• Question: why do people say that pluto is not a planet?

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Gemma Marsden

      Gemma Marsden answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Hi gargank,

      I’m in no way an expert but after doing some reading, I’ve found out that Pluto was re-classified as a dwarf planet in 2006.
      This reason for this change is because scientists created an official definition of a planet. So ‘a full-fledged planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large enough to have become round due to the force of its own gravity. In addition, a planet has to dominate the neighborhood around its orbit.’
      Pluto does not dominate its area in space because it is only 50% larger than one of its moons. Pluto also doesn’t pull in asteroids and other debris to its orbit in a tidy way like bigger planets do.

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