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Structuring the bullet items better
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B--rian
B--rian
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NASA distinguishes four types of exoplanets: Gas Giant, Super-Earth, Neptune-like, and Terrestrial. The question asks why ice planets termed "Neptune-like" and not "Uranus-like".

Let's start with some statistics: What is curious, that (at least according to scholar.google.com), intially more icy exoplanets were termed Uranus like planet rather than Neptune like planet before eventually, the latter term started growing:

1980 to 1990

1990 to 1995

1995 to 2000

2000 to 2005

2005 to 2010

This supports the hypothesis that it was a "vote with the feet", rather than something coordinated, much like initial density fluctuations in a protoplanetary disk which might serve as the seed for a planet, or not.

@uhoh already suspected this in a comment, plus also mentions that the pronouncaction of Uranus might lead to unintended puns when talking about "planets like ...". It is sometimes these linguistic pecularities which make a brand successful and another one not.

I'm 100% sure that

  1. it's because of the way Uranus sounds when said out loud, and
  2. the decision was made in the collective unconscious, we'll never find a smoking gun, or a...

After all, there quite some similarities between Uranus and Neptune, see e.g. the concise comparison between the two planets at WolframAlpha, although there is also reasoning Why Neptune and Uranus are different.

NASA distinguishes four types of exoplanets: Gas Giant, Super-Earth, Neptune-like, and Terrestrial. The question asks why ice planets termed "Neptune-like" and not "Uranus-like".

Let's start with some statistics: What is curious, that (at least according to scholar.google.com), intially more icy exoplanets were termed Uranus like planet rather than Neptune like planet before eventually, the latter term started growing:

This supports the hypothesis that it was a "vote with the feet", rather than something coordinated, much like initial density fluctuations in a protoplanetary disk which might serve as the seed for a planet, or not.

@uhoh already suspected this in a comment, plus also mentions that the pronouncaction of Uranus might lead to unintended puns when talking about "planets like ...". It is sometimes these linguistic pecularities which make a brand successful and another one not.

I'm 100% sure that

  1. it's because of the way Uranus sounds when said out loud, and
  2. the decision was made in the collective unconscious, we'll never find a smoking gun, or a...

After all, there quite some similarities between Uranus and Neptune, see e.g. the concise comparison between the two planets at WolframAlpha, although there is also reasoning Why Neptune and Uranus are different.

NASA distinguishes four types of exoplanets: Gas Giant, Super-Earth, Neptune-like, and Terrestrial. The question asks why ice planets termed "Neptune-like" and not "Uranus-like".

Let's start with some statistics: What is curious, that (at least according to scholar.google.com), intially more icy exoplanets were termed Uranus like planet rather than Neptune like planet before eventually, the latter term started growing:

1980 to 1990

1990 to 1995

1995 to 2000

2000 to 2005

2005 to 2010

This supports the hypothesis that it was a "vote with the feet", rather than something coordinated, much like initial density fluctuations in a protoplanetary disk which might serve as the seed for a planet, or not.

@uhoh already suspected this in a comment, plus also mentions that the pronouncaction of Uranus might lead to unintended puns when talking about "planets like ...". It is sometimes these linguistic pecularities which make a brand successful and another one not.

I'm 100% sure that

  1. it's because of the way Uranus sounds when said out loud, and
  2. the decision was made in the collective unconscious, we'll never find a smoking gun, or a...

After all, there quite some similarities between Uranus and Neptune, see e.g. the concise comparison between the two planets at WolframAlpha, although there is also reasoning Why Neptune and Uranus are different.

Source Link
B--rian
B--rian
  • 5.6k
  • 2
  • 18
  • 65

NASA distinguishes four types of exoplanets: Gas Giant, Super-Earth, Neptune-like, and Terrestrial. The question asks why ice planets termed "Neptune-like" and not "Uranus-like".

Let's start with some statistics: What is curious, that (at least according to scholar.google.com), intially more icy exoplanets were termed Uranus like planet rather than Neptune like planet before eventually, the latter term started growing:

This supports the hypothesis that it was a "vote with the feet", rather than something coordinated, much like initial density fluctuations in a protoplanetary disk which might serve as the seed for a planet, or not.

@uhoh already suspected this in a comment, plus also mentions that the pronouncaction of Uranus might lead to unintended puns when talking about "planets like ...". It is sometimes these linguistic pecularities which make a brand successful and another one not.

I'm 100% sure that

  1. it's because of the way Uranus sounds when said out loud, and
  2. the decision was made in the collective unconscious, we'll never find a smoking gun, or a...

After all, there quite some similarities between Uranus and Neptune, see e.g. the concise comparison between the two planets at WolframAlpha, although there is also reasoning Why Neptune and Uranus are different.