Talk:Eris (dwarf planet)

Plutoid

ArkHyena has recently removed the reference to the term plutoid.[1] In their edit summary, they raise a valid point, namely that the term is hardly, if ever, used in literature. While I think they are correct in principle, I am not sure whether removing it from the article altogether is the right choice.

The category of plutoid was introduced by IAU in 2008, to refer to dwarf planets in the outer Solar System. Following the announcement of the term by the IAU Executive Committee, it came to light that there was substantial disagreement among other parts of IAU (most notably the WG-PSN), who rejected the term. See Dwarf_planet#Name for details. This, it would seem, contributed to the term never becoming widely used in the scientific literature. While the IAU seems to have stopped using it, the definition is still technically valid. As far as I know, the 2008 decision was never reverted or amended.

There are reliable, recently published sources that use the definition, in connection to Eris or in general. Confining the list to books or articles published by Springer, there is A Guide to Hubble Space Telescope Objects from 2015: Eris, which orbits far beyond Neptune, is a plutoid while Ceres, which orbits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is a dwarf planet.[2] Another one, Asteroids, Comets, and Other Non-Planetary Objects[3] from 2018, says that Plutoid, meaning “resembling Pluto,” is an alternative name for a dwarf planet, while the 2019 book Classifying the Cosmos[4] (p.60) says that In honor of Pluto, dwarf planets beyond Neptune’s orbit are sometimes termed “plutoids,” though the term is not in common usage. Does this mean it should be kept out of the Wikipedia article entirely? Renerpho (talk) 07:28, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

To go into more detail on my position and why I believe "plutoid" is best removed (or at the very least, not a necessary term to include) does hinge on its absence in literature and public usage, but how it is a redundant term as well.

Though there are occasional RS's that use the term (as per your examples), it still remains the case that RS's that use "plutoid" are overwhelmingly a decade old, with only sporadic usage past 2012 or so. This came from a cursory search on Google Scholar that I did, so no doubt there are ones that I may have missed and ones that aren't quality sources, but I doubt it's enough either way to change the equation. Now, it would be fine if "plutoid" was in common usage despite its occasional—at best!—appearances in literature, but this is also evidently not the case. To my knowledge, no popular science outlet has used "plutoid" since 2010, and the IAU themselves appear to have all but forgotten/abandoned the term themselves. Many astronomy glossaries, including Wikipedia's own, do not include "plutoid" (though those glossaries generally don't include more specific terms broadly, so this may not be as relevant).

Furthermore, the term is arguably pretty much redundant. The more common terms I see are simply "trans-Neptunian (dwarf) planet" or "Kuiper belt (dwarf) planet" or some variant thereof, e.g. an LPI abstract Evaluating Trans-Neptunian Dwarf Planets as Targets for an Interstellar Probe Flyby[5] or an article Geologically Diverse Pluto and Charon: Implications for the Dwarf Planets of the Kuiper Belt.[6] The IAU proposed the term to differentiate the newly-discovered trans-Neptunian dwarf planets from Ceres and any other candidate inner System dwarf planets. However, there generally is no strong consensus for any need to set a hard dividing line between Ceres and dwarf planet TNOs, especially since it has been revealed that Ceres itself is an icy object, making all consensus dwarf planets plus Orcus, Charon, and Salacia icy worlds. This makes the term redundant geophysically speaking. Dynamically speaking, the term is again redundant; astronomers seem to prefer the aforementioned "trans-Neptunian dwarf planet" as we already have a broad dynamical class where all consensus DPs except Ceres are members.

Ultimately, usage of the term "plutoid" seems to be analogous to the term "cis-Neptunian object"; both are defined terms that see sporadic usage, but neither truly do anything to improve/clarify communication of astronomy topics or reflect actual terminology used by astronomers. ArkHyena (talk) 19:45, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

It may not be common, but it is a used term from the IAU to Britannica to the OED to classes at UCLA within the past two years. If it's archaic we state it as such. We certainly don't use it in the lead but rather in the main prose. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:56, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

That's certainly fair, and any descriptive clarification of its usage wouldn't hurt. But beyond discussing the history of TNO terminology, is its inclusion even warranted or useful? ArkHyena (talk) 20:06, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Date format in dwarf planet articles

An IP user has recently attempted to change the date format in this article to DMY, which was reverted by ArkHyena.[7] I have no personal preference, but I like consistency, and I like to consider whether a change has merit before it is reverted. While the revert was technically correct, given the preferred date format (MDY) that's stated in the header, I wonder why we treat the articles in Wikipedia:Featured topics/Dwarf planets (plus Orcus, which is currently discussed to be included) so differently:

• Eris (dwarf planet): MDY, stated in header
• Pluto (dwarf planet): MDY, stated in header
• Makemake (dwarf planet): MDY, no preference
• Gonggong (dwarf planet): DMY, stated in header
• Sedna (dwarf planet): DMY, stated in header
• Ceres (dwarf planet): DMY, stated in header
• Quaoar: DMY, stated in header
• Haumea (dwarf planet): DMY, no preference
• 90482 Orcus: DMY, no preference

Six articles use DMY, three use MDY. What sets Eris, Makemake and Pluto apart from the others? I can understand using DMY for those articles that simultaneously ask for British English (this is preferred for Ceres, according to its header), but the others? Mixing American English with DMY seems weird, even random to me.

We can, of course, decide this on a per-article basis, but if we treat it as a coin toss then why did the edit have to be reverted? Renerpho (talk) 18:21, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I myself cannot give a definitive answer, as the articles that have had date formats set were decided long before I joined and began editing. If I had to fancy a guess, Pluto uses MDY and American English due to its close association as "America's planet," so to speak: it was the only one of the "old nine" to be discovered and confirmed entirely by Americans, its binary companion and at least two of its four small moons were all discovered by American-led teams, and the only mission to date was sent by NASA. Most of the uproar against Pluto's reclassification in 2006 appears to come from the U.S. This may arguably fall under MOS:DATETIES, although I would personally strongly object to applying DATETIES (and similar guidelines) to any celestial object. All other dwarf planets are much less clear, and honestly seem to be chance cases of MOS:DATEUNIFY, where the earliest versions (and thus, editor consensus) of some articles were in MDY and others in DMY.

As a side note, I would argue against suggesting or advising articles that use American English to adhere to MDY. I myself am a native American English speaker and I much prefer DMY formats :) Additionally, some non-native English-speaking editors may have learnt English through American media, despite hailing from regions that don't use MDY. ArkHyena (talk) 18:48, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@ArkHyena: I personally use YYYY-MM-DD whenever I get the chance. ;-) Haumea has recently been changed by the same IP you reverted. The rest looks like it's been like this for a while. Renerpho (talk) 18:59, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Fair! In either case, I don't believe the date inconsistency between dwarf planet articles is a major issue to readers—at least, I hope not. Regardless of date format, it seems all articles manage to convey timelines of relevant events clearly enough and in a self-consistent (within a given article) manner. ArkHyena (talk) 22:21, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm with Renerpho. Use ISO dates for all scientific articles. By the time something gets into the encyclopedia, the month and day are hardly important, so the year should come first. As a side benefit, the Brits and the Yanks will be equally unhappy. — kwami (talk) 00:57, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Sound recordings of Eris on YouTube

There are numerous YouTube videos of supposed sound recordings of Eris. It is my judgement that they are fake and are actually taken from the ambient sounds of the video games Half-Life and Half-Life 2. People are being mislead that the supposed recordings are actually from the dwarf planet, maybe we should put this fact in a trivia section. 151.251.112.123 (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Unless these sound recordings become notable in reliable sources, there's not much reason to put them here. And given that the very concept of sound recordings of objects in space is ridiculous on its face, I find it very difficult to believe that they are a widespread phenomenon. Serendi^podous 21:41, 27 August 2024 (UTC)