is a vaguely worded definition for a planet. Looking at the Wikipedia page for clearing orbits, there is some decent numerical standards that can be referred to, but I think the wording would be better off along the lines of "locally gravitational dominant."
That was both entertaining and informative! I’m a good thirty years older than you - I was well into my thirties when Pluto was demoted - but I have no problem with Pluto being placed into a different category than the eight planets. When I was learning the names of the planets was back when in elementary school, we were only taught about the nine planets and the asteroid belt. That’s it. I didn’t learn that any objects in the asteroid belt even had names until I was in college. That’s really unfortunate because I was fascinated by space and would have loved learning the names of more objects in our solar system. (I had a freakishly good memory and loved memorizing vast amounts of data, like memorizing the names of the stars in many of the better-known constellations. Thank you, autism spectrum!) I’m subscribed to your channel now, so I look forward to many more fascinating discussions of all things astronomical in nature.
You are the first guy that I have seen who explained this, and now I understand because that clearing the neighborhood thing was confusing. Thank you. Next Question what is in Plutos Neighborhood that hasn't been cleared
Excellent video, very informative. I'm a pretty big astronomy buff, but this was a fantastic way to put the planetary discoveries into a chronological order. Oh and puts into perspective the decision about Pluto as well. I'm not sure why everyone is so bothered by what it's called Planet, Plutoid, Dwarf planet... It is still what it is. Pluto. I have this feeling that as our technology improves, we are going to discover thousands of Kuiper belt object... then next will come the Oort cloud.
That was an excellent video. It was well made and explained the history and reasoning behind the decision really well. My kids and I really enjoyed it.
Dang bro, now I feel old, you’re fifteen years younger than me and way more eloquent! This was a great video, awesome graphics and animations, very informative and entertaining. Just what I was looking for, and the humor peppered throughout….Hahaha not MY ANUS, YOUR ANUS. lmao, dork. Awesome. 9:09 - why do they have three telescope pointed at the ground 😂
Imagine how chaotic the argument is gonna get and how many new categories will need to be created as humanity gets better at finding exoplanets. There's already a chaos of terms like "super earth" "hot Jupiter" and probably tons of stuff I haven't even heard of yet which are occasionally misused.
By the IAUs very definition, exp-planets are not planets at all. They run afoul of criteria 1: “…in orbit around *the Sun*.” Meaning our sun, Sol. There are only eight planets in the universe according to the IAU. Am I being a petty rules-lawyer to reach a conclusion I’d decided on before even beginning. Yes, but no more the IAU did themselves in 2006.
@@matthewtalbot6505 I don’t blame you at all! It’s easy to poke holes in the IAU definition, and people SHOULD do that because the IAU embarrassed themselves with a nonsensical argument.
I have never seen this decision broken down in such a clear way. I get it now. I always sort-of got it and agree that it was a good decision, but now I really understand the full process of arriving at that decision. Thanks!
Ultimately this distinction is just an arbitrary name we use to make sorting and remembering easier, so it can really be whatever. It's like trying to come up with a technical definition to define a pancake as different from a cookie, it doesnt change the nature of them or all the different baked goods between and around them
I find it very interesting someone took the actual time to name a planetary object using a click language. As far as what could be lurking in the darkness out beyond Neptune and even the Kuiper Belt, whatever it is, it has to be extremely dark, possibly as large as or larger than Jupiter, which could explain the wild erratic orbits on the Kuiper Belt Objects, and very high in mass. I would either learn towards a Super Jupiter, or maybe even a Brown Dwarf Star which borders and blurs the line between a failed star and a Super Jupiter. As far as where it is... You'd have to calculate a LOT of math as to the orbits of every possible object, the orbital plains of them, and maybe even gravitational measurements as well, and then you still have a LOT of sky to observe.
The three second pause after introducing Uranus is the equivalent of a laugh track
Good to know I'm not the only one who perceived it like that :D
The 12 year old in me laughed
*soft piano notes*
Needed a cricket noise.
Agreed but far more effective.
I think we all sleep on the fact Ceres got an upgrade from "Asteroid" to "Dwarf Planet."
And it is visible in a 4 inch telescope, which was preaty cool, when I found it one night. It resolved as a neat little circle in the eyepiece.
(Neptune and Uranus generally resolve as little blue pinprick dots if you find them- and really need a bit of a bigger telescope)
Of course, asteroids have for the longest time been classified as "minor planets".
must have been a 4 inch refractor....price really jumps up from going from 3.3 inch to a 4inch.
I believe it has been seen by the naked eye by people with extremely good night vision at high elevation dark sky sites.
@accelerationquanta5816 No it isn't. It fails one category.
@accelerationquanta5816 Well since I was one of the people responsible for the criteria required (2006 IAU resolution) I think I might know this. To be considered a planet the object has to have cleared its orbit - Ceres has not done that.
The definition is:
A "planet" is a celestial body inside the Solar System that
(a) is in orbit around the Sun,
(b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape,
(c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
"Planetoid" is the only fitting name, because they are tiny planets; I think that is the name I was taught in Astronomy in college (I was taught it somewhere), and now I know why. We have two very different kinds of planets, and so there is nothing wrong with two very different kinds of planetoids.
only 2 different kinds of planets?
I don't know bro I don't normally put the 4 rocks in the same bag as the 4 gas giants
Neptune and Uranus are considered ice giants so wouldn't it be 3?
In 1987 in the 6th grade I said I didn't think Pluto was a planet. We hadn't discovered the Kuiper Belt yet, but science knew comets came from the outer solar system. That there were a bunch of ice chunks out there and occasionally one got bumped toward the inner solar system and became a comet. I think it was called the ice belt. I thought it was like the asteroid belt, just ice instead of rock. I said Pluto was just an above average size ice chunk. The teacher said it was a planet because it had an atmosphere and a moon. I said comets have atmospheres and if it came closer to the sun it would have a tail. And I said there are asteroids with other asteroids orbiting them, they aren't planets. Pluto even has an off plane elliptical orbit like a comet. Not the best technical definition, but I was 11 and had just thought this up 2 minutes earlier.
The teacher said "That is the stupidest thing I have heard in my entire life." So I was thrilled in 2006 when Pluto got demoted. I hope my 6th grade teacher was still alive and remembered calling me stupid.
@@BrettonFerguson BURN! American school system be like:
@@WinVisten Yes america schools.
The same teacher once said the Earth's inner core was molten metal. I corrected her and said the outer core was liquid, but the inner core was a solid. She said I was stupid because the core was like 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit so the Iron would be melted. I said melting temperature increases with pressure. At that point she told me to go to the principal's office "for being a smart ass".
Humans really love to sort stuffs in boxes. It helps us a lot, but nature really loves to tell us that it couldnt care less about our boxes.
Actually, we are looking at nature's boxes and simply labelling them.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver No, nature doesn't have boxes. Nature doesn't care. OP was correct, we create our own boxes.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver No, we try to simplify reality to reduce complexity, but nature is just inherently complex. That's why semantics will always be debated.
@@gljames24 We observe a loose association of body types in our solar system. Same for stars and galaxies.
I do really wish people would stop insisting that the boxes themselves are some sort of objective truth, and I am sad that he stooped to doing that at the end of the video.
Haumea is the most criminally underrated object in the entire solar system
yup
yea
It's not a crime it's a felony
The great egg in the sky needs its voice heard
@@tartine2463 You made me spit out my water, but I'm not angry.
I've always wanted to see a near complete model of the solar system. With features like the kuiper belt, the oort cloud, hills cloud, all of the planetoids, all of jupiter's moons, the trans-neptunian objects like Sedna and Haumea, to name a couple, the asteroid belt and the significantly sized asteroids that we've named. Plus the usual details like planets etc.
Imagine having to model each asteroid they found💀
@@el-verdadero_mordecai-456 There are probably a ton more models in a large open sandbox type game like Breath of the Wild, GTA V, or something else I haven't played. Sorry, not big on gaming.
I've often wondered how people deal with tasks like that. Not as complicated as modeling large amounts of objects, that's way beyond me. But just entering information into a massive database. Like say, you want to start a dictionary site. You'd need a database with all of your words in it for the website to consult whenever somebody searches. Sorry if this is too simplistic I just don't want to assume any prior knowledge and cause confusion. And I just think about how many tens of thousands of UNIQUE entries they have in each entry in the database. And every one of them had to be entered by a person.
Again, I'm no expert, but I'm sure they have ways to automate it to a degree. For example to digitize books, I found an app where you just point your camera at a page in a book and it turns it into a pdf document. But aside from hiring people at slave wages to do data entry for you, I dunno how they would fill even a database with 10k entries.
And yeah, then you get into video games you suddenly you have databases of objects that have to be called in a very specific manner at very specific events. The database itself may have just as many items, but the way they're interacted with is way more complex than just a user searching for one at a time.
And nevermind actually making the maps for these games. Like Breath of the Wild's map is apparently about the size of Manhatten! Give or take, of course. But looking at other games, that's about the size of the maps for some of these large ones. You've gotta think about a game like GTA V where they had to recreate large parts of LA, although I guess a good bit of the groundwork was already done in San Andreas. But they still basically had to start from a vague template. Not to mention, as big as San Andreas' map was, V's dwarfs it. I'm curious how big VI's will be.
@@VoidHalo Nope, Not even close, the amount of KBOs is staggering
Universe Sandbox only renders the important ones, and all others are just a generic dust cloud
Just go look at Space Engine. It's not perfect but good enough.
The I.A.U hurt Pluto's feelings and laugh at Pluto and calling Pluto names right?
Wait, Ceres has 33% of the mass on the asteroid belt? That's amazing.
We totally need to move all mining operations out there asap.
No need to mine on Earth for Space-based equipment / resources beyond the first few generations.
@@TechRyze -- That might not be as useful for resources though. Ceres is mostly Rock, Ice, Salt, and Clay. There's some graphite and sulphur too. The heavier elements may have sank to the core over billions of years of cryovolcanism.
All that water is great for a station though. Lots of propellant for rockets, lots of water for easy shielding from radiation, and lots of drinks for the monkeys! Asteroids for mining could be towed into orbit, and the refining equipment kept near the (relative) comfort of a full station.
Exactly why it's cool. It's such a massive object in the belt. It would be cool if more people knew about it.
@@TechRyze What is there to mine? And what use even were it found?
@@eannamcnamara9338 1 Ceres is only 11 percent the mass of the Moon.
Dude, I really have to say that you're an exceptional TH-camr. The effort you put into your videos has gone to the point where you have taken some of the first steps to properly visualize and render what has previously been abstract and distant into something tangible and clear. You painstakingly rendered like over 20 celestial objects, many of which have never been rendered to the level of detail you've done here. I've been with you on Atlas Pro since before 100k and I'm so excited to see what you do on this channel.
Now I understand Pluto's demotion even better.
What I find pretty silly however is the reasoning behind their choice to make it simple for kids in school. I understand that too, but just because you want to make it simpler, that doesn't mean there is just 8 planets in the solar system.
I was in 2nd grade in 2005, so Pluto was among the planets we kids worked on. Can't remember what planet I worked on.. could have been Mercury?
Regardless, I would have LOVED to have even more planets to read about in school! Space is so fascinating!
There are 9 planets in our solar system and 4 known planetoids.
Alright then learn all asteroids and TNOs [insert gru holding you on gunpoint here]
To make it simpler, they could’ve just chosen to only teach the classical nine planets while still recognizing there are more out there. You can have your cake and eat it too. Voting to change scientific facts is not science, nor is the motivation behind it valid.
It's okay to disagree with the IAU's arbitrary third criteria.
@@ulfrinn8783 Yeah, I don’t know why people think the IAU has the final word of this subject. It’s clear that they don’t and many people already ignore their definition, myself included.
The human ability to argue about massive rocks floating in space half a light-year away is frankly astonishing.
Yeah, it's crazy that we argue about the smallest particles to the biggest galaxies, but also kind of impressive that we have the means to do that at all.
Sorry if I'm taking this too seriously and you were just making an exaggeration, but you went a bit far there. The planets are several to dozens of astronomical units away. A light year is used for interstellar distances where rogue planets and stars would inhabit, and is many thousands of times further away.
Kuiper Belt is not rocky bodies. They are icy bodies.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver also these are way closer than half a light year. It's less than a thousandth of a lightyear.
Pluto is like half a light day away if not closer.
Pluto, apparently not even in the solar system.
Calling them Plutoids instead of Icesteroids is one of the biggest misses in astronomical history.
Damn I wish I'd thought of Icesteroids 😂
@@astropro1 it was an appeal to the emotional pluto lovers who won't shut up after 16 years
Plutoid is a nice homage to dear old Pluto but we really need something more scientific.
@@astropro1 In fairness, cryasteroids sounds way more scientific
I cryo'd 🥶😭
This is easily the best explanation I’ve ever heard about this subject. Good work.
Keep in mind that with Sedna, there should be many similarly-sized objects on super long orbits like that. And perhaps even Mars-sized or even Earth-sized objects scattered among them as well. Finding Sedna really opens the door to the possibility of vast amounts of stuff on highly eccentric orbit.
I have a theory that the long awaited planet 9 might be an object so distant that it takes hundreds of thousands of years to complete it's orbit arround the sun, maybe a former rogue planet ?
Do i have anything to support this ? No lol, but it's cool to theorize.
If such an object were to be discovered, I assume the IAU will change their definitions again. It seems weird to have a Kuiper belt object the size of Mars or the Earth that isn't classified as a planet.
@@PyroBlaze202_alt um, there are no "Earth-sized" objects in Kuiper. Triton, Neptune's moon, is the largest. Triton is not even as large as the Moon.
@@jeffdeischer8692, none have been discovered. But, as far as I understand, one could be discovered. which is what I'm referencing in my comment.
@@PyroBlaze202_alt I wouldn’t doubt it. The IAU botched the definition to begin with, it’ll be obsolete in no time.
A couple of corrections:
9:14 Piazzi did not join the search, his find of Ceres was actually a huge concidence!
31:03 there has never actually been an anomaly in Neptune's orbit, we have long found out that our estimates of the mass of Neptune were slightly off (by taking actual measurements when Voyager 2 passed right next to it). The hypothesis for another big boy planet this time is based on the orbits of kuiper belt objects that are too far to be affected by Neptune, Sedna included
other than that, great video, people who complain about Pluto clearly have never heard about the story of the asteroid belt so I'm glad you took the time to explain how it shows that this was just a repeat of history 👍
I know people say Piazzi finding Ceres was a coincidence but I really doubt it. My guess is the celestial police didn’t ask him to look for it, so when he heard about it anyway and actually found it, the police lied and said his letter “must’ve gotten lost,” which remains the official story. I find it almost impossible to believe he found Ceres without knowing where to look first.
@@astropro1 I guess it is possible yeah. But "officially" he was not part of the group and just so happened to be systematically surveying that part of the sky correcting star charts he was in possession of 🤔
Damn. I was totally theorizing that Neptune's orbit was being deformed by the wormhole left out there by previous visitors.
Also if im not wrong there was some measurement whose calculated value (as per the newtonian model) wasnt aligned with the observed value; but what it turned out to be was that that newtonian model was fundamentally flawed in the sense that the main gravitational equation was "incorrect", and that when people used Einstein's theory of general relativity to calculate the aforementioned value they got something that lined up with the observed value.
@@elle9834 That was Mercury
Very good way to explain the history of planet naming. This really put a great context on it, that at one time we had even more than 9 planets and how that was trimmed down to 9, and now down to 8. That is until Planet 9 is discovered.
I'm a presenter/educator/communicator at a planetarium, and here are my thoughts on the subject. I think a lot of the controversy comes from the lack of teaching about the dwarf planets. I think that term is fine and describes what they are, similar to planets but smaller. It's just that when people talk about the Solar System and exclude the dwarf planets, of which Pluto is the one everyone knows, it doesn't satisfy peoples curiosity and desire to understand. I know this because I was in that position, being an elementary school kid in 2006 during the IAU scandal, and had read about Eris and other unnamed objects discovered beyond Pluto and wanted people to tell me more about them. By teaching people about the biggest of the dwarf planets (Ceres in the asteroid belt, Pluto in the Kuiper Belt, and Eris in the scattered disc, maybe a few of the others like Haumea) it explains that there are other significant objects orbiting the Sun that are worth exploring. This can also be said of the major moons of the Solar System; if someone is going to learn about Pluto and Eris then they should also learn about the Galilean moons, the large moons of Saturn, Triton, along with the familiar moon of Earth. By acknowledging Pluto and the other dwarf planets, separate still from the asteroids, planetoids, and tiny objects around the Solar System, even if in a separate category than the major planets, people will be satisfied to know that they exist and are interesting little worlds in their own right. It's ok to call them dwarf planets; it's not ok to call them nothing at all, and ommit them from existence.
This I can agree with. Pluto, Eris, and large round moons are just as interesting as planets, sometimes even more so (Titan is a lot more awesome than Mercury). Omitting them from Solar System models does them a great injustice as despite being called “dwarf” planets, these are very large objects, thousands of times larger than asteroids.
Learn to edit. C+
Hey, why not present/communicate/ or educate at the planetarium the possibility that Mercury is Venus' moon.
@@atomicplanets8226Mercury does not orbit Venus??? What the hell are you on?
Nobody loses interest in a celestial obeject because it's called a dwarf. Just to acknowledge that means that you are interested in astronomy to begin with. Most people couldn't care less. The real argument is on a precise definition of a planet.
the 3 seconds after Uranus's introduction and then the subtle piano when the audience is waiting for the punchline that's never coming is the best thing that has happened to me this week.
He didn't need a punchline, the audience knows the joke and the silence was just enough time to think of it and laugh before the content resumes. (We are all children)
we're never mature when it comes to uranus (audience laugh)
The silent pause after saying uranus was just too funny, but it be interesting to find out why they decided to name it that.
10:51 "Not my anus Uranus" 💀
@@guestiveuranus isn't a laughing matter ... uranus is huge full of gas and very important!
On the other hand by creating the concept of dwarf planet it raised Ceres from asteroid to dwarf planet. So that's cool. Ceres is an amazing celestial object, complex and dynamic, so to be classified as an asteroid would had been a diservice.
I also think the name Dwarf Planet is a cool name. Smaller doesnt mean less interesting or lesser. Peter Dinklage is no lesser of an actor despite being very short, is he?
Ceres was initially classified as a planet, but there wasn't a huge uproar when it was downgraded to asteroid. I guess because there was no internet back then.
@@Dulcimerist And people who loved astronomy acted more dignified and as adults back in the day.
@@carlossaraiva8213 Great point!
@@Dulcimerist Asteroids were a subset of planets back then (as with pretty much everything that's not either stars or comets). It wasn't until Kuiper's papers in 1950s that argued about asteroids' distinct physical differences from larger planets that they stopped being considered planets.
I think the reason for the lack of uproar was probably because Ceres was never really as popular as Pluto.
@@AstroChara Ceres is still very much a planet. Math isnt wrong the IAU is as ussual. No one in Astronmy agrees with that UN board of Selected politicians.
I remember hearing about Quaoar being discovered while I was in grade school, so for a while I included it as the 10th planet in the solar system.
Which really highlights the main reason why Pluto had to be excluded: Because any division between Pluto and the other Kuiper Belt objects would be far more arbitrary than a division between Pluto and the gas giants.
Also, seeing that table of planets with their mass/neighborhood ratio really cements the drastic difference between them and the objects in the Asteroid and Kuiper Belts.
Well, no. Pluto would stay a planet and Quaoar would get added. Also, Pluto’s mass in comparison to its orbit is so minuscule because it’s so far away, hence why Earth’s mass is greater than Jupiter’s shown on that graph. If Earth were moved to Pluto’s distance from the sun, it would suddenly not be a planet.
g!kúnǁ'hòmdímà
@@handledav What you said is a dwarf planet candidate, 2007 UK126
@accelerationquanta5816 Apparently astronomers couldn’t cope with the existence of more planets. They’re fine with billions of stars and galaxies, but planets reaching double digits is “too much”. Our solar system has hundreds of planets, they need to get used to it.
@@Jellyman1129Star” and “galaxy” are quite simply more general terms than “planet”. There are so many objects orbiting the sun that to say “well over a quintillion” wouldn’t even be an understatement, but only 8 of them are planets.
Love your terminology! You could even shorten those two terms to geoids and cryoids. (Asteroid means star-like, which… they’re really not at all.)
Atleast star-like makes sense in the context of being a point of light in the sky. But obviously we now know that is about the only similarity between asteroids and stars. (Tiny rocks vs giant perpetual nuclear explosions)
Geoid already has a meaning, so I thought terroid might be better... however, a quick Google search found that to be taken as well.
@@RuthBingham words can have many meaning associated to it
to be fair we still use the words galaxy and galactic, so asteroid honestly isn't that big of a deal considering that most people nowadays think of a big space rock when they hear asteroid and not something star-like
@@Mahlak_Mriuani_Anatman in this case, science doesn't like using identical terms for very different things if possible. Especially not when we're using classifying words. The entire point of classification is to maximally delineate as definitively as possible.
The idea that Planet X could be a fairly close, but still way further away than Pluto, black hole is terrifying to me.(Some theories suggest that one or several ones orbit our sun) Like this seems like a straight irrational phobia, since it's pretty clear that it poses no danger to our system, but I just get the panic jabics, the heebie jeebies, the AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!. I love black holes, but they are one of the few things in life that give me that deep, instinctual feeling of panic
I have so much respect for the part at 24:40, that's more effort put in trying to learn a completely foreign pronunciation than I've ever seen any other american do. And this is insane compared to trying to pronounce spanish, german and french, he did it right
Black hole orbits our sun? Are you high? Black hole are way more massive and they are center of masses of the galaxies. So, in fact, it's other way around, the sun is orbiting a black hole, just like all the other stars in our galaxy.
@@rakhatthenut3815 You may be right, as insane as your comment sounds. This comparably tiny black hole would definitely change our sun's orbit around the galactic core, even if it has less than 2 solar masses
or the "black hole orbiting the sun" could just be planet mass??
I'll rate this as second best lecture on planetary classification I've heard. I went to one in college (I think presented by either Trujillo or Brown but I honestly don't remember) called "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" that's always stuck with me. Partly for the fantastic name, partly because prior to that lecture actually explaining the why behind Pluto's reclassification in an accessible way I was staunchly pro-planet-Pluto.
That must’ve been Mike! That’s the book he wrote about all this. That’s awesome, I wish I could go to a lecture of his!
@@astropro1 It was back in 2007 or 2008 but I remember it being really interesting. Great work from you on this video as well!
@@astropro1 Brown and his co-author have a good paper from last year predicting the orbit of a massive trans-neptunian body "Planet Nine". ~6.2x Earth Mass at >300AU!
@@alexreustle I'm betting if Planet Nine exists it has not cleared it's orbit (the further out an object is the more massive it has to be to "clear it's orbit") and so Brown is either going to have to give up the clear it's orbit thing or admit it is not a "planet" even though it would be an ice giant.
That's a hilarious title for a lecture
While I agree with the science behind classifying Pluto, Ceres, Eris & co. as "dwarf planets" I've always sorta longed for a separate classification for those larger Asteroid / Kuiper Belt objects. I think they deserve a bit more distinction from the little scraps of rock their regions are known for. Ceres, Pluto and Eris are better described as "proto-planets" as they really do display all the characteristics of regular planets, just not as developed as their larger cousins. I think Haumea could be included in this as well, with its own little ring system. Great video!
The question here is; when does a hill become a mountain.
Can I interest you in the term "centaur"?
@@BerryTheBnnuy isn't that only for things influenced by Jupiter's orbit?
So basically just "all the dwarf planets except Makemake"
*separate
This is the first time I stumbled upon your channel and I must say I am impressed. This video is absolutely amazing, you deserve way more subscribers.
very good video! a couple things:
1: as others have pointed out, the anomalies in Neptune's orbit were actually due to a mathematical error. once the correct values were punched in, the discrepancy between its predicted orbit and its actual orbit disappeared completely. i can't remember the details, and i'm too lazy to search rn, but if you harass me i might go look it up.
2: the search for Planet 9 has recently been renewed, as some astronomers have noticed a strange clustering of Kuiper Belt objects with highly elliptical orbits that all point roughly in the same direction, which suggests another planet may exist with an elliptical orbit in the opposite direction.
3: there is also the story of the planet Vulcan, which was hypothesized to orbit extremely close to the Sun to explain anomalies in Mercury's orbit. it later turned out that these anomalies were due to the incomplete nature of Newtonian physics, and were resolved with the introduction of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
im glad theyre trying to find a new planet, lets just hope it actually exists
Search for planet 8*
I don't know why they're pretending Earth fits in the definition of planet when there are two "uncleared" asteroids swinging around us lol
@@SoftBreadSoft because, as Caelan pointed out in the video, its about the proportion between the planet's mass and the mass all of the things in its orbital path (because every planet - even Jupiter - is going to have stuff in its orbital path. hell, larger planets LIKE Jupiter are going to actually corral stuff into those places, which is why we get Trojans) and since Earth's mass dominates it's orbit, it is considered a planet. in fact, if a planet's orbit had to be totally clear all the time, the number of planets in our system would be a whopping 0.
@@4orks976 Earth's mass does not dominate its orbit, neither does Neptune now that you reminded me (hello Pluto)
It is much easier to retroactively move goalposts, make ammendmemts and special exceptions than to admit the semantics are not rigorous and change the diction, which is what they should have done in 2014-15 instead of the aforementioned damage control.
@@SoftBreadSoft ok can you maybe come back here after you actually watch the goddamn video
and maybe learn a bit about basic astrophysics before you try to pass yourself off as someone who knows astrophysics
Stellar first video and breakdown of our solar system's planetary history. I remember doing a school report on Pluto shortly before its demotion from planethood. Seems like the information we gather on the cosmos grows exponentially and I am excited about all the things we still have to learn and all the imagery that will come from our curiosity for the night sky. Can't wait to see what topics you decide to tackle and share with us next! 🌌
Best description or example of why Pluto was reclassified. I was at one time thinking on becoming an astronomer back in 1975. The dean of astronomy at the University of Washington sat me down and gave me information about what it takes and a lot of other information about astronomy that I opted out of that route. LOL My math was a bit lacking, He he. However I thought I was pretty much up on astronomy except now with this much more concise, informative video I realize I really didn't know that answer, but now I do. Thank you. 👨🎓
Or we could just teach kids at a young age that there's more than just planets and moons to our solar system off the bat. Kids are pretty smart and retain a lot of information, as long as the information is interesting to them and not just a memory test like most school is. I'm pretty sure it would help them as adults too, having already grasped a basic concept of the known solar system and everything that entails. There are a lot of physics that can come easier by knowing how orbits and gravity works.
Edit: I think it's kind of cruel to teach kids that life is simple, only for them to grow up and be overwhelmed with how complex reality is. It feels like lying by omission.
@accelerationquanta5816HARD AGREE. I'm totally teaching kids that there are dozens of planets. You don't need to memorize them, just like you don't need to memorize the 50 nearest stars, just some important ones. We already often group Uranus and Neptune together, so grouping all the generic iceballs together isn't really all that different. And of course, we may discover rings, odd shapes/colors or geological features etc as our knowledge increases.
Sometimes kind of shocking to watch a good TH-cam video made by someone that more effectively explains a subject I spent years learning about in school. Like "why did no one else think of explaining it this way before? "
*IAU* : There would be far too many planets. And more keep being found with increasingly awkward names. No kids would ever be able to learn from this ever growing list.
*Pokemon Company* : we started with 150 but now we're nearing 1,000 and we've increased the letter count in new names.
*Dinosaurs* : There’s over 1,000 species of us. Kids love it!
Yeah, it was a stupid decision for the IAU to limit the number. I guess we have to go back to eight states and eight elements. 🙄
@Jellyman1129 Kids don't learn all 1000
Meanwhile the periodic table:
Dude I had fallen asleep watching something about a telescope. This played while I was half dozing. I recognized you from your Atlas channel, and assumed this was from that channel for some reason.
At the end of the video I saw this was a new channel. I'm absolutely on board, what a great video that was.
Honestly, I'd rather they'd have named it planetoid instead of dwarf planet because from a cursory search that doesn't seem to be an official naming convention yet.
I feel like that wouldn't have caused as much backlash because it is kinda obvious once you compare the other "plutoids" out there that a name similar to asteroids could make sense.
Unfortunately, planetoid is a term long in use. It is another word for asteroid. It's a shame, really, since it is the most logical name to use.
@@perrywilliams5407 Boo at redundant naming, reclaim planetoid for a proper use!
I think all asteroids and all so-called 'dwarf planets' (what a condescending name) should be called 'planetoids'.
@@Rishi123456789 We have also 'dwarf stars' (including 'red dwarfs' and 'white dwarfs') and 'dwarf galaxies'. Why 'dwarf planet' is condescending?
I absolutely loved this video. It was so well done and I learned a lot about planetary classification in only 30 minutes!! I hope your channel keeps growing and keep up the great work!!
There is a noticable size difference between Pluto and Eris compared to the rest of the smaller objects. Maybe they aren't planets however I think in the future it might be helpful to classify them as something different.
somehow it's not being discussed that Pluto-Charon is actually closer to a binary PLanet system, ala the Centaurus system (3 stars in in orbital resonance), since the gravitational barycenter is well outside of Pluto's surface. Earth-Luna was the largest example of size relation of planet-satellite, until the details about Charon became better known. Add in the fact that both Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other, and it's a slam dunk.
My complaint isn't that they made Pluto not in the club, it's that a dwarf PLANET is a planet due to the name and then continued to say "not a planet". I think they should admit they are planets, and call them Planets/Planetoids or Major and Minor Planets. This preserves a simple list of important ones while acknowledging the other significant bodies are similar and relevant without confusing people as much..
I agree! Planetologists call them dwarf planets, but as a TYPE of planet. Like how the sun is a dwarf star, it’s still a star.
What's the difference between dwarf planet and Minor planet? The only difference I see is that you prefer the word minor to dwarf. I don't buy your argument
@@enadegheeghaghe6369 The term “minor planet” was used a long time ago when we thought there were “major planets” (Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, etc.) and “minor planets” (Juno, Vesta, Pallas, etc.). Once we determined that these “minor planets” are less massive and geophysically different than the planets we were familiar with, we realized they weren’t “planets” at all, but asteroids. So the term “minor planet” was dropped, but some people at the Minor Planet Center still continue to use the term for some reason. I caution against using it because it doesn’t make sense to call an asteroid a planet when it’s not. “Asteroid” replaced “minor planet”.
Dwarf planet is a different can of worms. It was a term coined by planetary scientists in the early 90s to mean “small planet”, like how the sun is called a dwarf star to mean “small star”. This term does NOT refer to asteroids, but objects that are actually spherical and planetary like Pluto, Eris, Makamake, Sedna, and more. This term get far more mileage because it actually makes sense. Some people call them “minor planets” because they’re lower mass and gravitationally minuscule compared to the eight “major planets”, but that can get confusing. I’d just stick with terrestrial planets, giant planets, and dwarf planets.
Planets that gravitationally dominate (i.e. over 50% of the mass in their orbital region) should be called cardinal planets.
@Acceleration Quanta That's not how that category works. Titan, Triton, the Galilean satellites, and our moon are not planets.
I was initially skeptical if this really was Atlas Pro, or worse if someone was stealing his videos and posting on this channel. Then thankfully I watched until the end and there he was explaining he is also Astro Pro! Let's gooooooo!
dude, that pause after announcing William Herschel's discovery....just long enough that I had to chuckle
The fact it has a giant heart on it just hurts. Such a loveable little guy.
I remember when I was a kid, they announced Sedna in the newspaper and I cut that piece out because I was so excited for a new planet!
I was really into space back then and space still interests me now!
Same feeling when Eris was found out. I thought it will be the tenth planet. 😔
I was in 5th grade when it was discovered and I remember saying to my friends that Sedna sounded like an insurance company.
I like the term proto planet. I've slowly been memorising the names of the dwarf planets. I'm intrigued by them. But the moons which are as large or larger than Pluto are curious too. I'm fascinated by all the discoveries in and out of our solar system. Which is why I name my pets after astronomical objects. (4 birds and 3 cats. Psyche, Pandora, Vega, Sojourn, Sola, Lunas, Aster. Eris and Callisto have flown to the bright bird cage in the sky.)
Anyway, space and all its wonders are entrancing to observe and think about. Thanks for the video!
Either its a planet or it is not. e do not care about your pets. OFF Topic.
Proto Planet is a term for ancient remanents, like Vesta and Ceres, Plus planets that probably existed like Theia
It's funny -- as a kid I accepted that Pluto wasn't a planet right away because I assumed we had just learned more about our surroundings and were updating everyone on that. My first love was dinosaurs and science documentaries, so maybe I was just more comfortable with the idea that scientists were frequently revising things as we learned more and understood our findings in better ways
same thing here, to be honest, i don't even remember pluto being a planet itself, maybe i am too young. but, I've always heard about pluto being "no longer a planet" and accepted as an update on our conceptions, or new discoveries.
i was also a dino and documentary kid, up to the conception that science is not constant, since it is a way of creating knowledge, not the knowledge itself, so things we classify today as something will be classified as others as our understanding and classifications grow. maybe one day, pluto and other similar bodies will be once again planets.
Same here
I was in elementary school when the change happened and was also a nature/science documentary kid. Blue planet was awesome as a kid, and "Life" was really cool when it first came out.
I just accepted the change as the newest documentaries always had more info and corrections over older ones.
One thing that is really cool in the age of streaming is you can find a documentary series like "How the Universe Works" and watch season 1 through season 10, but its really cool to watch the season 1 episode on black holes and then watch the season 10 episode on the same topic. Both episodes are made with the same good faith and most up to date information but its hilarious how different they are, because newer data supports a different theory.
Don’t know why’d you immediately accept something without doing your own research. Seems gullible.
@@Jellyman1129 The 'research' in question was realizing that newer information from reputable sources all agreed it wasn't, and that when newer information is in agreement when it comes to science, it is usually more correct than the old information. That kind of critical thought is frankly pretty impressive for an elementary-age kid (or heck, even in most adults I would say); what else would you expect a kid to be able to do (or even the general public in this kind of situation, most people don't have private access to multi-million telescopes!
So, 20+ planets is just too hard to teach, and there are how many Pokémon now? I think the kids can handle it.
1,025
how do we teach kids about some icy object that’s name sounds like a cat walked across a keyboard
@@astronliketheancientgreekword seems easy enough
I know the name of all 1025 of them
I can handle 50 or so planets
@@Fernietheplantso you can name them all, without any external help, or spelling. Bc yeah I can name 500 of them, but not off the top of my head. Humans can’t remember more than 250 faces/names at a time, so it’ll take help
This was a very well done and thoughtfully researched video. Bravo!
I loved your statements of "Our ability to observe the universe briefly exceeded our own our understanding of the universe." and the ending of "[Science] is about receiving new information and updating your understanding." Too many people think science is proving stuff right, when in fact science is doing something over and over and over to prove itself wrong. Then figuring out what is wrong with it.
It reminds me of all the many aspects of sciences that people act like are 100% concrete at all times. These things though constantly change and adapt like our understanding of Atoms. Even going beyond the Natural Sciences of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology if we look at the Social Sciences things are changing constantly! Sociology, Anthropology, Criminology, Economics, Linguistics, etc. We look at the way that people in the past thought about things and update the terms and ideas to match our increased understandings.
However since Natural sciences are a lot easier to prove because you can just throw math at the arguments... social sciences are happening all around us and affect how we view ourselves and our place in the world. My favorite aspects of the Social Sciences is Philosophy with things like Metaphysics, Social Constructs, and Intersectionality.
Ummm…retired lecturer in Philosophy here. Philosophy isn’t a social science. It isn’t any kind of science, but an exploration of fundamental questions by use of reason. The main divisions are metaphysics (what is the nature of reality) epistemology (how do we know anything) and axiology (study of values - right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, cool and uncool).
Social constructs and intersectionality (awful word!) are concepts from social science. Social science isn’t really science either.
@@robinharwood5044 and pray tell why is intersectionality an awful word?
This was so good on Nebula! I hope y’all enjoy!
Dang I gotta watch it there instead. Bye yt!
Why, what's different there?
@@drsrwise watch it earlier
I like the term planetoid, an object that has some but not all the characteristics of a planet. It’s something that could be used to describe some of the moons in our solar system too. Even our moon has many things in common with Pluto or Eris. But our moon isn’t a planet, so therefore planetoid.
Dude I have some soothing cream for Planetoids...
It Can be very painful in the science department😢
On a serious note you mentioned our moon, which is moving away from us every second, about 4cm a year.
At one epoch no longer will eclipses happen as we see today, but the earths gravitational force will be superceded by another force centrifugal(¿) And be thrown into a different orbit. Maybe stable enough around the sun that it meets all the criteria for the planet. The new name for Luna To Jänus?
You have to be one of my favorite TH-camrs, and this video shows why. The stories you weave are just so well told. Looking forward to more great Space content like this one! (BTW, congrats on the new house. And your new hair style at the end is fantastic!)
Also, what is the definition of a moon? Luna, about 380,000 km from Earth, orbits the Sun in almost exactly the same shape as Earth, is orders of magnitude closer to the ratio of the Earth than just about anything else in the Solar System other than Charon and Pluto, is also just as round as the Earth and is in hydrostatic equilibrium, and the Sun exerts much more force on it than the Earth does in fact, about twice as much.
That would suggest that Luna is a planet too, and certainly I imagine that if we made a bunch of colonies on it, for which we have a number of ideas as to how to do it and have actually physically been there, if they raised people there, they would probably think of their home to be just as important as Earth, Mars, Mercury, and others. Hell, Mercury even looks a lot like Luna.
Earth-Moon is a binary system, the center of gravity of the system makes it difficult to visualize.
The Moon would be called a planet if it orbited the Sun by itself.
Earth-Moon are a binary system. It is difficult to visualize because of the center of gravity of the system being so near earth, and because we are viewing it from the larger body, and because the binary system 'wobbles' through its orbit once every 28 days.
Isn't all of the moons are moons because they orbit a planet?
@@12cat123 Does the Moon really orbit the Earth? The gravitational force on the Moon from the Sun is twice that of Earth's pull. And what other body in the Solar system is even remotely close to being able to swing around the bigger body with such strength? Charon around Pluto is the only other rounded body in the Solar System that does this in addition to the Moon. The Moon can get the barycentre to about ⅔ the difference from the core to the surface. Not even Callisto, Ganymede, or Titan can do that with Jupiter and Saturn and they are bigger than Mercury. The shape of the Moon's orbit around the Sun is essentially a circle, and this is not true of any other rounded body in the solar system except for Charon, and the planets both dwarf and major.
Information overload!! I don’t think I’ve ever had that much new information given to me in that amount of time. Well done!! New subscriber.
Atlas Pro made a channel _just_ for astronomy? Instantly subbed. Also, I finally have an excuse to rewatch all the old astronomy videos from the Atlas Pro channel. I'm going to start with the video on Areography since that's one of my all-time favourite videos from the channel. I look forward to all your future videos!
Back then as a kid in the early 2000s I was very interested in space and astronomy, and i remember hearing the news that a 10th (Sedna) and 11th (Eris) planet were discovered. I remember Eris was originally called "Xena" back then, and somehow I thought for years that it was officially called Xena until I learned that it was renamed to Eris already soon after its discovery.
I remember the name Xena too. I was also confused for some time when I saw the name Eris.... I actually liked the name Xena for some reason.
@@Rebslager A certain warrior princess perhaps? ;-)
@@lordearthblood Ha ha... Yea I know about her too.... But I also remember Eris was called Xena in the beginning.... and it is kind of a cool name for some reason.... And the warrior princess didn't make the name worse ;-)
This was really well done. What a presentation. Bravo!
So good! Thank you! Can't wait to see what is next for this channel. ❤
The intro scene and channel introducing scene was really awesome 👌
This is the best and best-explained basic presentation on this and similar topics (such as transneptunian objects) I have ever seen.
It's interesting to see this perspective, because I was just about to graduate high school when the announcement came out, and we took several weeks off from other material in my physics class to talk about the whole thing and calculate out some related things using what we'd been learning in physics (def very basic stuff, but as a teacher you gotta take what real life application moments you get!). So like, was probably the ideal age to just be fully informed about the decision, since adults not in the field could easily avoid looking up the context, and kids of a younger age probably weren't ready to get into the stuff about it all in their science classes.
But also, our entire way of classifying objects in our solar system probably should be adjusted. Maybe talk about our "ten orbital ranges" to kids, one named for each of our eight planets and one for the astroid belt and one for the kuiper belt, since those groupings are still easily teachable without trying to group disparate objects weirdly. Each orbital range is rather unique, and that would give a good stepping stone to talk about all the smaller, less charismatic orbital bodies in the ranges of the inner planets too!
This is such a good video. I watch a lot of space content and nothing is managed, coordinated and explained in such an organised timeline. 5 star video 📹 ✨️
I think the part where you talk about how our ability to observe the universe exceeded our understanding of it is interesting because we're basically there again with dark matter
as expected from you... AMAZING QUALITY I LOVE IT!!!
Nothing but the best for you 😉
I think planet should be a large category for all bodies in hydrostatic equilibrium that are not stars (including the large moons). If you want a short list for the kids, you can still call the terrestrial planets, gas giants, and ice giants the 8 major planets.
I couldn’t agree more! I use the geophysical planet definition as it’s far less ambiguous. Instead of kids learning the names of every single planet, just have them learn the types. There’s terrestrial planets (like Earth), giant planets (like Jupiter), dwarf planets (like Pluto) and satellite planets (like Titan).
Yes agree. the Sun is very small compared to other stars so might as well remove sun in the star category because of its size 😒
@@janjamesramos247 Exactly. The sun is a dwarf star, but it’s still a star. Same with the dwarf planets. They’re planets that are just smaller.
@@Jellyman1129 @Jellyman Thank you. Oh, I didn't know that the sun is a dwarf star. I just disagree with the notion that Pluto is not anymore a planet. Its characteristics are like a planet except that it's small. But some satellites are also too small but there's no dwarf satellite category 😅 Anyway, I agree to your categories and it can be truly considered.
@@janjamesramos247 Yeah, the sun is a yellow dwarf. And Pluto has all the characteristics of planet-hood. Some moons are even bigger than Mercury.
I was not sure from the title if this was going to be solar planets or exo-planets, but having watched the whole video you did an excellent job of explaining why Pluto is no longer classified as a planet. I was surprised that you did not mention the KBO known as Zena and it's moon Gabriel given its size.
Zena/Xena is now named Eris
Xena and Gabrielle are just the old unofficial names for Eris and Dysnomia.
I had forgotten that those two had initially been named after two characters from a television series, until they finally came up with the official names.
No mention of Ceres gaining the title Dwarf Planet as well. Ceres needs more recognition.
Ceres is cool
Join the Ceres fan club
Every single video of yours manages to blow me away. Your attention to detail and dedication to your work is spectacular. Keep up the good work. You're by far my favorite content creator on TH-cam.
Everyone: *Trying to think of a good name for a planet*
Nasa: Nah, Oppa12314J is a good name for a planet.
First of all, I absolutely loved this video. Your research, editing, presentation, humor, and narration are fantastic for such a young channel!! The one MAJOR thing I think you miss in this video is who the IAU is... They're made up of ASTRONOMERS. I was always convinced by the definition change here until I read Alan Stern's book about the New Horizon's mission to Pluto. There's a whole chapter in there about how the IAU had no business defining what a planet is because astronomers don't study planets internally so much as they study how celestial bodies behave, interact, and form.
According to Stern, a planetary scientist and the leader of the New Horizon's mission, the people who should get to define what a planet is are PLANETARY SCIENTISTS. Pluto has an atmosphere, glaciers, active volcanos; it is incredibly geologically active. To Stern, not calling these planets is like saying dwarf stars aren't stars. To try to come up with a new classification just so that it's easier to remember the planets is a PR nightmare to him. Plus, the IAU definition is sloppy since it says it must orbit "the sun". It literally excludes exo-planets. And for bodies floating in interstellar space that have no accretion disk to compare to, you can't say it has or hasn't "cleared it's neighborhood".
for more: pswscience.org/meeting/is-pluto-a-planet/
Anyway, I'm not incredibly convinced either way, they're just definitions. Definitions are just there to help us communicate, and if that's what the astronomers and planetary scientists are doing effectively, then let them have their way. It's ultimately a linguistic problem and not a science problem. Thanks for so eloquently bringing out this discussion!! You should totally make a patreon, I'd sign up in a heartbeat... Excited to see what comes next, subscribed!!!
Fantastic comment, I couldn’t agree more! I was convinced at a young age that Pluto wasn’t a planet (mostly due to its small size) until I heard about New Horizons and Alan Stern. I saw his analysis of the IAU definition as well as the process of the vote and immediately switched sides to his definition. The EXPERTS of the field should define what they study, NOT an outside organization (especially by unscientific vote). So I’m with Stern on this, his definition makes way more sense from a scientific and principle standpoint.
You nailed it. Great job. This was a IAU media stunt to get publicity A scam upon the general public.
Thank You!!! Could not agree more!
long time fan of your other channel, here to thank you for another fantastic video. Looking forward to what's next here
Huh, I never knew about the new classification of "plutoid"; I think that makes a lot of sense. If we had to start changing names like asteroids due to not matching what they are, then we'd also lose out on the word "nova" (new star), which means we'd also lose out on supernova and hypernova, etc. and I would prefer to keep those cool sounding names. Plutoid also rolls off the tongue better than dwarf planet or proto-planet; less syllables lol
I like your proposed names, but I would also specifically like to keep Proto-planet as a name. Specifically for those space rocks whose mass and spin give it a regular smooth outline like Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Haumea, etc.
Proto-planet is a good term for almost-but-not-quite-planet
Vesta and Pallas are already considered proto-planets since they are large enough to have a differentiated interior but not enough to be round.
I am a student astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Labs, and I thought I knew it all!! Turns out there is so much more rich history and politics involved in our astronomical discoveries than I thought. So cool man; I subscribed and hope to see more.
Which one is your favourite “main” planet in the sol system? Mine is either Saturn or Jupiter
The first two criteria of the definition of "planet" makes sense as it excludes all of the asteroids except for Ceres. An argument could also be made for the third part of the definition, too though I wonder how useful that distinction really is when it comes to studying the objects in our solar system. It has also been pointed out that But I think this does a great disservice to the vast complexity of the solar system.
Pluto may not be big, but its geology is remarkably complex, active, and potentially capable of harboring life. (It's funny how "size" and "developed" are assumed to be one and the same thing in this comment section.) Pluto's characteristics actually puts it in good company with other bodies that also aren't considered planets at all, such, such as Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter's moons Io and Europa. I would like to also point out that some of these moons and Kuiper Belt Objects and the rocky inner planets Earth through Mars have more in common with each other than they do with the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (Someone from Jupiter might look at our solar system and conclude that there are only four planets). A strong argument could also be made that while distinguishing between planets and satellites is useful when looking at planetary systems (particularly complex systems such as Jupiter's and Saturn's) the distinction says next to nothing about other characteristics of the satellite. For example, Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos are much more like asteroids, whereas the the likes of Titan and Io are more complex and might better described as planets that just happen to be have been captured into the orbit of another planet.
I find it noteworthy that "dwarf planets" and "minor planets" (asteroids) have the word "planet" in their name even though they aren't supposed to be called planets. For the purpose of teaching people about our solar system, might it not make more sense to call all them planets and then talk about the subclassifications rather than focusing extensively on individual planet names? That certainly would teach a child a lot more about our solar system than just memorizing the names of planets. We can talk about our four gas giants and our four inner rock planets, both which could be a sub-categories of planets that orbit on the planetary plane--essentially what we now call planets. Asteroids could be asteroids, which is important for us understanding potentially dangerous Near Earth objects (though I'm not sure if objects two meters wide and 800 km wide should be in the same "asteroid" category). Kuiper Belt Objects could be Kuiper Belt Objects. Comets could be comets. Geologically active bodies, like Pluto, Titan, Io, etc., could be their own category. Some of these might be free-floating planets, some of them might become satellites of other planets, and some of them might become Trojans or co-orbit in other ways. Some of these may change their status along the way--for example, the Moon will eventually leave Earth's orbit.
I think history will show the IAU classification to be horribly limited and not very useful for our understanding of planets. Now that we are discovering planets orbiting other star systems, we will find it necessary to develop better categories and classifications in order to better understand our universe.
DING DING DING!! You hit the nail on the head!
I don’t think creating an arbitrary dividing line for planets just to help memorize their names is a scientific concept. And like you said, it does a massive disservice to the complexity of the solar system. Many places like Enceladus or Europa May harbor life! They’re certainly better candidates for life than Mars, but Mars gets more attention because it’s a “planet”.
Planetary experts signed a petition to reject the 2006 vote immediately after it was made. To this day, they continue to ignore the IAU vote and use a better definition called the geophysical planet definition. It says a planet is any object in space large enough to be round by its own gravity (hydrostatic equilibrium), but not so large that it ignites in nuclear fusion (because then it would be a star). Short, sweet, and simple. It’s about the physical characteristics of the object, regardless of the orbit or location.
So Earth, Jupiter, Pluto, Sedna, Ceres, and even Titan, Io, Enceladus, and many more are ALL planets! And like you said, Titan and Io are more similar to other planets than Phobos and Deimos. They’re still moons, but “moon” just means satellite. It doesn’t tell you ABOUT the satellite. Io is a planetary satellite and Phobos is an asteroidal satellite. So they’re still moons IN ADDITION to being planets/asteroids. Large round moons are just planets that orbit other planets.
You can divide planets by orbit. Planets that orbit the sun are solar planets (like Venus). Planets that orbit other stars that aren’t the sun are extrasolar planets (like Dragur). Planets that orbit other planets are satellite planets (like Titan). Planets that orbit nothing are rogue planets (like OGLE-2016-BLG-1928).
Or you can divide them by composition and size. Medium-sized planets with rocky crusts and metal cores are terrestrial planets (like Earth). Large planets made of gas are gas giant planets (like Jupiter). Small planets with icy crusts and rocky cores are dwarf planets (like Pluto).
There’s also solar system regions. The inner zone (the Sun to the Asteroid Belt), the middle zone (Jupiter to Neptune) and the outer zone (the Kuiper Belt to the Oort Cloud).
So astronomers can have their cake and eat it too. They can divide objects by their differences using different metrics AND have ALL of them STILL BE PLANETS because of their unified similarities. I don’t know why they felt like they had to remove objects from planet-hood. Pluto is different from the terrestrial planets, but the terrestrial planets are VERY different from the gas giants. And yes, the giant planets may think there are only four planets in the solar system, since they’re in a league of their own. The terrestrial planets look like specs of debris by comparison, so we shouldn’t shame Pluto for its size.
“Minor planet” got replaced with “asteroid” once we found out these “minor planets” weren’t planets at all. They aren’t large enough to be a spherical shape, so they became a distinct object. So I wouldn’t use the term “minor planet” since it gets confusing and isn’t used anymore for that reason.
And as we discover more planets around other stars, it makes the IAU definition look more and more idiotic with the first criterion stating planets must orbit the Sun and only THE SUN.
So the IAU definition sucks and you have the right mindset! Well said! 👍🏻👍🏻
I know you briefly touched on it but the notion of Planet X still existing fascinates me. I’m not really sure what else there is to say on the topic but a video on where/what Planet X might be like would be cool.
It might exist or it might not, some people think it’s the solar system’s missing “super-Earth” others say it could be a completely transparent gas giant
It just doesn't exist, What they where looking for was found out to be failed math, they expected a near Jupiter mass object to explain the anomaly, but the discovery of general relativity fixed the math
Planet 9 is a completely different theory than the Planet X theory, and theoretically it could be possible, as the math for it only puts it at around 3-4 Earth masses, but even then, it's also likely based on incorrect math
I'm looking forward to this video and this channel! My favorite planet is Ceres. #FreeCeres
Pluto... you lost your status... but you won our hearts. Great viideo
This was really good and very entertaining to watch. There's still so much more to cover, I'll look forward to it.
Astronomy unfortunately will be confusing for awhile. I like your idea for the use of protoplanet but that already seems to be a classification so there's gonna be a lot of change lol
That could also bring the other Ceres sized objects in the outer reaches of the solar system into the dwarf planet category
Edit: after doing a bit more research on the solar system I feel as if dwarf planet is currently the best way to describe these planets as they are dwarf in comparison to the rest of the terrestrial planets
I think what we should do is have a name for all spherical objects directly orbiting the sun, which "planet" or "planetoid" would work well as. And then a distinction between the tiny ones like Ceres and Pluto which should be "dwarf planets" (following the naming convention of dwarf stars), and then "main planets" could cover the large ones with a distinction between terrestrial/rocky main planets and the Gas/Ice Giants.
The unfortunate reality is that like most things in nature this is a spectrum and we are applying arbitrary categories. Categories are still useful but at the edges the distinction is often irrelevant. (Red and orange are distinct colors, but if i give you a laser at 621nm and one at 619nm i doubt you could tell that the first is technically red and the second is technically orange. Sorting anything in nature is the same way, usually the exact distinction is pretty arbitrary but the category is useful in some way.)
0:24 'dwarf planet.....something literally no-one had heard of before' - errr what? The term was being used in my english astronomy books in the early 80's, to describe ceres and other large asteroids. It was first defined in 2000 by Stern. It didnt get voted on by the IAU until 2006. So any astronomer in the english-speaking world with an interest in the solar system would know the term by 2000.
Basically you are getting six year old You confused with 'literally everyone'.
But Stern's "dwar planet" was subcategory of planet, not new class of objects
Alan Stern coined “dwarf planet” in 1991, but it meant “small planet”, analogous to “dwarf star” and “dwarf galaxy”. The IAU completely botched the term to mean something completely different.
That was really well made! I'm super happy to see that you'll be making strictly space videos over here ☺ all your content is amazing 💜💜
I agree with you, but if dwarf planets are not real planets does it mean that dwarf people are not real people???
@@Reth_Hard exactly
I learned the nine planets as a kid. When I studied astronomy in college I found out about Ceres and I was angry we didn't learn about it as kids. I think "planet" should be an umbrella term for everything with hydrostatic equilibrium, including major moons. We don't have to memorize 420 planets, but we shouldn't omit teaching about all but 8. How cool would it have been to know there was a little planet in the asteroid belt??? For how much of a space nerd I was, it's so sad I never knew about Ceres.
I feel like planet should be your term and the ones we currently teach should be called major planets or something similar, that way they can all be planets but we can teach the smaller set to young kids.
Agreed, Ceres and the gas giant moons often get overlooked just because they are not called planets, even though Ganymede and Titan are even bigger than Mercury, and some of them are very interesting in regards to liquid water and possible life under their crusts, and possible exploration and human settlement in the further future.
18th and 19th century german astronomers actually sometimes called large moons "Nebenplaneten", meaning by-planets or side-planets, which I think is a fitting word for the planet-sized ones.
I agree that all round bodies orbiting the sun should be considered planets - just as we classify the 8 major planets into terrestrial and gas giants we can easily classify ceres and any other round asteroids into inner belt planets and Pluto and eris and any other round kuiper belt objects as outer belt planets
Irregular or oblong objects are merely space rocks - I agree that asteroid is not a good name (they used to be called planetoids or planetesimals) but I think the term is too popular to change now
I agree, although it is worth noting that makes Luna a planet too and brings the number of planets up to around 36 with the "plutoids" of Varda and Salacia being the most controversial.
I heard about Ceres from a friend who was into Astrology. This was before the whole Pluto fiasco. The reason Pluto was demoted was because at the time they thought the asteroids were shards of a planet that had exploded. So Ceres and the others were demoted. Later it was determined that this was not the case. That's just where a bunch of solar system rocks had collected. But they also found out of all the other objects in the belt, Ceres was, in fact, round. Even so, the mistake was not acknowledged and Ceres was not reinstated as a planet. But when this dwarf planet classification came about, they threw it in there. Because dwarf planets are important too, right. Separate but kinda equal, right?
Well, I do space outreach. We set up information booths about space discoveries and stuff. I had found a solar system graphic that included the dwarf planets.
A twelve year old girl walked up and stared at the map. She pointed to the small circle between Mars and Jupiter inside the asteroid belt.
"What's this?" She asked.
So I told her it was dwarf planet Ceres.
"Why didn't anyone tell me about this!" She said with that same astonished anger those of us have to the suppression of the glory that us our solar system. So we had a little talk.
Point being, the varsity team is the one that gets all the press. The minimum is what gets taught, and because dwarf planets aren't "important" enough to be planets, they aren't important enough to be taught as key prices of our solar system. That's sad...
Not for Pluto or Ceres, but what it means for the imagination of our kids living in a bigger solar system than they thought
People should be happy for Pluto, it went from runt of the litter to king of the dwarves.
Regarding the term "asteroid": It wasn't because the astronomers thought that they were small stars, it was because they were too small to resolve them in their telescopes as disks, like the planets. They could only see them as dots, like stars, hence star-like.
I only remember August 24th, 2006 because it was the day I was born, it's quite interesting to know Pluto became a dwarf planet on the same day. Funnily enough I never knew Pluto had become a "dwarf planet" until I was like 10 or 11, I was very confused at why Pluto suddenly got demoted.
It’s a political battle, not a scientific one.
You remember the day you were born? lol
@@Jellyman1129Its very much a scientififc battle.
@@Jymboslicx When one “scientist” (Brian Marsden) leads the IAU vote with only 4% of the total membership in attendance because he wants to tarnish the career of his rival (Clyde Tombaugh) and another “scientist” (Mike Brown) goes along with it for an ego boost, it’s a political battle.
@@Jymboslicx When one “scientist” (Brian Marsden) leads the IAU vote with only 4% of the total members in attendance because he wants to tarnish the career of his rival (Clyde Tombaugh), and another “scientist” (Mike Brown) goes along with it for an ego boost, it’s a political battle.
Great video. The only thing that bothers me is the use of expressions like 'demoted', 'downgraded' to refer to Pluto. I believe this further helps feeding the controversy, because it implies there is ranking / hierarchy among celestial bodies. Unfortunately, many science communicators do this. In fact, as explained in this video, Pluto was *reclassified* due to better data. That's it. No need to attach antropomorphic feelings or social status among its 'peers'.
Thanks for all the information and clear message.
People got upset because there was an intense emotional political battle behind the scenes that this video doesn’t mention.
THANK YOU! At last it all makes sense. SO well explained without being over-extended and/or boring.
I wish you talked about Pluto's active geology which has sustained itself for billions of years through mostly its own radioactive decay in its rocks like Earth, rather than through tidal forces such as the Galilean moons. Pluto is just as planet-like as Mercury, Venus, and Mars. A lonely cryovolcano has been discovered on Ceres, indicating that this king of the asteroid belt is right on the line between a geologically active body orbiting the sun (a planet), and one which isn't. Triton is especially interesting, because it's the only large moon in our solar system which geologically makes sense to be a captured planet, and the only large moon with a retrograde orbit. Geologically, out of any body in the system currently known, Triton has the best case for being the tenth planet with anything less planet-like than Triton orbiting the sun but still being spherical, a dwarf planet, but has essentially been entrapped by Neptune, rendering only nine planets :)
#MakePlutoGreatAgain
@@gigadude Dangerously based.
Couldn’t agree more! This is largely in line with the geophysical planet definition, which is superior.
I've been with you before 10k across multiple accounts (the other ones got hacked) and I'm still here
what’s your thought on the alternate classification that considers the moon a planet? basically instead of one planet, there’s a separate gas and rocky planet classification, since earth is more similar to the moon or pluto or mars than to jupiter, but i don’t remember the specifics of the theory. if you pulled the moon off of earth and made it orbit the sun it would have been considered a planet in antiquity and probably still now.
That’s the definition I prefer, called the geophysical planet definition. It classifies planets based on WHAT they are, not WHERE they are. By definition, the moon is a planet and so are other round moons.
Didn’t realize this channel existed until about 20 minutes ago, I’m so happy it does
Same! Now time to watch every video 💪
6:33 I realy don't want to correct you but Wilhelm Herschel was a German. Yes he lived in England, but he was born in my Hometown of Hannover and many important things are named after him, like a school or a Observatory. For comparison too Einstein lived in America but was born and raised in Germany. And nobody calls him Americas greatest Scientist or do they? With all do respect Wilhelm Herschel was a German Astronomer, who lived a long time in England. So far Im realy enjoying your new channel and wish you all the best so this channel too reaches the one million mark.
I consider dwarf planets to be planets, however, i feel like a lot of objects that somehow manage hydrostatic equilibrium with low mass should be considered planetoids.
In all, Makemake is barely dwarf planet
Also, speaking of dwarf planets, it’s been argued that Charon is actually a dwarf planet as well, and it and Pluto are a dual-planetary system, which does have merit. Technically, Pluto doesn’t orbit around the sun, it orbits around a point just above its atmosphere, which Charon also orbits, and said point is what orbits the sun. Lastly, the two bodies are tidally locked to each other, and all 4 other moons orbit both of them
This is a incredibly well done video. One of the best I've ever watched on youtube!
There are 23 planets. That's my opinion on the matter.
I partially agree, but there’s more than 23.
“After some debate, a name for this new planet was chosen. Uranus... ... ... 😶. Thrilled with his...”
The pause has me laughing😭.
I like planetoids as an umbrella term for geasteroids and cryasteriods.
I've always thought that "clearing their orbital region" is a vaguely worded definition for a planet. Looking at the Wikipedia page for clearing orbits, there is some decent numerical standards that can be referred to, but I think the wording would be better off along the lines of "locally gravitational dominant."
Not much debries in its orbital path?
It’s just a bad criterion in general. It’s difficult to determine what exoplanets qualify and it’s USELESS to determine what rogue planets qualify.
That was both entertaining and informative! I’m a good thirty years older than you - I was well into my thirties when Pluto was demoted - but I have no problem with Pluto being placed into a different category than the eight planets.
When I was learning the names of the planets was back when in elementary school, we were only taught about the nine planets and the asteroid belt. That’s it. I didn’t learn that any objects in the asteroid belt even had names until I was in college. That’s really unfortunate because I was fascinated by space and would have loved learning the names of more objects in our solar system. (I had a freakishly good memory and loved memorizing vast amounts of data, like memorizing the names of the stars in many of the better-known constellations. Thank you, autism spectrum!)
I’m subscribed to your channel now, so I look forward to many more fascinating discussions of all things astronomical in nature.
You are the first guy that I have seen who explained this, and now I understand because that clearing the neighborhood thing was confusing. Thank you. Next Question what is in Plutos Neighborhood that hasn't been cleared
the Kuiper belt.
The other Kuiper Belt objects
Excellent video, very informative. I'm a pretty big astronomy buff, but this was a fantastic way to put the planetary discoveries into a chronological order. Oh and puts into perspective the decision about Pluto as well. I'm not sure why everyone is so bothered by what it's called Planet, Plutoid, Dwarf planet... It is still what it is. Pluto. I have this feeling that as our technology improves, we are going to discover thousands of Kuiper belt object... then next will come the Oort cloud.
It’s a problem because the decision was only made by 4% of the IAU. So it’s essentially just minority opinion, not scientific fact.
That was an excellent video. It was well made and explained the history and reasoning behind the decision really well. My kids and I really enjoyed it.
Dang bro, now I feel old, you’re fifteen years younger than me and way more eloquent! This was a great video, awesome graphics and animations, very informative and entertaining. Just what I was looking for, and the humor peppered throughout….Hahaha not MY ANUS, YOUR ANUS. lmao, dork. Awesome.
9:09 - why do they have three telescope pointed at the ground 😂
Imagine how chaotic the argument is gonna get and how many new categories will need to be created as humanity gets better at finding exoplanets. There's already a chaos of terms like "super earth" "hot Jupiter" and probably tons of stuff I haven't even heard of yet which are occasionally misused.
Hot Jupiters in your neighbourhood
By the IAUs very definition, exp-planets are not planets at all. They run afoul of criteria 1: “…in orbit around *the Sun*.” Meaning our sun, Sol. There are only eight planets in the universe according to the IAU.
Am I being a petty rules-lawyer to reach a conclusion I’d decided on before even beginning. Yes, but no more the IAU did themselves in 2006.
@@matthewtalbot6505 I don’t blame you at all! It’s easy to poke holes in the IAU definition, and people SHOULD do that because the IAU embarrassed themselves with a nonsensical argument.
I have never seen this decision broken down in such a clear way. I get it now. I always sort-of got it and agree that it was a good decision, but now I really understand the full process of arriving at that decision. Thanks!
It was a horrendous decision! Only 4% of the IAU voted on it, making it minority opinion rather than scientific fact.
Ultimately this distinction is just an arbitrary name we use to make sorting and remembering easier, so it can really be whatever. It's like trying to come up with a technical definition to define a pancake as different from a cookie, it doesnt change the nature of them or all the different baked goods between and around them
I find it very interesting someone took the actual time to name a planetary object using a click language.
As far as what could be lurking in the darkness out beyond Neptune and even the Kuiper Belt, whatever it is, it has to be extremely dark, possibly as large as or larger than Jupiter, which could explain the wild erratic orbits on the Kuiper Belt Objects, and very high in mass.
I would either learn towards a Super Jupiter, or maybe even a Brown Dwarf Star which borders and blurs the line between a failed star and a Super Jupiter. As far as where it is... You'd have to calculate a LOT of math as to the orbits of every possible object, the orbital plains of them, and maybe even gravitational measurements as well, and then you still have a LOT of sky to observe.