The Debated Planet

The actual word "planet" can be dated back thousands of years, but before the 21st century there was no official scientific definition that existed. This is because before the beginning of the 1990s there was no need for one, up until that point astronomers were only aware and able to study a small sample of planets in our solar system. But in 1992 there was a discovery of the myriad tiny worlds that was located just beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune. This led to a small planet sample size to increase from about nine to at least several dozen and has since increased to several hundreds.

Because of this increase there has been a growing interest in studying but there has also been a growing interest on what the proper definition for the word "planet" actually is.