Like why is it not included in solar system i don’t get it
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A lot of comments on “we discovered other stuff” but not much on why we de-planeted Pluto vs. making the other’s planets.
We updated the definition of a planet with our increased knowledge of space. Key for this are the following
1) Planets are big enough to clear their orbits of other space-stuff. In other words, they have enough gravity to pull the stuff in their orbit into themselves, absorbing them, or their gravity “throws stuff away” out into space. Pluto has enough ‘space junk’ in it’s orbit, it’s clearly not doing this.
2) Planets have strong enough gravity to pull their shape into something close to a sphere. Smaller objects don’t have enough gravity and they have ugly shapes, like potatoes or awkward shapes like that. Pluto and it’s “not quite planet” siblings are not roughly spherical, they are ugly shapes.
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