this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
69 points (90.6% liked)

science

22099 readers
158 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

All planets have elliptical orbits just like periodic comets. Comets' elliptic is just more extreme.

Mercury, Mars and Venus have tails, they just aren't as visible.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

While I understand they are all elliptical, isn't that the reason they moved Pluto to a dwarf planet, because it's orbit was "to elliptical" and crossing Neptune's orbital path?

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 4 points 2 days ago

Its orbit is also at a considerable angle relative to the plane all other planets orbit in. That alone made me question it's planet-ness long before it got demoted. And I felt really validated when Jim Carrey's kids in Me, Myself and Irene argued about Pluto being a planet or not.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Plus there are other additional bodies similar to Pluto that didn’t make sense to call planets