• Question: why is pluto not a planet anymore and every other planet is still a planet

    Asked by anon-186551 to Verity, Danny, Andy on 13 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Danny Ward

      Danny Ward answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      Pluto is considered a dwarf planet due to its size. We found things located objects in a thing called the Kuiper Belt that were of similar size that were part of Plutos astronomical neighbourhood. Because of this, Pluto no longer met all the criteria to be considered a planet so it got downgraded to a dwarf planet 🌐

    • Photo: Verity Hill

      Verity Hill answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      The idea of a “planet” is just a scientific definition that we have imposted! In the natural world, things often don’t fit in to the boxes that we would like them to.
      When planets were defined, we included Pluto because it made sense to because it orbited the sun. But, as Danny says, we found things of a similar size so we decided that Pluto didn’t actually fit our definition!

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