I've been getting kind of tired about all the news stories about thousands of astronomers meeting in Prague to determine whether or not Pluto is a planet, as if that's the only thing that will happen at the IAU meeting this week. So it's kind of a relief to hear
what the actual news is, which is that the IAU is proposing to create a new class of planet, "dwarf" planets as they've been dubbed by the media.
To summarize, there would be the 8 "classical" planets.
The dwarf planets would include Pluto, Ceres (the largest asteroid), 2003 UB
313 (Xena), and Charon (Pluto's moon). Furthermore, there would be a class of object called plutons that include all of the above except asteroids.
Except there's already a name for the class of objects that characterize plutons, which is "Kuiper Belt objects." Is is just an issue of size in that case?
What about the Earth's moon and the Galilean satellites, which are all bigger than Pluto?
Really, I think the only people who care about planet nomenclature are schoolchildren and Michael Brown, the discoverer of 2003 UB
313, who would much rather be known for discovering a planet rather than a large Kuiper Belt object.
I think this quote by Geoff Marcy sums up my own attitude quite nicely:
“I am not attending the I.A.U. meeting, nor do I care about the outcome of any vote about whether Pluto and Xena are ‘planets.’ ”
*This is what DS1 would tell you about Pluto if you asked him about it, prefaced by the statement, "Pluto is a Kuiper Belt Object."