Pluto should be defined as a planet again, according to a recent public vote on the issue.
The vote was held after astronomers debated the issue, with other scientists, teachers, and others voting on the issue.
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics held the debate, with three experts weighing in--two arguing that Pluto should be defined as a planet.
Dimitar Sasselov, director of Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative, said that he isn’t ready to pass judgement on what consitutes a planet before deep-space exploration turns up more discoveries.
“Let’s keep Pluto a planet until we sort it out,” Sasselov said, according to a report from Harvard.
He noted that a planet can be defined as “the smallest spherical lump of matter that formed around stars or stellar remnants.”
David Aguilar, the host, noted that only 400 people--the International Astronomical Union--voted in 2006 that Pluto is a dwarf planet, not a planet.
“The basis of that decision: A number of other worlds have been discovered at the margins of the observable solar system, and Pluto might not even be the largest of these frosted runts. Astronomers suspect there are hundreds more of these worlds waiting to be discovered,” noted National Geographic in summarizing the union’s decision.
“How, then, could Pluto alone be called a planet? The IAU needed to figure out how to classify Pluto and its friends, and describe what made them different from the classical eight planets. So, the assembly voted to call them ‘dwarf planets,’ and Pluto became one of the first entries in the new official category. Joining it are Ceres, in the asteroid belt, and Eris, Haumea, and Makemake, which like Pluto live in the icy Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune’s orbit.”
