Pluto is still a planet to many astronomers. The IAU vote to demote Pluto was made by a tiny minority of its members, most of whom are not planetary scientists. Dynamicists, astronomers who study orbital dynamics, hijacked the IAU vote by railroading through a proposal on the last day of a two-week conference when most attendees had already gone home. No absentee voting was allowed. This was a political, not a scientific decision. Dynamicists seek to classify objects solely by where they are while ignoring what they are. In contrast, planetary scientists recognize that even if an object does not dominate its orbit, if that object has enough self gravity to pull itself into a round shape (a condition known as hydrostatic equilibrium), that object has the same geological processes as the classical planets we know. Pluto, Ceres, Eris, and MakeMake, by this definition, are planets, not asteroids. The IAU needs to correct the linguistic nonsense in its definition, which states that dwarf planets are not planets at all. They are. They simply are one subcategory of the broad class of objects that fall under the umbrella of the term planet.
laurele: There's no one right definition of planet. How we define it is a matter of consensus, and if we include Pluto as a planet, as you point out, we have to include a bunch of other previously unknown lumps of rock. That may not be a bad thing, but they definition had to be straightened out one way or the other, and they chose to settle it by excluding pluto, rather than including the others.
But in spite of the IAU vote by four percent of its members, most of whom are not planetary scientists, there is no consensus among astronomers in favor of this definition. That is because this definition didn't straighten anything out; its sloppiness and vagueness only made the planet definition issue more confusing. Therefore, it was a step in the wrong direction. The small group who made this choice need to recognize that this issue is not settled and include input from the many planetary scientists who are not even part of the IAU but nevertheless focus all their research on studying planets. A first step towards that was the Great Planet Debate this August in Laurel, MD.
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Why is pluto no longer a planet?




Why is pluto no longer a planet?
Why did they take pluto off as a planet?