Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
As far as the number of planets in the solar system -- this is the decision also made by scientists based on the facts. Pluto is smaller than other objects that we have never called a planet, and it's orbit is pretty strange -- out of the plane and some of the time it is inside Uranus, IIRCC.
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No, this was a decision made by a small committee, who cooked up a rather whacky definition of planet specifically to exclude Pluto. Those smaller objects are a few of the moons of the outer planets (which aren't called planets only because they orbit those planets), and the several recently-discovered planet-sized objects outside the orbit of Pluto, which the committee for some reason refuses to accept as planets.