Can Pluto regain its status as a planet?

Question

We know that Pluto was reclassified as a "dwarf planet" by the IAU because it has not cleared its own orbit of debris.
http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.or...

It meets the other two criteria for a planet. So, as time passes and Pluto accretes more of the small objects in its path, will it clear the orbit enough to regain its status as a planet. None of us will be alive at that time, of course. I suppose that what I am really asking is, "How clear is clear?"

Thanks!

Answer 1

This issue is very similar to the asteroid belt issue some 150 years ago. When the first asteroid, Ceres, was found, it was considered a planet. Only after 15 other "planets" were found in the same orbit regime did astronomers downgrade these asteroids to "minor planets" some 50 years after Ceres' discovery.

It's unclear if Pluto could ever clear its orbit...it crrently has only 7% of the mass of its orbital neighborhood (as opposed to, say, Earth, which contains some 99.9999% the mass of its orbital neighborhood), so it's only cleared a tiny fraction of its orbit throughout the entire age of the Solar System, 4.5 billion years.

Moreover, other objects in Pluto's orbit (and pluto itself, in fact) are trapped in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune. This means these "plutinos" are in a very stable orbit, unlikely to be scattered away unless something very big and unexpected comes along.

Answer 2

It is still a planet; it's just received a new classification by the IAU. Sooner or later, the definition will probably change when there is enough evidence warranting a change.

With respect to Pluto clearing its neighborhood, I think the primary point is that the rest of the planets do not have significant bodies sharing the orbit. Oh, Jupiter and some of the larger planets have asteroids in the LaGrange 4 and 5 points but these are insignificant to the planets themselves. Pluto, on the other hand, has a number of comparable bodies in reasonably close orbits to itself.

It was the discovery of these bodies that brought up the question in the first place. If Pluto had remained the largest of these bodies and the others were relatively small (~kilometer size or so), then the question probably wouldn't come up. But when Sedna and Eris and others of comparable size were discovered in the same general neighborhood, that's when the IAU stepped in to more clearly define what a planet should be.

Answer 3

No by way of fact there are different products way out interior the Kuiper belt that are like Pluto yet even bigger, so logically they could ought to be seen planets too, and issues gets muddled. it is not any vast deal that Pluto is now no longer seen a planet, issues like this have occurred till now. while the 1st asteroid replaced into chanced on it replaced into theory to be a sparkling planet before everything, till others have been chanced on interior the asteroid belt and it replaced into found out that those products are no longer possibly planet-like, so as that they have been positioned into their very own classification.

Answer 4

The dwarfs at the IAU have stolen Pluto and in now belongs to
them....It is a dwarf planet...
We will fight to reclaim our deal little Pluto and defeat the Dwarf
armies soon...
We will reclaim Pluto from the Dwarfs and restore it to its rightful
place among the human family of planets..
Death to all Dwarfs...

Answer 5

Presumably yes. but the real question is will it do this in our lifetimes? And the even bigger question is, does Mickey really care or does he still love Pluto for the way he is?

Answer 6

let a an astronomist [better than an astrologist] be consulted
to fore tell pluto's fortune