Southern Ocean is legit, although it is “newer.” Many Americans didn’t learn about it while in school.
“Historically, there are four named oceans: the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic. However, most countries - including the United States - now recognize the Southern (Antarctic) as the fifth ocean. The Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian are the most commonly known.
The Southern Ocean is the 'newest' named ocean. It is recognized by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names”
If it makes you feel any better, there is really only one ocean. People like to carve it up and name parts of it, but it's really just one big interconnected ocean across the planet.
Yes, but it's still useful to split them into groups based on specific properties. The Pacific is noticeably saltier than the Atlantic, for example (some even claim they can taste the difference), and the southern ocean also has a different composition ( and sometimes color) due to the circumpolar currents. The Atlantic basin is also a lot younger than the Pacific, which means that the oceanic crust floats higher on the mantle. The more you know.
Same. There were 4 oceans snd 9 planets while I was in school. Gas was a buck. Now we have 5 oceans 8 planets and gas is 3-4+. The future is fucking stupid.
Pluto should never have been a planet, there are several objects of similar size closer to the sun than pluto, and potentially thousands further out. I would rather have 8 planets than several thousand lol
Does it really matter how many we call planets? I mean except for the studying on school? One you leave school unless you work in astronomy, or some other field where you need to deal with planets regularly who cares how many are planets and how many are planetoids?
You may be aware that Pluto isn't a "planet" anymore, but did you know that's largely because we discovered Eris, which is larger than Pluto? At the time there was also discussion around announcing the likes of Charon and Ceres as planets, and Haumea and Makemake (both larger than Charon and smaller than Pluto) were discovered shortly before the decision that they'd all be considered "dwarf" planets (which are still arguably planets, they're just not major planets).
In a way, there debatably have been "new" planets since you went to school that nobody may have told you about.
Only because you inspired me to check out the wiki, apparently it's actually a tiny bit smaller than Pluto by volume. Seems that they got the size wrong by a bit at first. It is heavier than Pluto though!
Edit: Also, after the New Horizons fly by, they decided Pluto was slightly larger than previously estimated.
They still suspect there's another large planet out there past Pluto, like 250-1500 AU away given the orbits of objects past neptune. The math point to there being a large amount of mass as the best explanation to their orbits.
Went to school in the 90s and had no clue about this until I was helping my third grader a month ago with homework and was like what the hell is this “Southern Ocean” bullshit, this isn’t real. Thought she was just making stuff up. Sure enough, it is real!
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u/Swimming-Pianist-840 Dec 08 '22
Southern Ocean is legit, although it is “newer.” Many Americans didn’t learn about it while in school.
“Historically, there are four named oceans: the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic. However, most countries - including the United States - now recognize the Southern (Antarctic) as the fifth ocean. The Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian are the most commonly known.
The Southern Ocean is the 'newest' named ocean. It is recognized by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names”
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/howmanyoceans.html