Spaaaaace

[chenille]

@jerwin

But to a planetologist, the fact that a body clears its orbit is trivial.

Yeah, no, I don’t think it is. I mean, sure, they won’t care about clearing its orbit as such…but the fact that it didn’t do so has strong implications about how it formed, what other objects it is like, and how it fits into the structure of the solar system. It very clearly goes with it being in the same category as things like Haumea and Triton rather than things like Neptune or Earth all the ways that a planetologist should care about.