[SunkenCiv]

This article was originally published on The Conversation..

image by International Astronomical Union

[gorush]

[Snickering Hound]

[Night Hides Not]

An unintended effect of global warming.

[seawolf101]

Pluto is the Rodney Dangerfield of planets.

[SeeSharp]

LOL. Science by voting.

[Parley Baer]

I think Pluto should be “grandfathered” in as a planet. They should have just left it alone.

[M Kehoe]

If Uranus can be a planet, then I vote for Pluto being a planet...unless Uranus is occupied by Klingons.

5.56mm

[Billthedrill]

It may have nothing to do with it, but a message appeared at NASA headquarters reading, “The last creeps that took my planetary status away were the dinosaurs. Remember them? Didn’t think so. Just a word to the wise. Yer bud, Pluto.”

[Moonman62]

Raj: I think he’s eating lunch. Uh, Sheldon, I want you to meet Neil deGrasse Tyson from the Hayden Planetarium in New York.

Sheldon: I’m quite familiar with Dr. Tyson. He’s responsible for the demotion of Pluto from planetary status. I liked Pluto. Ergo I do not like you.

Dr Tyson: But I actually didn’t demote Pluto. That was a vote of the International Astronomical Union.

Sheldon: If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas. Think about that, Dr. Tyson.

[Phlyer]

There's at least one error in the article. Pluto is not the largest of the Kuiper Belt objects. It's actually in third place among those which have been discovered so far.

That's significant, because the issue is not really, "Should Pluto be reclassified as a planet?" The issue is, "Should *all* the Kuiper Belt objects that are about the same size as Pluto, plus Ceres, be classified as planets?" The problem is that there is no good place to 'draw a line' that includes Pluto as a planet and doesn't include the others.

Personally, I'd be satisfied with some sort of definition that says any body which is large enough to have gravity pull itself into a spherical shape and does not orbit another planet can be called a planet. That means we have a least 12 planets, and probably more. The line that they drew is just another option.

One comment in the article is relevant. The Earth - though it is the largest of the 'rocky' planets - is only marginally large enough to meet the definition. Working the math shows that the sun's gravitational pull on our moon is greater than the Earth's and the moon's motion is never retrograde with respect to the sun. In fact, the moon's orbit is always curving toward the sun, even when the curvature is larger than the Earth's orbit (so that the moon moves away from the sun relative to the Earth). So, has the Earth 'cleaned out it's orbital region' of other objects?

At least all this discussion on whether Pluto should be considered a planet has gotten a few people in the general public interested in the planets for a while.

[ExCTCitizen]

If I was a typical Obamabot, I would say, ‘We should ask the citizens of Pluto if they want to be a planet.’ or say, ‘Should we ask Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy if Pluto a planet?’

[TigersEye]

At least make Pluto an honorary planet.

It’s not like it’s going to go around bragging about it.

[minnesota_bound]

I was watching a show called “Universe” this weekend. They said the sun was created that 8 planets were formed.

Later I watched a BBC show on Planet Earth and the narrator kept inserting global climate change into the show.

We have a 9th planet and the weather changes everyday during the 4 seasons.

I hate when propaganda is used.

[Conan the Librarian]

I recommend Mike Brown’s “How I Killed Pluto and why it had it coming”.

He was the guy who actually caused the uproar to start with when he found Eris. The vote to make it a planet again is irrelevant. It would still be a dwarf. Mercury probably should be classified as one too.

Pluto is a dwarf planet at best. Time to move on to more important subjects, like, why is the weather always bad when I want to do some observing.