No Love for Pluto

Following up on my post from earlier in the week, the IAU has made a decision about the solar system.

Apparently not fans of cartoon dogs (or Greek gods of the Underworld, depending on your point of view), the IAU has demoted Pluto, and now there are only 8 "official" planets in our solar system. The other eight planets have "orbital dominance" .. Pluto doesn't. It's orbit overlaps Neptune's. Therefore Pluto, along with some other celestial bodies like the earlier proposed planets like Ceres, will now be classified as "Dwarf Planets."

And so, the IAU has now confirmed there is no Santa Claus. Defenders of Pluto as a planet are upset. The widow of the man who discovered Pluto is upset. Apparently NASA thinks the "definition" is just lazy, especially since they are planning a mission to Pluto.

Yet, life goes on. Science is an ever-changing field, and it's understandable why this one particular scientific body wanted to come up with a "proper" definition of a planet. But as one of the many, many people since the 1930s who grew up with the knowledge that there are 9 planets, I can't help but be a little disappointed.