Quickie Questions

What I was taught in elementary school is that a very large portion of its orbit is actually inside Neptune's. Like, one orbit is something like 250 years, and it spends over 170 of them closer to the sun than Neptune. It actually only crossed outside Neptune's orbit for the first time since discovery in the mid-90s. So I never understood why it's considered the 9th planet rather than the 8th.

Oh yeah, Pluto is definitely a Kuiper Belt object.

Also that graphic is not at all like what I learned in school with regards to Neptune and Pluto, but Pluto's orbit doesn't have nearly the eccentricity it's supposed to, so I think it's just projected along the plane the rest of the solar system is (Pluto's extremely off the standard plane as well)

edited 28th Jun '15 9:52:03 PM by TParadox

It doesn't spend much of it's orbit inside Neptune's at all

Plot of the 4 giant planets, Pluto, the known KBOs as of 2009 (in green) and projected trajectory of New Horizons◊

Shortened that second link since the fora was breaking it.

Well prosaically Pluto was the 9th because it was found after Neptune.

Also The Other Wiki tells me that Pluto gets closer to Uranus at 11 AU than it ever does Neptune (17 AU). The more you know *rainbow star*

Quick question: Is anyone else finding that the forum pages never stop reporting as "loading", even after all the content is there?

edited 28th Jun '15 10:18:08 PM by Luthen

... Wait, so Eris spends almost just as much time outside the Kuiper belt as it does 'within it?

Bah, whatever. I say if it has geological activity (e.g. tectonics) and at least one natural satellite, then it's a planet.

edited 29th Jun '15 9:15:01 AM by MarqFJA

So Venus isn't a planet, then? :P

I didn't say that having no natural satellite is a disqualification.

"No" is less than "at least one".

edited 29th Jun '15 5:38:43 PM by Luthen

Logical Fallacy. "If 'P and Q' then 'R'" doesn't always automatically mean that "If not 'P and Q' then not 'R'". It just says that P and Q being both true means that R must also be true.

In fact, you could say that the proper form of the statement I wanted to say is "If it has geological activity, then it's definitely a planet. If it has at least one natural satellite, then it's even more definitely a planet."

edited 29th Jun '15 6:35:14 PM by MarqFJA

Mea culpa for assuming iff when only if.

Does Pluto have tectonic activity?

We don't know yet. Mainly because these are the latest photos of Pluto, taken from New Horizons◊ and before New Horizons the best we had were from the Hubble Telescope◊, so we can't tell if it has any features that show tectonic activity until after the New Horizons flyby.

That said, there are already theories on what its internal structure is like based on what we do know of it.

I think this has moved well beyond the quickie part of Quickie Questions.

Indeed it has. I was even wondering why we weren't discussing this in the Space Thread.

Alright, I have a quickie question: How come American football and baseball eclipse all other sports in the United States — including soccer — in terms of popularity, when it's soccer (represented by the FIFA World Cup) that eclipses all other sports on the international level?

Different national identity? I've seen it argued that Americans love high scores, and there's a perception that soccer is boring because rarely more than two points are scored in a game.

One of the biggest reasons is because most European nations had a game which was basically half King Of The Hill and half Big Ball of Violence, but the Americas didn't have such a game, especially not for how many missionaries and puritans went over there.

So where European nations had a vaguely Soccer-like game, American colonies didn't.

Why is it even called football?

Because the etymology stems from either how they are played using the foot in some manner, or perhaps more likely that they are played on foot, rather than on horse as say jousting is.

Probably because each "session" of the game is started by one team's player kicking the ball from a set position, and then the players making a mad run for either the opposing ball-holder (if there is one), the goal (if they're the one holding the ball), or the opponent players (to prevent them from tackling their ball-holder). Lots of footwork, you see.

Keep in mind that "soccer" is just a derivation of the actual official name, "associaiton football".

edited 30th Jun '15 4:02:41 PM by MarqFJA

What is "Stranger danger" and what does it mean?

It's a mnemonic for teaching/reminding children to be wary of people they don't know. Basically to get them not to take candy from strangers or get in their cars.

It is problematic, since most danger to children isn't from strangers.

It also gets sarcastically thrown around by adults sometimes.

edited 30th Jun '15 11:33:00 PM by Luthen

Thanks.

I feel like it interacted negatively with my introversion. I hate meeting new people.

I'm using IE (version 11 I think) on a tablet, and need to view my history, but the explorer bar in the desktop version has somehow become really narrow, and I can't widen it (sometimes I really hate the touch screen). I know there's something you can write into the URL bit that lets you see your history in File Explorer or something, but I can't remember it and can't find where I found it. Anyone know what it is? It was in the format X:Y, I remember. I think Y was History, but not sure.

Might be about:history. I think most browsers use the about: protocol. Chrome uses chrome: but will redirect from about:.