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Originally Posted by dgavin
If i remember from when I read about this there is a upper limit as to the number and mass of large bodies that could form and be stable enough not to colide into each other. It was around 10 earth masses, but can't remember the max number of them.
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I know that you are going off of memory, but if you ever find an online reference to that I'd love to read it!
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It's just as likely that we'll only find 4 or 5 more of that size, and the rest will be asteroid sized snow balls.
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You may be right, but I am doubtful. I remember when Sedna was discovered, a big deal was made about it being a fluke that Sedna was at one of its closest points on a highly erratic orbit and that there could be hundreds of bodies like that in the outer solar system.
We are just now discovering the bodies just beyond the edge of the Solar System (out to 50 AU), and that is only a small fraction of the total space in the Kuiper and Oort regions. I think it's premature to assume we
won't find more Pluto-sized bodies, at least until the new discoveries start slowing down.
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I don't think declassifing a planet to prevent a -possible- large quantity of them form being called the same is all that valid of a reason for an approach either.
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I agree. If we think that the Trans-Neptunian bodies are not that much different than the 8 inner planets, then it certainly
does make sense to classify them together, no matter how many planets that would leave us with.
That said, I believe that there is actually very little similarity between the 8 inner planets and all of the bodies outside of Neptune outside of the fact that they are gravitationally round.
Their orbital characteristics are dramatically different (eccentricity, inclination, dominance and distance from the sun). In addition, there are huge differences in mass -- the largest KBO is perhaps just 1/10th the mass of the smallest planet. There are far more dissimilarities than similarities, which supports the idea of putting them in separate classifications.
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Having 25 Belt Planets wouldn't really bother me, as we could differentiate them by the term Belt. Would work for both Kuiper objects and sheparded ones.
Something akin to 8 Dominant Planets, and 25 Belt Planets, makes more sense to me then 8 Dominant Planets and 25 Large KBO's.
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There is no functional difference between those two alternatives. You have still separated the KBOs from the Inner planets according to their orbital dominance -- all you have really done is changed the labels. I fail to see how this is any different than the scheme I posted except for your desire to incorporate the word 'planet' for KBOs. But doing that has required you to add a new qualifier (Belt & Dominant) that is not really necessary.