The Fallen Comet's Repository

* So I say . . . why don't we go between the lines?

Pluto is not happy to be trans (dwarf planet) or sad to be a dwarf planet instead of a planet. Pluto's emotions do not matter to the question. What does matter is that you're implicitly framing anyone suggesting that Pluto is a planet as transphobic.

Yes, some people think Pluto is a planet for stupid reasons, because of nostalgia for what they learned in school or because they think Pluto is sad. But Pluto can be considered a planet, by reasonable criteria. The IAU definition of a planet was hand crafted to exclude Pluto (and Eris). It is not a truly scientific classification. It also excludes the large moons of the Earth and the gas giants, for no good reason. And exoplanets, of which we know thousands. But I'm not going to take the time to relitigate this question here. A friend of mine gave this topic adequate nuance in this post. (last two reblogs)

Nevermind that the least interesting question you could ever ask about an object is whether or not it's a planet, but that's all people ever talk about when it comes to Pluto.

Look at this thing. There's no other known planetary object in the solar system that looks quite like this. It has a massive flat of nitrogen glaciers engaged in solid state convection, with floating mountain-sized icebergs of water ice atop it. It has sand dunes made of methane ice. It has gunky organic tholins that are thought to be seasonal. It has cryo-tectonics, maybe even cryo-volcanism. It's even thought to have an internal liquid water ocean like some of the ice moons of the gas giants.

(Art by James Tuttle Keane)

and its binary companion, Charon, has some interesting cryotectonics going on too, and a reddish polar cap of tholins made by photochemical processes working on methane gathered from Pluto's exosphere over billions of years.

Pluto's got four additional minor planet sized moons, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Because they can't tidally lock to both Pluto and Charon at the same time, they have chaotic rotation. Their day length is not fixed. The sun could rise in the east and set in the north!