alt Hacker NewsYes. I wouldn't call a dwarf person any less of a person, nor would i refer to a dwarf planet as being any less a planet. Between the terrestrial planets, the gas giants, the ice giants, and arguably a couple of rounder moons, we have far more than 50 planets in our solar system.
By some extreme definitions, Earth might not be a planet. Some say the moon is too big to qualify the earth "cleared out its orbit" criteria, making Earth-moon some sort of double planet... like Pluto-Charon.
Replies
fc417fc802 • today at 8:31 PM
Ultimately these sorts of quibbles are fundamentally semantic in nature thus (in general) entirely pointless. It's only the subjects themselves - the myriad celestial bodies - that are interesting.
➕ show 1 reply
Setting aside the whole "demote Pluto" and "dwarf planet" aspects, I find it amusing that we use the same term for small rocky Mercury (2,440 km radius, 5% of Earth's mass) and immense gaseous Jupiter (69,000 km radius, over 300 times Earth's mass). Only we don't, of course. Jupiter is a gas giant, while Mercury is a rocky planet, or iron planet; there's a lot of 'planet' terminology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planet_types