What is the evidence of this deliberate exclusion? A bright line was found, a logical and natural bright line, and used. Eight things lay on one side of it, not nine. That’s not deliberate exclusion.Glenn E. wrote:that seems to have been deliberately created to exclude Pluto.
With the discovery of lots of large-ish KBOs, a definition was needed.
• That definition could have been the current definition of a dwarf planet: directly orbiting sun, big enough to be rounded by gravity. That would make Pluto and may other KBOs into planets. Sure. Would you have preferred that? (I don’t strongly object.)
• Or it could be the sensible definition involving gravitational domination.
• Or, perhaps my favourite, it could be the previous “plus the nine objects that were, prior to 2006, called planets”.
• Or a better bright line. What?