Quote:
Originally Posted by tlbs101
...standards.
By their own definition:
(3) It must reign supreme in its own orbit, having "cleared the neighborhood" of other competing bodies.
Well, Neptune hasn't swept Pluto from its path, yet. So until it does, Neptune will have to be demoted, too.
I wonder if any of those astonomers thought of that.
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I disagree... let me explain.
The "cleared the neighboorhood" argument is basically the "orbital dominance" scheme that I and many others in this forum have been proposing for a long time.
However, there is an exception to be made regarding small bodies in an orbital resonance. Neptune has effectively cleared its orbit by gravitationally forcing Pluto and other nearby objects in the Kuiper Belt into a specific orbital resonance. Those that did not reach a resonance were ejected (cleared) from Neptune's orbital region.
There are other examples... There are large "Trojans" in Jupiter's orbit, but they are stable only because they are either 60 degrees ahead or behind Jupiter.
Moons around each planet are another example.