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to small bodies during the process of planet formation, some scientists also use the term planetesimal as a general term to refer to many small Solar System bodies - such as asteroids and comets - which are left over from the formation process. A group of the world's leading planet formation experts decided at a conference in 2006 on the following definition of a planetesimal:

A planetesimal is a solid object arising during the accumulation of orbiting bodies whose internal strength is dominated by self-gravity and whose orbital dynamics is not significantly affected by gas drag. This corresponds to objects larger than approximately 1 km in the solar nebula.

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