339
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 2 points 3 days ago

I thought dwarf planets still had to be round, and they just lack the "cleared its orbit" requirement (e.g. Ceres in the asteroid belt). That would disqualify any Oort cloud objects except Pluto and Charon as far as I know.

[-] mkwt@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

It's true. Dwarf planets do have to be round ("in hydrostatic equilibrium"). That requirement will definitely disqualify many of the hypothetical billions of Oort cloud objects.

Ceres is an official dwarf planet, but I excluded it from my list because I was focusing on trans-Neptunians.

A big reason why the IAU hasn't confirmed most of the 36 is because they want strong evidence of roundness, like a spacecraft flyby with direct imaging. Pluto and Eris are close enough that earth telescopes can just barely resolve some of their shapes.

Finally, Pluto and Charon are too close to be considered in the Oort cloud. Sedna, whose discovery precipitated a lot of this crisis, has been nominated as the very first discovered object in the "inner Oort cloud." Sedna's perihelion is at 76 AU.

[-] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Oops, right -- Pluto and Charon are in the Kuiper Belt, not the Oort Cloud. I really shouldn't mix those up.

I thought Haumea, Eris, and Makemake were solidly considered dwarf planets. But we don't have good images of those, do we?

this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
339 points (99.4% liked)

History Memes

2597 readers
721 users here now

A place to share history memes!

Rules:

  1. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.

  2. No fascism (including tankies/red fash), atrocity denial or apologia, etc.

  3. Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.

  4. Follow all Piefed.social rules.

  5. History referenced must be 20+ years old.

  6. Avoid posting AI-generated content whenever possible.

Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world

OTHER COMMS IN THE HISTORYVERSE:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS