The actual qualification is “hydrostatic equilibrium”, but I didn’t want to complicate the point with technical mathematical jargon.
there will be edge cases where it’s not clear which category they fall into
Which is pretty par for the course so far as scientific classifications go. Classification is a human endeavor to attempt to neatly categorize things to better understand them, but the universe is what it is and defies tidy categorization. Just about any scientific classification you can devise will have edge cases and ambiguity.
Which is pretty par for the course so far as scientific classifications go.
Well yes I don’t necessarily disagree with you there. But there are some cases where it’s more obvious than others. A good example would be ring species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
I’d say planets are about the same level of arbitrariness as far as scientific categories go
The actual qualification is “hydrostatic equilibrium”, but I didn’t want to complicate the point with technical mathematical jargon.
Which is pretty par for the course so far as scientific classifications go. Classification is a human endeavor to attempt to neatly categorize things to better understand them, but the universe is what it is and defies tidy categorization. Just about any scientific classification you can devise will have edge cases and ambiguity.
Well yes I don’t necessarily disagree with you there. But there are some cases where it’s more obvious than others. A good example would be ring species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
I’d say planets are about the same level of arbitrariness as far as scientific categories go