When Michael Brown announced on Feb. 28, 2004, the discovery of Sedna, an object believed to be nearly 2,000 km large orbiting between the Kuiper belt and the innermost part of the Oort Cloud, it seemed to everyone that the solar system had finally found its "tenth planet."
But the thing lasted very little... Sedna’s diameter, however interesting planetoid, was soon reduced and the count of the planets returned to be the same as before.
Only 517 days passed, and on July 29, 2005, still Mike Brown announced the discovery of another large object, provisionally designated 2003 UB313.
The estimated diameter was even 2400 km, slightly larger than Pluto's, and at that point, it seemed evident that the newcomer had all the qualifications to be crowned "the tenth planet in the solar system".... the first one found beyond Pluto's orbit!
Then it became known how the thing turned out. Not only was Eris-as it was later definitively called-never considered a "planet," but Pluto also lost its planetary status...so that the planets instead of increasing in number, even decreased, from nine to eight.
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Credits: Ron Miller, Mark A. Garlick / MarkGarlick.com
Credits: Nasa/Shutterstock/Storyblocks/Elon Musk/SpaceX/ESA/ESO/ Flickr

Video Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:21 Eris Discovery
06:52 Size matters
09:18 Mass matters
10:32 The surface and the atmosphere
12:30 Future research

#insanecuriosity #eris #dwarfplanets