What is Pluto doing so close to Australia?
That shouldn’t be allowed. Someone tell it to go back to it’s usual orbit, this is not on.
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You didn’t know they had a thing? It lasted until Australia found out Pluto wasn’t really a planet.
They’re using it to cool up Australia
It’s their payback for that whole “clears its orbit” business.
Still, the surface area is much bigger. Pluto is a real continent
Discreetly insulting both Australia and Pluto in one sentence! Absolutely love this; will share it with all my Australia and Plutonian friends! If Earth gets attacked, it’s not my fault, but yours :'P
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Australians can’t attack Earth, they’d fall right up into the sky without some reverse-reverse-gravity system.
First they came for Pluto’s planethood.
Next they’re coming for Australia’s continenthood.
When they came for Pluto, I said nothing because I wasn’t a planet
When they came for Australia, I said nothing because I wasn’t a continent
When they came for Bielefeld, I said nothing because I wasn’t a city
When they came for me, there was no one left to say anything– Martin Niemöller
Wow, Pluto has approximately the same surface area as Russia
And now putin starts pumping out propaganda that pluto used to be russian
So… Does this mean Australia is no longer a continent?
Dwarf continent
Or does it mean Australia is a planet?
Australia would have to round up its edges and clear it’s orbit of little islands before being called a planet.
Mostly just a cunt
I’m sure the rest of the world would agree!
If that photo was taken right before impact, none of the continents will remain continents because it’s all about to melt and we might have another moon when everything settles down and we evolve back from scratch over the next several billion years.
The only survivors would be Australia’s infamous Magma Spiders.
Just in time to get baked by the sun!
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It never was. The concept of Australis is part of spherical world order.
Do you really think a Platypus is a real animal? A mammal that let’s eggs and has bioluminescent fur. Get the fuck outta here.
Sand Mass?
Honestly never had a clue. Thanks for the share.
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Fun fact: the surface area of Pluto is only about 4% larger than Russia.
So thats why Russia wanted to expand
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It’s actually 4π*(0.5*(length-of-australia))^2 bigger than that.
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Even more amazing that it was found in the era it was. People were pouring over the skies looking for the next big planet, and instead they found this little guy.
There are still some orbital dynamics suggestions that something large and dark is lurking out there – an ice giant. But it’s still largely conjecture. It’d be interesting to see how they define it should they find something very large (say Neptune mass), but it hasn’t cleared its orbit. Is it a planet or not? :D
Actually 🤓 it was James Cook who found Australia and he didn’t go there by ski but by ship and he didn’t find one little guy but exterminated a whole indigenous population
Ah shit, a switcheroo!
They only found it because it’s more like a binary dwarf planet system than a planet/moon system, so the telescopes were able to pick up light reflected from both Pluto and Charron, while Pluto alone might have not been bright enough.
And thats why you’ll never be a real planet!
Heresy! Australia will always be a planet.
No! Austria will never be a planet nor continent. It is a white, European country and I’m willing to die on that hill!
Absolute size isn’t really in the criteria for a planet though. Pluto isn’t a planet because it shares its orbit with lots of other icy bodies in the Kuiper belt.
Exactly. That’s also why Jupiter, which shares its orbit with thousands of asteroids, isn’t a planet either.
Do you mean the Trojans? They’re excluded from the mass calculation of ‘clearing the neighbourhood’ because they’re in a resonant orbit - their orbit is a consequence of Jupiter’s mass.
I don’t know. I don’t think we should make excuses for Jupiter just because of its size. Pluto’s doing the best it can. Could any of us do any better, so far out from the sun?
Jupiter does throw its weight around a bit too much.
Thanks to your comments, I went looking at more about Jupiter’s influence on us and read that most of the other planets are more in line with Jupiter’s orbital plane than the Sun’s equatorial plane (which sounds impressive, but maybe only makes complete sense since the planets would have all initially formed from the same disk). Anyway, thanks
That’s really interesting!
I just discovered a theory about the cause of the ‘late heavy bombardment’, which is thought to have delivered water to earth via comets.Essentially the gas giants all orbited much closer, but Jupiter and Saturn got into resonance and flung Uranus and Neptune way out (and Saturn too). Uranus and Neptune flew out into the path of a heap of ice, and their gravity pulled the ice into an orbit that collided with the terrestrial planets.
No kidding. The Sun - Jupiter barycentre is outside the Sun.
Jupiter was declared too big to fail.
This picture is inaccurate, Pluto is actually much farther away.
Telephoto shot, using a 1e50 mm lens.
Probably not necessary to use a lens so long it can reach distant galaxies!
if anyone wants to do the math, how far away from the sun would the camera have needed to be to take such a photo?
Apparent scale is inverse linear, i.e., proportional to 1 / distance. If we want the apparent scale of two objects to be about 90% accurate to their actual relative scale, their relative distances to the camera can’t be more than 10% different. Pluto being 40-ish astronomical from Earth, you’d want to shoot from about 400 AU. Voyager I should be in prime position circa 2140.
Small little fucker, no wonder it’s not a planet anymore.
Straya’s never been a planet, mate.
Yeah, but it is a pretty big island.
Might as well have been. 😉
As a former Plutonian, I can confirm it’s small, that’s why we immigrated to Earth. And fucking cold!
Stop posting pictures of my family, they are very shy!!!
I have this Tshirt
I get groans
What is this, a planet for ants?!
Extremely venomous ants.
It’s a close-up shot; the planet in this photo is actually much bigger than Australia.
Then again it could be super close and the size of a potato.
Potatoes aren’t usually blue
They are if they are moving towards you really fast!
Imagine hitting that fast ball
Hey wtf put Pluto back to where it belongs. Do you have any idea how bad this is for the world economics???
Would the owner of a beige 1930 dwarf planet please move it, or we will have it towed.
I think a TARDIS can do that.
