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Because Mercury is so much more closer to the Sun than Pluto is. It appears that Mercury is moving faster because it's orbit around the sun is a lot smaller, they could both be moving at the same speed and it would still take Pluto a lot longer to complete it's orbit.

Compare to 2 runners running laps on two different tracks.

One track is one mile around, the other four miles around.

They both start at the same time and at the same speed, say four miles an hour.

While the runner on the four mile track has done one lap, the runner on the one mile track has done four laps, as is the same for Mercury and Pluto.

Because of the size of tracks and orbits it appears that one is moving faster than the other, but they have both covered the same distance at the same speed. Because of it's shorter "lap", Mercury will complete 1008.59 laps before Pluto completes it's first.

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17y ago

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