The article discusses the ongoing debate about the number of planets in our solar system. It highlights the challenges of defining a planet and how the discovery of dwarf planets like Eris led to the reclassification of Pluto. The article also touches upon the possibility of a ninth planet, Planet Nine, being discovered.
The number of planets that orbit the sun depends on what you mean by “planet,” and that’s not so easy to defineAll eight of the solar system ’s “major” planets appear in this illustration, but the actual number of planetary bodies orbiting our star is far greater., alien worlds that orbit alien suns. Only eight planets call our solar system home. Or there might still be nine if some astronomers are correct about an as-yet undiscovered large body out past Neptune.
Or should that be “nine or 10”? Astronomers are pursuing this idea right now. Many smaller outer solar system objects appear to have orbits that are aligned in certain mysterious ways;that is many times the mass of Earth and orbits more than 30 billion km from the sun. Temporarily called Planet Nine, this putative world’s potential location in the sky is not clear.the Vera Rubin Observatory
But have a care before you make up your mind. I’d argue that the main reason we’ve struggled for so long to come up with a definition for “planet” is that“planet” is more of a concept, a generalization, than a definition. He’s right. There are no hard and fast lines we can draw around the concept of a planet to make it definable and distinct from other classes of objects.
PLANETS DWARF PLANETS SOLAR SYSTEM PLANET NINE
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