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It's backwards. Highly eccentric orbits are the default; near-circular orbits are the inevitable result of averaging out a large number of orbits after they col
by o11c 1y ago
It's backwards. Highly eccentric orbits are the default; near-circular orbits are the inevitable result of averaging out a large number of orbits after they collide.
It's also ignoring the fact that we likely did have additional planets, but after interactions with other planets with nearby orbits, they would have been either ejected out of the solar system entirely, caused to collide, or herded into more circular (non-overlapping) orbits.
This is why Pluto is not a planet.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- prerok 1y agoWhile I agree with you on most points, that is not why Pluto is not a planet. The reason is that it was observed "too soon" because of its interaction with Neptune's orbit. Once we realized there were plenty of such objects in the range of Neptune's orbit but we also realized that these were not fully formed planets, we invented the term of dwarf planet, so Pluto was demoted to that status, which it shares with many other objects in the far out orbit. So, it was just a classification thing. We could have also said all those others are also planets.