What is a planet?

[vakkotaur]

Comments

[wordslinger]

I like the "enough gravity that it compresses it into a sphere."

Of course, this then redefines a gazillion moons as planets, too... so perhaps the caveat needs to be added "and orbiting a sun and not another body."

[vakkotaur]

Oh yeah. I guess I didn't make that explicit, but should have.

[jdm314]

Funny you should mention that, a friend of mine recently posted a very similar entry on his blog.

[vakkotaur]

His final paragraph reminds me of how someone once suggested that an alien visitor to our solar system might describe it as "a system of one star, four planets, and assorted debris" with only the gas giants being counted as planets.

[chakawolf]

a planit is sumthing that monsteres liv on

[vakkotaur]

Considering that the classic definition of monster would include centaurs as monsters, I have no problem with that. But I haven't heard of any centaurs from other solar system objects than Earth... does that make Earth the only planet?

[chakawolf]

Well, theres the martians what liv on Martia, and the venuseians what liv on venusia, and sum others i dont know of

(I gotta get some sleep!)

[vakkotaur]

Oh, the sleeps came from anesthesia.