Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
This is the first I've ever heard of intersecting orbits mattering. The criteria it fails is that Pluto hasn't "cleared the neighborhood." It's kind of a way of saying that Pluto doesn't have enough gravity to be a planet. Orbits intersecting with other bodily orbits can still happen. As you yourself put it, Pluto's and Neptune's orbits still intersect, and Neptune is still a planet. The difference is, Neptune has enough gravity to dominate it's area. Pluto doesn't, which is why it hasn't.
To put it another way, Neptune has an orbit that crosses over with some junk, but doesn't have much in the same orbit that it has that isn't also orbiting Neptune. Pluto, meanwhile, is in roughly the same orbit as every other hunk of rock and ice in the Kuiper Belt. They aren't planets for a similar reason that we don't usually call Saturn's rings, moons.