that whole pluto thing was wild

When Pluto was declared a dwarf planet instead of a planet people lost their minds. I think that's pretty interesting.

Btw --- Pluto is a planet. So is the Moon.

Article Discussed:
Moons Are Planets: Scientific Usefulness Versus Cultural Teleology in the Taxonomy of Planetary Science

#pluto #Planet9isjustPluto

[kang]

I like the soft world of warcraft allusions

[MattMcIrvin]

You know what it was like? When people discuss admitting a new state to the Union and someone starts worrying about how it would affect the arrangement of stars on the flag.

[kelpsie]

"Exiting vim is hard" is nostalgia humour. It's not funny because it's true, but rather because being stuck in vim while editing a conf file in your first Linux installation, for instance, is a very common experience. Being able to exit a text editor seems like something you should just be able to trivially do, so it's slightly embarrassing to fail at. It's like sharing stories about kicking furniture in the dark, or getting on the bus in the wrong direction. Vim, though, has the benefit of being part of computer culture, so the joke became embedded into that culture while the internet was still a small place. Now, when you need to use vim for the first time in seven years, maybe you get stuck for a moment, and maybe you share that with a community who you know has also been there.

[xmetax]

It was devastating...watching Pluto up on that platform, in front of everyone... _them_ just walking up and tearing the stripes right off Pluto's little arm...

[georhodiumgeo]

Pluto was discovered, declared a planet, named, surveyed, demoted and argued about in less than one of its years.

A word to describe humanity: manic

[Alico_Reborn]

I was in 10th grade when this was announced. I, for some strange reason, thought that the planet was destroyed. It took an embarrassingly long time to learn that it was just reclassified.

[Jiggerjaw]

When you did your "2006 rant", it gave me "angry whispering so I don't wake up my parents" vibes. Which is SO early YouTube I love it.

[Scottagram]

I remember my grandma was very upset and my grandad was very "you're acting like they shot it down, geez"

[sreichman]

My first thought was "youre the Jenny Nicholson of physics" then you mentioned a numbered list and that solidified it for me. Adjunct physics instructor here. Love your vids!

[ingratitude]

The vim thing is relatable because a lot of people don't choose to use vim day-to-day, but every once in a while you have to edit a file on a remote machine and the only thing it's got is vi, and the last time you used it was 2 years ago and no, :q does not work because it's in the typing mode, and you don't remember what to press to get to the command-entering mode, and you search on the internet for the 100th time "how to exit vim" while mentally reviewing life choices that led you to this unfortunate point in existence.

[thebrainnetwork]

I might be misremembering but there was about a 18 month period between "we're gonna change the definition of planet" and "this is the new definition of planet" during which time we did the thing that's discussed in the video, having those conversations but it it felt like higher stakes because the decision wasn't made yet, it was all, like, anything goes and there were articles in science magazines about how planets could get demoted, asteroids and Kuiper Belt objects could get promoted and moons could be planets, moons like Earth's Moon, this conversation centered around barycenters. But the question was half "is our moon a planet" and half "under what conditions does the barycenter become part of the new definition". Pluto was definitely on the chopping block the whole time but so was Charon becoming a planet, which makes more sense on the barycenter argument, I think Earth's Moon's barycenter is still inside Earth, so that was the counter-argument, to keep things the way they stayed, which is really a mass argument. The big enchilada was the then-newly discovered big objects in the Kuiper belt, some very much on scale of Pluto, what do we do with them if we continue to discover more and more of them, the whole icy planet category thing mentioned was definitely a vibe for some of that conversation. What actually eventuated was the least wild thing that got discussed. I think the popular consciousness ignores the global perspective on Pluto too, non-Americans do not hype up Pluto as much, many Europeans denied and debated its planetary status back in the day and to an extent this never stopped, and we also forget there was a time in the 19th Century when there were 11 planets, and that conversation and demotion back to 8 created the category of asteroid which I think is a super useful category, I feel like definitions of planets are human-centric, which could be why exoplanets get left out?

[catz]

This has never bothered me as much as the realization that because Pluto was discovered in the 1930s, it was too late to inspire its own movement in Gustav Holst's "The Planets". I mean, those songs go so freakin' hard! Can you even imagine how badass one about the god of the underworld would have been?! 😭

[KaitlynBurnellMath]

Ceres was discovered before Neptune and apparently considered a planet for half-a-century before being re-classified as an "asteroid" (and later in 2006 as a dwarf planet of course).

But yeah, I get the impression they just didn't want to re-classify Ceres as a planet again. "Doesn't clear out its orbit" seems very deliberately aimed at Ceres because Ceres is in the asteroid belt. And the definition they came up with to exclude Ceres happened to exclude Pluto as well.

[edgarallenhoe]

"Did people get upset about Pluto because they thought it was funny?" Yes, absolutely. I was 4 in 2006 but that style of humor stuck around for a while (it's still here although its changed a lot) and I definitely remember people doing that with Pluto specifically. The most similar example that comes to mind is the Oxford comma.

[lizzzylavender]

The reason the “how to exit vim” joke is funny is because it’s something they can relate to, from their past. The first time trying to exit vim as a baby programmer, sure eventually you just google it, but you probably futz around for a little and get confused first cause it’s just a lot different than anything else. Maybe you accidentally opened vim in the first place which leads to the bewilderment. So this first moment has a, like, emotional connection and a funny memory tied to it. Which is why it’s funny to make an exaggerated callback to that.

[scottrobinson]

I remember this being a big thing when I was a kid.

Now I'm in the middle of my PhD, and pluto is one of the first things many friends and family members will ask about, or just make rhetorical comments about.

[WhatTheFriedRice]

The pilot episode of the magic school bus had an epilogue where they discussed how until 1999 Plutos orbit was within Neptune’s orbit so it wasn’t even considered the 9th planet then. I remember watching as a kid and that’s the first thing that popped into my head when the Pluto downgrade swept collective consciousness. They even had a little visual of the crossed orbits.

[scientious]

It will happen at least one more time. In fact, what is coming will dwarf the whole Pluto thing.

[suedonym]

This video was uncharacteristically quiet for you which is fine as I just turn my volume up. but oh man, YouTube getting rid of the "ad in x seconds" warning was sooo cool ... Literally just had my eardrums blown out by an unsolicited ad

[stevefrayne]

The way science is communicated is not only a like a game a telephone.
It is like a game of telephone with financial incentives to miscommunicate, and social incentives to not correct the other misunderstandings.
You are very good at communicating how disparate incentives affect scientific communications. I hope you keep it up.