Comment by drxzcl
10 hours ago
Trans-neptunian objects, including Pluto, are in orbital resonance. They owe their stable orbits to the existence of Neptune.
It’s like saying Jupiter is not a planet because the Trojans exist.
10 hours ago
Trans-neptunian objects, including Pluto, are in orbital resonance. They owe their stable orbits to the existence of Neptune.
It’s like saying Jupiter is not a planet because the Trojans exist.
...or like saying Earth is not a planet because NEA's share our orbit.
If you have to argue that it doesn't apply to Jupiter or Earth because they are obviously planets, it implies that "clearing the neighbourhood" is a vague and not particularly useful criteria.
It’s not vague or unimportant. Clearing their orbits literally made them planets because they absorbed the mass of everything they cleared out.
Except I said nothing of the sort. I said the opposite.
Jupiter, Neptune and earth in your example dominate the gravity of their orbit by locking the smaller bodies into orbital reasonances.
It’s not a vague criterium. It might be an irrelevant one if you are interested in geophysics, but it’s concrete and testable.