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posted by janrinok on Sunday July 19 2015, @05:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-changed-the-rules,-we-can-change-them-back-again dept.

After nearly a decade in the wilderness of celestial classification, Pluto is on the rise again. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to adopt a new definition of what makes a body a planet, and to specifically demote Pluto to the status of dwarf planet. Now, with new data and images streaming in from New Horizons showing that Pluto is not only a little larger than previously thought, but also home to some remarkable geological features (including what may be some of the solar system's youngest mountain peaks, reaching to 11,000 ft/3,353 m high), many are saying it's time to restore the ninth planet to its previous station.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the most prominent advocates for Pluto are scientists working on the New Horizons mission, which reached the closest point of its long-awaited Pluto fly-by on July 14.

"We are free to call it a planet right now," Philip Metzger, a planetary scientist on the New Horizons mission, told DW.com. "Science is not decided by votes ... the planetary science community has never stopped calling bodies like Pluto 'planets'."

Really, isn't it time to re-classify Pluto as a dog?


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  • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:39PM

    by dry (223) on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:39PM (#211204) Journal

    Every book and paper written before 2006 refers to it as a planet

    Especially the ones written 75 years before 2006, including the books that have Ceres as a planet and then there is Georges planet. Then there are people like me that learned that Pluto was comparable to Mercury in size and also learned that Pluto may well have started out as a satellite of Neptune and it orbit was not typical for a planet.
    Perhaps we should just use the books that have been written over the last 6,000 years. A planet is a celestial object that moves against the backdrop of the fixed star and is observable by the naked eye. This way we can give back the Moons planetary status and go back to arguing whether the Sun is a planet.

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  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Monday July 20 2015, @10:34AM

    by theluggage (1797) on Monday July 20 2015, @10:34AM (#211365)

    Especially the ones written 75 years before 2006,

    No, especially the ones written shortly before 2006 that are otherwise perfectly valid and will be essential background to interpreting the data that New Horizons sends back over the next year.

    A planet is a celestial object that moves against the backdrop of the fixed star and is observable by the naked eye.

    Except that definition was invalidated by actual scientific discoveries - from heliocentricity through to exoplanets - not by arbitrary rules dreamed up by a committee.