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xkcd #3063: Planet Definitions (xkcd.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/xkcd

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Under the 'has cleared its orbital neighborhood' and 'fuses hydrogen into helium' definitions, thanks to human activities Earth technically no longer qualifies as a planet but DOES count as a star.

https://explainxkcd.com/3063/

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[–] AnyOldName3 1 points 3 days ago

Would it be a non-planet for the millions of years it would take to clear its orbit?

Does Earth’s body/features magically change somehow for the duration of the clearing process, so that it doesn’t resemble a planet?

Clearing the orbit of other material, and in the process, accumulating it and incorporating it into a protoplanet is the process that turns a protoplanet into a planet. While that's happening, it's getting bigger and rounder and is constantly surrounded by impact debris that's in the process of forming moons and rings or is in a decaying orbit. All of these are processes local to the protoplanet that don't happen anymore once it's become a planet.