Poor, old Pluto. Once considered the ninth planet, it was demoted about a decade ago to “dwarf planet” status, meaning that it has different characteristics than the other major planets of our solar system.
Since then, several other dwarf planets about Pluto’s size or bigger have been discovered.
If all of these dwarf planets —and those yet to be seen — were classified as regular planets, we would have an ever-changing number of planets in our solar system. That would be unsettling to astronomers, so they decided Pluto would better fit into this new classification.
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