Planetary Confusion — Why Astronomers Keep Changing What It Means to Be A Planet

Dec 23, 2019
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If you go by the criteria that killed Pluto - that the object has cleared its orbit of other bodies - then I submit that Jupiter has not cleared its orbit. Consider the Trojan asteroids in co orbit with it at the leading and trailing Lagrange points. Neptune has not cleared Pluto from Its orbit, nor has Pluto cleared Neptune from its orbit. Even Earth has asteroids in looping orbits in our orbital neighborhood. It just seems the rushed decision on planetary criteria were not well thought out in the most recent rehash of that definition.
 

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