Top NASA boffin: It's time to make Pluto a proper planet again

[steve2470]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/24/pluto_planet_nasa/

Supporters of Pluto's readmission into the Solar System as a full-blown planet got a boost from NASA's planetary scientists on Friday.

"It's very hard not to call an object with this level of complexity in its geology, and such complex seasons, a planet," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute, during press conference about the Pluto probe's latest update.

"Astronomers and planetary scientists differ on this question but that's how science works – scientists make individual decisions and consensus is reached. I think we're going through a period of transition at the moment."

Data from the New Horizons space probe has shown Pluto to be geologically active, with new glacier plains of nitrogen ice carving out new surface features and eroding away impact craters from meteor strikes.

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Ha! I told you so!

Glad they are seeing the error of their ways.
Cosmic vengeance may be averted for their mistake, I have been told by reliable sources.
so there!

[gvstn]

3. That's where I am going.

It is the fact that Pluto's orbit is not on the same plane as all the "other" planets. It just appears to be something else than a planet. There is just no way around the fact that it is not orbiting the sun the same way as the planets.

[MillennialDem]

6. Plus Ceres. It also used to be a planet.

[MillennialDem]

8. Ceres falls under the dwarf planet classification

[Silent3]

4. How about simply adding "or Pluto" to the definition of a planet?

Grandfather Pluto into the definition, make it an "honorary" planet... whatever.

A planet needs to be at least some particular size, mass, etc.
A planet has to clear its orbit.
A planet's orbit shouldn't be highly eccentric.
A planet's orbit should be within so many degrees of inclination from the ecliptic.

...Or a planet should be Pluto.

[Silent3]

9. That was way too serious a response to a deliberately silly post.

You did catch the , didn't you?