Pluto: Planet or not?

[English assassin]

OK, its crunch time for Pluto, with astromoners meeting to discuss whether to demote it from planethood: http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/arti...844050,00.html

But what does the backroom think? On the one hand, Patrick Moore says its not a planet, and frankly what Patrick Moore thinks about the solar system is next to gospel. On the other hand, an extra 50 or so planets would really mess with the astrologers, so that would be good. Also it would mean that some gilrs would be borne under the sign of Xena, which would be quite sexy.

My Boys Book of the Planets (copyright 1973) clearly says Pluto is a planet, and, although i may not quite have fulfilled my childhood ambition to be an astronaut, I say leave my space faring memories alone. For me Pluto is and will always be a planet.

[InsaneApache]

Not. It isn't on the same plane as all the other planets....

[Leet Eriksson]

GAH

It was always a runaway moon from neptune.

[Sir Moody]

Iwan Williams, president of the IAU's planetary systems sciences committee and astronomer at Queen Mary University, London, said: "Personally, I'd include them all as planets, but in normal conversation, we'd slightly qualify all our planets and say we have four terrestrial planets, four giant planets and however many dwarf planets."

A popular idea is to count only objects above a certain size.

I agree with this guy, it would be better to remove our one definition band and introduce different grades of planets as he says ranging from dwarf to giant the advantage of this is easy classification is if we in the future come across something that is spherical and orbits a sun but doesnt match any of the classification we can create a new band for it.

so is pluto a planet? yes its a dwarf planet

[Duke of Gloucester]

Lots of people think that science is fixed and "correcct", becuase the science they were taught at school was exactly like this. Write in your science book that there are only eight planets in the solar system and your teacher will mark it wrong. This is an excellent chance for astronomers to remind us that science develops, and ideas change as the amount of evidence increases. We now know much more about Pluto, and what we know now suggests that it is much smaller than the other planets and more discoveries in the Solar System suggest that other objects are just as much planets as Pluto.

Be scientific. Demote it.

[Ironside]

What would really be funny would be if they find something bigger then Mercury out there. That would really mess things up.

I think they need more steps on that asteroid/planet scale. Dwarf planet sounds good.

That makes a gah right?

[Grey_Fox]

What would really be funny would be if they find something bigger then Mercury out there. That would really mess things up.

After Pluto I think Mercury is the smallest planet, therefore everythingis bigger than Mercury...

[Ironside]

After Pluto I think Mercury is the smallest planet, therefore everythingis bigger than Mercury...

But Mercury cannot be demoted from its planet status and therefore everything larger than Mercury has to be a planet as long as it circles around the sun.

I think a better definition of a major planet is an object that under its own gravity and rotation forms into a fairly uniform spheroid. Under this definiton the objects in the asteriod belt are not planets. Pluto can still be considered a planet within this definiton.

Wouldn't that make Ceres a planet? It's a fairly uniform spheroid, but is only about 950 km in diameter.
Gentlemen, forget what your courtesans have told you: size does matter!
CEO Nwabudike Morgan

What a serious matter to worry about.. As if Pluto isn't classified a planet, thousands, no million, no billions would die.. 0-i

Well... most of the opposition of demoting Pluto comes from USA, who currently only found one planet, namely Pluto.
Considering the current US goverment, that pride loss... And NASA has been threatening with building military space stations if Pluto is demoted...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

... Or the people getting most annoyed with this outside the scientiffic community will be the schools, as they'll need to update thier books.

[Pannonian]

Holst says it isn't.

[Flavius Clemens]

Holst says it isn't.

But he did write the Planets Suite before Pluto was discovered.

[The_Doctor]

Not about Pluto, but very interesting:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5241774.stm

[Louis VI the Fat]

Very intriguing, Doctor. Thanks.

[BDC]

I'd be tempted to say yes, merely to annoy astrologers. No more easy money!

But in reality no. It's part of the Kuiper Belt objects.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Demote it!

Pluto is not a planet, it is a random celestial object raised to the status of planet only because the ancient astronomers of the 20th century lacked the means to see all the other pluto-like 'planets'.

We, children of the modern era, now know better.

Calling Pluto still a planet is akin to thinking Bechuanaland or the Gold Coast are existing countries, or expecting an operator when dialling a phone number. It's so twentienth century...