Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G
What bothers me is, what if there simply didn't happen to be a Neptune? Would that have made Pluto a planet suddenly?
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Pluto doesn't dominate its neighborhood, with or without Neptune because Pluto is just another Kuiper belt object. In fact, Ceres probably has more dominance in asteroid belt than Pluto in Kuiper belt. After all, Ceres has significant fraction of all asteroid belt's mass in it, Pluto is far smaller compared to the Kuiper belt.
If Neptune and other KBOs suddenly disappeared, situation might be different...