Pluto Demoted

[ffutures]

So... Pluto isn't considered a planet any more, and Ceres, Xena, etc. won't be added to the list of planets.

Seems a bit of a shame, and will probably be about as effective as renaming Brontosaurus as "Apatosaurus" was. It's going to be a LONG time before people stop using the old nomenclature in both cases.

Having said that, I can see the reasons why they've done it - I just wish that they'd left in a "grandfather clause" to keep Pluto as a planet, since it was so much a part of astronomical history.

Comments

[parakkum.livejournal.com]

They interviewed one on NPR yesterday. He already had his story in place -- first, astronomers and astrologers have different definitions of planet and, second, he believed that Pluto's orbit is really just a subtle cofactor in things determined by Neptune's orbit, so most Pluto-based predictions are, in truth, Neptune-based.

Seriously.