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It was not so much a discovery that Pluto wasn't a planet, so much as a general concensus that it shouldn't be called a planet anymore. Over the past decade, astronomers have discovered several bodies beyond the orbit of Pluto that are in fact larger (for example, Eris.) They realized that there were probably many more they hadn't discovered yet and that the term planet was impractical for Pluto since it was so small and there were so many similar sized objects orbiting the Solar System. Eris was probably the final blow to Pluto's status. It is larger than Pluto and for a long time astronomers called it the solar system's "tenth planet''. In the face of this discovery and the fact that many other similarly sized objects had been found, the International Astronomical Union decided to formally define the word "planet" for the first time in 2006 and in the process effectively demoted Pluto.

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10y ago

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