Pluto is was and always will be a planet

'Disgracefully red carded'

People are way too much emotionally attached to a situation like this with Pluto.

Face it.
Whatever the criterium is for 'planet' status. The universe is big enough that there will be edge cases, which can mean they will fall on the planet side or the minor planet side of the equation, depending on how you look at it.
 
I always thought 'big enough to pull itself into a sphere' was the best and most obvious definition...
 
While this might be regarded as a fun thread, scientific input would be appreciated. I thought the relegation was a disgrace at the time, but New Horizon laid proof like an EGG.
 
Surely an object named after a minor Disney character cannot be taken serious with a claim to major planethood?!

(The should be an organization called "Panned Planethood", by the way :D)
 
I know, I know! My questions were an argument against the proposed definition of a planet. However, I wouldn't deny that big moons and small planets have many things in common, but their orbits are what distinguishes moons from planets.
 
If we make Pluto a planet then we need to make many (read hundreds) of other bodies planets under the same definition.
I make a case that the moon is as much a planet as Earth. The Earth and Moon orbit each other and they together orbit the sun. This means that either both bodies are planets or neither are planets.
 
rjh01 said:
If we make Pluto a planet then we need to make many (read hundreds) of other bodies planets under the same definition.
I make a case that the moon is as much a planet as Earth. The Earth and Moon orbit each other and they together orbit the sun. This means that either both bodies are planets or neither are planets.
Click to expand...

No. You can classify the largest body in the co-orbiting group as the planet and the smaller ones as moons.
 
Oystein said:
Surely an object named after a minor Disney character cannot be taken serious with a claim to major planethood?!

(The should be an organization called "Panned Planethood", by the way :D)
Click to expand...

Pluto is far from a minor character, having had shorts built exclusively around his activities, thus elevating him from minor to secondary star status. I think the more important question is, how can Goofy, as an, anthropomorphic dog, have masterful dominance over Pluto, who is also a dog, albeit one with dominant canine tendencies, where in the Disney evolutionary chart did they deviate from one another? Virtually every other creature in that universe is ether anthropomorphic, or at the very least, fully sentient, save poor Pluto. What do they have against him?
 
What a stupid idiot. The article is the scientific equivalent of "nuh-uh!" and any attention paid to it is more than it deserves.

The definition is completely arbitrary and everyone knows it. Pluto isn't a planet for the simple reason that we started finding a bunch of other Plutos. They're out there in the Kuiper belt just like Pluto is. Pluto's not even the most massive; that's Eris. There's also Sedna, Haumea, Makemake, Orcus, and lots of others. We've run out of mythological gods of the underworld to name them after.

Either the solar system has eight planets, or a couple of dozenish. Eight is cleaner. I'd also support dividing them into "Gas giant," "rocky body with atmosphere," and "rocky body without atmosphere," but dropping Pluto is necessary at a minimum.
 
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