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mcvoid1 t1_j571wp9 wrote

I have some questions that need to be answered.

  • Should Ceres be a planet? It's the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt (by a very wide margin) and is round, and about 9.1 × 10^20 kg. (Pluto is 1.30900 × 10^22 kg, so only about 10x bigger)
  • Should Eris be a planet? It's the largest object in the Kuiper belt that we know of. It's also round, and is bigger than Pluto (1.67 × 10^22 kg, so like 25% bigger than Pluto)

Really what's going on is that there's kind of four "zones" of planetoids.

  • The rocky planet zone
  • The inner asteroid belt (where Ceres is)
  • The gas giant zone
  • The outer asteroid belt (where Eris and Pluto are)

The definition of planet makes it that it basically rules out the two asteroid belts because who knows where to draw the line between what in there is a planet and what isn't a planet.

So if we're including the stuff in those two zones, where should the line be drawn?

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twurbster OP t1_j574ugf wrote

Regarding the last two paragraphs, I understand now. Basically I can view Pluto however I want to.

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