Should Pluto be reinstated as a planet?

[Buffy]

Perhaps the IAU definition of “planet” would have fared better with astronomers and the public at large if it had promoted an multi-word term like “orbit clearing planet” rather than restricting the definition of the canonic term “planet”. “The Solar System has only eight orbit-clearing planets” strikes me as less provocative than “The Solar System has only eight planets”.

 

Yah, but carry this one step further: it's "provocative" precisely because it's exclusionary. What the IAU *really* did was they said in effect "Pluto isn't a *real* planet, and "nyah" to all those stupid rube non-scientists who still think so."

 

Science is full of this sort of garbage: "there's no such thing as a Brontosaurus" or "it's spelled NeanderTAL."

 

The effect of this "over-specification" is always "we're real scientists and you're not."

 

Sometimes it's even after the fact, which makes it all the more annoying.

 

It's just so....anti-Hypography! :rant:

 

A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members, :)

Buffy

[Boerseun]

I might be oversimplifying, but I don't think its possible (or even desirable) to create a universally applicable taxonomy with only nine fossils.

[fahrquad]

Only if the other major Kuiper Belt objects are elevated to planet status too. Clyde Tombaugh is rolling over in his grave, which is lending a bit of eccentricity to our orbit, thereby causing global warming. Reinstate Pluto to end Global Warming. :blink: