Honk If Pluto Is Still A Planet
According to the BBC, you can buy bumper stickers over the internet already that say just that. Critics of the decision of the "Irrelevant" Astronomical Union decision to downgrade Pluto say that the vote was effectively hijacked by certain elements within the astronomical group.
On Thursday, experts approved a definition of a planet that demoted Pluto to a lesser category of object.
But the lead scientist on Nasa's robotic mission to Pluto has lambasted the ruling, calling it "embarrassing".
And the chair of the committee set up to oversee agreement on a definition implied that the vote had effectively been "hijacked".
The vote took place at the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) 10-day General Assembly in Prague. The IAU has been the official naming body for astronomy since 1919.
Only 424 astronomers who remained in Prague for the last day of the meeting took part.
An initial proposal by the IAU to add three new planets to the Solar System - the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's moon Charon and the distant world known as 2003 UB313 - met with considerable opposition at the meeting. Days of heated debate followed during which four separate proposals were tabled.
Eventually, the scientists adopted historic guidelines that see Pluto relegated to a secondary category of "dwarf planets".
Drawing the line
Dr Alan Stern, who leads the US space agency's New Horizons mission to Pluto and did not vote in Prague, told BBC News: "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review - for two reasons.
"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It's as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like 'they tend to live in groups'.
"Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it's inconsistent."
One of the three criteria for planethood states that a planet must have "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit". The largest objects in the Solar System will either aggregate material in their path or fling it out of the way with a gravitational swipe.
Stern dryly points out that Earth has not cleared its orbit. (They use the same picture of Clyde Tombaugh that I did last night, incidentally).
Cat fights among astronomers. This should be amusing to watch.
