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To: VanDeKoik
It was silly to yank it from Pluto because it’s too small seeing that we have systems with worlds 4 times Jupiter’s size, orbiting half the distance of the Sun to Mercury in 10 hours.

Pluto was never a planet. Pluto is an asteroid. It was called a planet because it appeared close to where Lowell was looking for Planet X, the previously unknown planet that likely exists but hasn't yet been discovered.

Having a couple of small asteroids orbiting each other doesn't make them moons, nor does it qualify the largest one of them to be a planets.

Interestingly, Pluto's orbit around the sun is an ellipse which brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune at perihelion, and twice as far from the Sun as Neptune at aphelion.

And, speaking of tidy, there is somewhat of a correlation of distance from one planet to the next. Take the orbit of the planet, multiply by 1.6 and you will get very close to the orbit of the next planet. For instance, Earth, 93 million miles, times 1.6 equals about 147 million, which is fairly close to Mars' orbit of 141 million miles. The pattern holds out all the way to Neptune, with the asteroid belt at 1.6 times 141, or 225 million miles. It is not exact, and the actual results may vary, but it is still interesting to note the interval. Pluto does not follow that pattern.

19 posted on 09/15/2014 1:44:57 PM PDT by webheart (We are all pretty much living in a fiction.)
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To: webheart
#19 Pluto was never a planet.
Pluto is gonna be very angry with you!

Blnk
24 posted on 09/15/2014 4:26:31 PM PDT by minnesota_bound
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