Under the ‘has cleared its orbital neighborhood’ and ‘fuses hydrogen into helium’ definitions, thanks to human activities Earth technically no longer qualifies as a planet but DOES count as a star.

https://explainxkcd.com/3063/

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Should Ceres be a planet?

    I honestly don’t know. I tend to say no, as it seems to just be a lifeless rock with no geological activity. I’d love to have rules to identify that, made by planetary geologists.

    But I wouldn’t want to disqualify a body with planetary characteristics like geological activity just because the space around it is busy, or it’s orbit is not in the ecliptic plain, etc.

    This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      Ceres does appear to be active in some form with cryovolcanoes, based on the 2015 Dawn mission.

      I think focus ought to be more on what the qualifications are for the minor label. What does it mean to be minor?