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IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

I’d rather we have dozens of planets, with news articles talking about “new planets discovered”

we can still teach the handful of “classical planets”, so we can have posters, or have like periodic tables, and everyone be aware that they might go out of date as more is discovery.

the solar system will be more exciting and more varied.

also, the “clearing orbit from similar objects” is time and orbit dependent,

larger orbits take longer to clear, which mean in a few billion years ceres might eject pluto and become a planet?

or we could have gas giants beyond pluto (like this hypothetical 9th planet ) which it would be unlikely it has cleared its orbit, so we could have a planet larger than Jupiter which we would call a planet, but if we discover another planet in its orbit (too large to clear), then we will have to say that it is a dwarf planet.

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