What makes a planet a planet ? | Tamil
Channel: Lets Talk Some Science
Date: 2019-12-27

What do we know about Planet ? How are they formed ?
The most recent definition of a planet was adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 2006. It says a planet must do three things:

1. It must orbit a star (in our cosmic neighborhood, the Sun).
2. It must be big enough to have enough gravity to force it into a spherical shape.
3. It must be big enough that its gravity cleared away any other objects of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun.

Pluto is the largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, discovered in 1930. It was thought to be the 9th planet of our system for 75 years until the discovery of Eris and other similar objects that led to its demotion from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006.

The Kuiper Belt (also known as the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt) is a region of the Solar System that exists beyond the eight major planets, extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, in that it contains many small bodies, all remnants from the Solar System’s formation.

But unlike the Asteroid Belt, it is much larger – 20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive.

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