Comment Re:Question for the science folks out there (Score 1) 79
The reason the planets are all in roughly the same plane and have nearly circular orbits is conservation of angular momentum of the protoplanetary disk. All planets, because of collions occuring roughly equally from all sides.
Pluto, being further out in less dense space, probably experienced fewer collisions, so it could not achieve the same equalibrium as the rest of the planets. Hense whey it's orbit is the most oblong and not on the same plane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoplanetary_disk
I'm sure we will all find out more once the probe reaches pluto in 2015:
