> Exoplanets also aren't planets.
Imagine writing this.
Imagine writing this.
The reviewer of this paper is saying that by biology they always meant naturally evolved cellular biology, not synthetic biology - there's just never been an example of the latter before.
I think the take is wrong, the receiving journals should be excited to expand their scope rather than frustratedly redefine their scope more narrowly, but definitions and categorization are hard.
Who is "they", and how do you know what they meant?
The relevant fact is that the claim "Exoplanets also aren't planets" is simply wrong -- exoplanets are by definition planets outside the solar system. It's like claiming that a brown furple isn't a furple -- the claim is wrong, regardless of what one thinks a furple is.
> The reviewer of this paper is saying that by biology they always meant naturally evolved cellular biology, not synthetic biology - there's just never been an example of the latter before.
They aren't saying that, and that isn't true.
If only language was so logical.
While I happen to agree that exoplanets are planets, as with my point in the other comment, I aver the stronger claim ("regardless") does not follow in this context.
Stonehenge, after which the concept of a henge is named, does not meet the current archeological definition of a henge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henge
Jerusalem artichokes are neither artichokes nor from Jerusalem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke
Guinea pigs are not pigs and are not from Guinea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_pig
The "mincemeat" in a mince pie is, these days, usually vegetarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincemeat
Chinese checkers is German and plays nothing like checkers. Peanuts are not nuts, strawberries are not berries, hamburgers do not generally contain ham, a killer whale is actually a dolphin, etc.
And "gas giants are failed stars and shouldn't count as planets" is completely irrelevant -- at best it's a fallacy of denial of the antecedent.
I won't respond further.
Anyone who says “exoplanets aren’t planets” really needs to think a little harder about the actual meaning of what they’re saying.
All that debacle around dwarf planets to prepare for future observations, and yet the distinction ceases to apply the moment you go outside the Oort cloud...
But really, that's just the naming systems being bad, obviously common people don't think asteroids around other stars are "exoplanets" or should be called that way
https://www.iau.org/IAU/Science/What-we-do/Pluto-and-the-Dev...
"More generally, a planet:
a. orbits its host star, just as the Earth and Jupiter orbit the Sun,
b. is large enough to be mostly round, and
c. must have an important influence on the orbital stability of the other objects in its neighbourhood."
Exoplanets are planets by that definition where the host star is not our Sun:
"Researchers have found hundreds of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, that reside outside our solar system. "
"Exoplanets also aren't planets": discuss
Even further up to the point of if these are or are not cell, it illustrates how taxonomical categories are made by humans for humans. Historically, any connection to natural laws in taxonomies is often mere coincidence.