>>7510001Disagree. 'Planets' ought to be classified on their own merits, not their locations.
"This leads to many bizarre and absurd conclusions. For example, it would mean that Earth was not a planet for its first 500 million years of history, because it orbited among a swarm of debris until that time, and also that if you took Earth today and moved it somewhere else, say out to the asteroid belt, it would cease being a planet."
Quote is from
>https://www.space.com/40550-pluto-planet-debate-flares-up-again.htmlThough I think the authors go too far. When several bodies are gravitationally bound, the most massive is is a planet and the others 'merely' moons (even if they're larger than objects which _are_ considered planets.
It's all in the definitions. Which has the least ambiguity? Probably never eliminate it entirely. What if we discovered a "double" exoplanet, two bodies of nearly equal mass. See "Rocheworld" AKA "Flight of the Dragonfly" by Robert Forward.
