Quote:
Originally Posted by Sticks
This link is to a vote on whether Pluto is a planet and they have video clips of two people from oposite sides of the argument. |
Buie's idea of just basing the definition off a low and high mass (nothing else) IS the simplest and most scientific IMO...keep in mind it allows plenty sub-categories based on size and orbit. This was essentially my earlier scheme.
However, this may be TOO simple, and does not have cultural acceptance. One confusing transition will be explaining to people that large moons are actually planets. I don't think that'll fly. Also, there would be dozens if not hundreds of small planets beyond Neptune, all crossing each other's orbits and within the same belt. I'd personally be fine with that if we go by the above classification, but again, I don't think we need to do that when we can just make a whole different class for those objects.
So with that in mind, my most recent idea is to seperate large bodies into four diffierent categories: planets, planetoids, moons, and free floaters...based on orbital characteristics. (I don't like the term dwarf planet since it implies a difference based on size, which it doesn't). Since this coincides much more with culture's understanding of a moon, I think this works just as well, if not better.