Officially, anyway.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/08/24/pluto.ap/index.html

BUT MY 1990s BOOK SAYS WE HAVE 9 PLANETS AND ONE OF THEM IS PLUTO /_\

Pffft my homeworld of "Pluto" is so a planet. Your human astronomers don't know crap and all need to be probed. Bloody mankind!

Finally they set things straight. It's ridiculous it was ever considered a planet in the first place.

And just a few weeks ago they said they wouldn't do just that

Awwww no way. I preferred the solar system when it included Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and 2003 UB313.

About damn time.

Though now I'll have to find a new mnemonic rhyme to remember the names of the 8 planets.

It will always be a planet in my view, so i don't really care what they say.

I hereby dub your view "stupid vision."

What about Cheron Xena and Ceres?
Will they be called planets? Or just floating peices of ****?

I dubbed yours as that a long time ago.

You should really work on comebacks that aren't totally lame.

Who ever said it was a comeback?

You mean Rupert?

I preferred it when it included The U.S.S. Shankolopagus.

You know what might help? Reading the article. I know this might be surprising, but it actually says what they are.

TLDR. Summerize?

Pluto got demoted to the rank of dwarf planet. Random floating rocks promoted to dwarf planet. Some scientist guy went crazy and committed suicide during the meeting because his lifelong goal was to inhabit the planet Pluto.

This completely and utterly ruins that magic school bus episode where they go to pluto.

And btw, I like how this news was published today and Wikipedia is already fully updated (both the solar system article and the Pluto article, as well as a new "dwarf planet" article)

Why is Neptune still a planet then? It obviously hasn't cleared its neighborhood if Pluto is still hanging out.

Neptune: All in due time, all in due time...

Not my problem.

sorry he's right ST, don't be lame

I thought Jep's home planet was lazytown

Pluto, but they are allies. I went dancing once with Stephanie. She had a ball.

[QUOTE=Vincent Valentine]Why is Neptune still a planet then?[/QUOTE]

Isn't Neptune, like, big?

"Big" and "small" are relative.

Ohh, like Hitler? I'm sorry

Hitler is nothing to the might of the Plutonian Cosmogigantic Fleet.

And Stephanie likes the bone like none other.

And let me tell you I knew your mother when she was making her bastards. Thank goodness you're too old to be one of mine.

Sooo... that's the rationale you use to justify the size of your penis...


j/k

i dunno, im a little disappointed, it was drilled into my head so many times at an early age that there were 9 planets, its going to suck for the elementary school students who have to relearn that again

what are you, 12?

People here really don't understand sarcasm anymore, do they?

Pluto is about 10% the size of Earth, so about 3% the surface area.

I really doubt Pluto can sustain the kind of population required to construct and crew any sort of remotely threatening battle group.

When reading the article, I thought exactly what Vinny did about Neptune's overlap.

But then, if that quoted section is their exact definition of a planet, rather just being paraphrased for this article, it also has other seemingly idiotic effects on astronomical definitions - namely, that in order to be a planet, a celestial body has to orbit Sol... so anything orbiting the other stars in our universe won't count as a planet.

And what's the margin of error for "nearly round"? How close does a celestial body have to come to a perfect sphere to qualify for that? Can some celestial board of trustees deny a planet its status at their sole discretion, provided they give two weeks advance notice?

This is all so arbitrary.

Not that I can take astronomers seriously anyway, with one of them waving a stuffed animal around while another says Xena is kind of cool (2003 UB313? Xena? It's not like there's a shortage of Greek deities to add to the planetary lineup - Hesiod was listing them 50 at a time, for Kronos' sake...)

In summary:

People can say what they want and make up all sorts of rules, but to me, Pluto will always be the ninth planet in the solar system. That's how I was raised, and I won't let any new definitions change my mind.

By the way, I was thinking. Shouldn't Jupiter's moon Ganymede be "officially defined" as a planet now? Yeah, it's a moon, but it's larger than Mercury. You do the math.

I'm wonder if 'planet' will ever be defined as an celestial body on which life exists.

That would throw out nearly all bodies in the cosmos right away.

it orbits around jupiter, not the sun.

though i dunno, everything's so confused now.

It has to orbit around the sun.

As for the Neptune-overlap issue .. Pluto's orbit is irregular in comparison to the other 8 planets' orbits, including Neptunes. That is, Neptune has a "similar" orbit to the other planets; Pluto does not. That's why.

http://www.nasm.si.edu/ceps/etp/pluto/pluto_orbit.html

It's about time. Seriously, **** Pluto. All that bull**** with it being sometimes the ninth planet from the Sun, but sometimes the eighth... completely ridiculous.