[X] My Assistant

[dmuller]

Article on the BBC website: 'Non-planet' Pluto gets new class
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7449735.stm

Now an IAU committee, meeting in Oslo, has suggested that small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune should carry the "plutoid" tag.

It also goes on to say that not everybody is too excited about it:

"It's just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up," he told the Associated Press. "Plutoids or haemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant."

[Greg Hullender]

Note that there was a small fuss when they renamed the surface features on Mars, too. Who else remembers when Olympus Mons was called "Nix Olympica?" Scientists can handle change, when it's merited.

Had the IAU simply ruled that no KBO could be a planet, and that on those grounds, neither Eris nor Pluto was a planet, I think there would have been less fuss. Further definitions should probably have waited until we had more data on the Kuiper Belt and the regions beyond it (not to mention more data on extra-solar planets).

--Greg