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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • You spend the money on the hardware capable of the higher spec though. The performance parts aren’t free. They didn’t reduce the price to match the spec.

    Imagine getting a big 60’ TV, but the screen is scaled to 48’ if you don’t pay a subscription. You still have a 60’ TV, the manufacturer already paid for all 60’ to be made. If they ask 48’ TV prices, they’re loosing a huge amount in upfront payment. In order to do that, they must expect subscription money to more than make up the difference. Since not everyone will get the subscription, that means the expected subscription money is close to or greater than the price of the entire TV, or the scaled TV isn’t much cheaper than a normal 60’ TV.

    Also, because subscriptions are expected to pay for the extra pixels in all TVs, subscribers are paying the manufacturer to put disabled pixels in non-subscriber’s TVs.






  • That definition means a planet has nothing to do with physical state, and everything to do with the proximity of your neighbors. We could promote the Moon to a planet by pushing it further away, or demote Earth from being a planet by slinging it a bit closer to it’s hungry uncle Jupiter. We could demote all planets by extinguishing the Sun! Then the entire system stops working and it’s all just asteroid or something.

    That arbitrarily chosen definition doesn’t describe the object, only it’s place in the malleable hierarchy. With this, the title of planet tells us nothing about the object itself, except that it’s orbit is only dominated by a star.

    Even worse, the IAU definition is extra arbitrary, as it only counts objects that orbit specifically the Sun, so the vast majority of bodies in hydrostatic equilibrium that don’t fuse hydrogen aren’t planets. They also play very lose with hydrostatic equilibrium, as Mercury isn’t in hydrostatic equilibrium, yet is explicitly classified as a planet. And “clearing it’s orbit” is also rather indistinct, with no method to determine this is given. It’s up to argument if Neptune is a planet, as many plutoids intersect it’s orbit.

    Even more worse, the barycentre of our solar system is sometimes outside of the sun! That means sometimes the Sun is co-orbiting with the rest of the solar system bodies, and therefore by this definition nothing is a planet! It’s a definition so arbitrary that it periodically stops existing!

    I’m not just saying I disagree with the IAU here, but that their definitely is objectively poor, and poorly used. I agree that Pluto, Eris, Ceres, and many others should be in a different category from Jupiter, but make some categories that make sense, please!



  • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyzTell me the truth.
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    1 month ago

    Pluto and Charon orbit each other. The barycentre (the center of mass they both orbit) is far outside of Pluto. The Earth-Moon barycentre is still inside Earth, though this could be changed by moving the Moon further out.

    Either way, Earth, the largest rocky planet, could be made into a moon by sending it to Jupiter, so I don’t think being a moon should disqualify a celestial body from being a planet.


  • There’s also plenty of classifications of plants based on form! Non-vascular plants, woody plants, herbaceous plants, algae and lichen…

    Most of our “rocky” planets are pretty wet though. Mars is drying out, but Venus is caked with volatile chemicals and Earth is downright infected. Only Mercury is really barren, partly due to it’s small size. I could easily see three categories for gravitationally rounded bodies that can’t fuse hydrogen: Dry planets (usully smaller), Wet planets (usually larger), and Gaseous planets (gas giants).