# Pluto vs Earth **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 17, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859 "2016-10-17T17:46:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/21 "2016-10-17T22:50:48Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > It would kill all life on Earth with the exception of bacteria and maybe a few other organisms with resistant spores. With an impact like that, wouldn’t even thermophiles and resistant spores be wiped out? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/22 "2016-10-17T23:04:22Z")
> [@Canadjun](#): > > With an impact like that, wouldn’t even thermophiles and resistant spores be wiped out? Since [some bacteria can live in rocks almost two miles underground,](https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S16/13/72E53/index.xml?section=newsreleases) I wouldn’t bet on it. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/23 "2016-10-17T23:26:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Nor is Pluto the largest dwarf planet in the Solar System: Eris, at least, is larger, and there are probably others larger than Eris that just haven’t been discovered yet. Turns out Pluto is larger, although Eris was thought larger at first. That’s because Eris is more massive, about 20% more. However the difference is diameter is not much – about 50 km or so. What this means is that Eris has a greater amount of rock in its compostition. > [@](#): > > I’m not sure what superlative, if any, one can really attach to Pluto with regards to its size. Largest body for which there’s a silly argument about what it’s called? ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/24 "2016-10-17T23:43:40Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m not sure what superlative, if any, one can really attach to Pluto with regards to its size. Largest (and smallest) solar system body that has a Disney cartoon character named after it? –Mark ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/25 "2016-10-17T23:58:51Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Largest (and smallest) solar system body that has a Disney cartoon character named after it? > > –Mark Ariel (the Little Mermaid), a moon of Uranus with a diameter of 1,160 km, is smaller. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/26 "2016-10-18T01:13:14Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Ariel (the Little Mermaid), a moon of Uranus with a diameter of 1,160 km, is smaller. 🙂 I figured I was forgetting one. However, I wonder if the character was really named after the moon. It seems more likely that she, like the moon, was named after the Shakespearean character. The dog Pluto, on the other hand, was definitely named after the planet. –Mark ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/27 "2016-10-19T19:06:48Z")
Obligatory T-shirt link: [http://mediacdn.snorgcontent.com/media/catalog/product/b/a/backinmyday\_fullpic\_4.jpg](http://mediacdn.snorgcontent.com/media/catalog/product/b/a/backinmyday_fullpic_4.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/28 "2016-10-19T19:35:03Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Obligatory T-shirt link: [http://mediacdn.snorgcontent.com/media/catalog/product/b/a/backinmyday\_fullpic\_4.jpg](http://mediacdn.snorgcontent.com/media/catalog/product/b/a/backinmyday_fullpic_4.jpg) That gives me an idea for a Halloween costume: a toga printed with “Back in my day, we have five planets.” Maybe in Latin. –Mark ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/29 "2016-10-19T19:44:20Z")
Όταν ήμουν νέος είχαμε πέντε πλανήτες ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/30 "2016-10-19T20:40:26Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > That gives me an idea for a Halloween costume: a toga printed with “Back in my day, we have five planets.” Maybe in Latin. > > –Mark But in the days when a toga would be appropriate wear, they had 7 planets. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/31 "2016-10-19T21:02:51Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Since [some bacteria can live in rocks almost two miles underground,](https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S16/13/72E53/index.xml?section=newsreleases) I wouldn’t bet on it. If we take **Mr. Kobayashi** ’s simulation in Universe Sandbox at face value, it looks like the entire crust is hot enough to be incandescent, and is molten enough to completely erase every geological feature. Living two miles underground won’t help much in that case… Though in even the most extreme scenarios, there’s also the possibility that some bacteria will survive on the ejecta from the initial impact. A lot of the ejecta will stay in near-earth orbits, and some will return to the earth after the crust has cooled. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/32 "2016-10-19T21:06:10Z")
I would never bet against bacteria. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/33 "2016-10-19T21:55:49Z")
As Stephen Jay Gould said, (paraphrasing), forget all this you hear about the “Age of Fishes”, “Age of Reptiles”, “Age of Mammals”, etc. We are now, and always have been in the Age of Bacteria. Bacteria have always been the dominant life form on Earth. –Mark ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/34 "2016-10-19T22:36:53Z")
Of course, what we’re in the Age Of depends on just how you lump together organisms. It’s not like you’ve got “bacteria”, on the one hand, weighed against “humans”, on the other. That only sounds fair from our biased perspective, but it’s pitting a single species against an entire empire of life (possibly two empires, if you count the archae as bacteria, as seems to be implied by “always have been”). If you only look at individual species, and count by total biomass, we just might actually be in the Age of Humans right now. OK, I just looked it up. Antarctic krill (_Euphausia superba_) have us beat, but only by a factor of 5 or so, and _Bos taurus_ also seems to be a little bit ahead of us. So far as I can tell, though, we’re still in third place. I’m having a hard time finding figures for various tree species, though, which might also be contenders. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/35 "2016-10-19T23:00:39Z")
Biomass is just one way of estimating dominance. [Here](http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_bacteria.html) is one of Gould’s essays on the topic. He argues that bacteria win (compared to EVERYTHING ELSE) in terms of duration (easily), indestructibility (also easily), taxonomy (by far; look at a modern “tree of life” and try to find any branch that isn’t bacteria; all non-bacterial life is on a tiny barely noticable twig), ubiquity, utility, and MAYBE biomass. We don’t really have an even remotely accurate estimate for bacterial biomass because (1) we don’t know where they live (it’s only recently been found that they live much farther underground and at higher temperatures than previously thought, and (2) most bacteria don’t grow in culture media, so traditional sampling methods missed up to 99% of them. Gould estimated (in 1996 admittedly) that bacterial biomass exceeds that of all other life combined. The current [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)) says “The total live biomass of bacteria may be as much as that of plants and animals or may be much less.” –Mark ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/36 "2016-10-20T00:34:05Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > It would kill all life on Earth with the exception of bacteria and maybe a few other organisms with resistant spores. But on the plus side, there wouldn’t be any tsunamis, which is what the OP seems to be worried about. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/37 "2016-10-20T01:18:01Z")
Bacteria do not win in terms of duration, because the archae have them beat on that. And if we’re going to argue “all non-eukaryotes combined vs. all eukaryotes combined”, then they still don’t win, because one might just as well say “all non-elephants combined outnumber all elephants combined”. Or, for that matter, “all non-_E. coli_ combined vs. all _E. coli_ combined”. The statement doesn’t say anything about the organisms themselves, only about the arbitrary way we’ve chosen to categorize them. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/38 "2016-10-20T01:41:54Z")
Yes, I’m sure Gould meant to include archaea in what he calls bacteria. Other than that, your argument is just sophistry. Comparing the group “bacteria” to “non-elephants” is ridiculous. These categories are not arbitrary names, they are based on objective differences in evolutionary history and genetics. Compared to bacteria/archaea, elephants are basically identical to humans, to all other mammals, to all animals, and to all plants for that matter. These groupings are based on genetic similarity and cladistic analysis, not just arbitrary names. –Mark ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/39 "2016-10-20T02:21:09Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And if we’re going to argue “all non-eukaryotes combined vs. all eukaryotes combined”, then they still don’t win, because one might just as well say “all non-elephants combined outnumber all elephants combined”. Or, for that matter, “all non-_E. coli_ combined vs. all _E. coli_ combined”. The statement doesn’t say anything about the organisms themselves, only about the arbitrary way we’ve chosen to categorize them. No, that’s quite wrong. Elephants represent a clade, while non-elephants do not. Elephants are more closely related to each other than they are to other organisms, while many non-elephants are more closely related to elephants than they are to other non-elephants. Likewise E. coli are a clade, non-E. coli are not. Clades are not arbitrary groupings. Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucaryotes are all clades and not arbitrary groups. And since Archaea and Eucaryotes appear to be more closely related to each other than either is to Bacteria, Bacteria vs non-Bacteria are both legitimate clades. So comparing the abundance and diversity of Bacteria to that of everything else is a fair comparison. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859/40 "2016-10-20T02:33:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > … > OK, I just looked it up. Antarctic krill (_Euphausia superba_) have us beat, but only by a factor of 5 or so, and _Bos taurus_ also seems to be a little bit ahead of us. So far as I can tell, though, we’re still in third place. I’m having a hard time finding figures for various tree species, though, which might also be contenders. A useful guide to at least the land mammals if nothing else: [xkcd: Land Mammals](http://xkcd.com/1338/) Odd, but I had occasion to post this same link in a different thread today. What are the odds? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluto-vs-earth/768859.md?page=3)