The Pluto Debate: Why We Still Care

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) in August 2006 downgraded the status of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet. According to IAU, a dwarf planet is any celestial body in direct orbit of the Sun that is massive enough and its shape is controlled by gravitational forces rather than mechanical force. Therefore, for any object to be considered a planet, the object must orbit the sun, be massive enough such that the force of its gravity has pulled it into a round shape and must have cleared the neighborhood of its orbit of other debris. However, despite Pluto meeting the first two of these criteria, it doesn’t meet the third one, hence, IAU downgraded it into a dwarf planet. 

However, despite Pluto downgrade by IAU to dwarf planet, I strongly remain of the opinion that Pluto should be considered a planet. First, the establishment by astronomers that Pluto is bigger than Eris’ after the recalculation of its size is a clear fact that Pluto should be reclassified back to planethood. Secondly, the third condition by IAU as to what criteria an object must meet for it to be classified as a planet is fundamentally flawed. Should such criteria be applied then, no object in the solar system will qualify to be a planet because there is no any object which has entirely cleared its neighboring zone of its debris. The fact about an object clearing its zone entirely lie on the distance a planet is from the sun. Therefore, the far away an object is from the sun the bigger it needs to be for it to clear its zone. In this case, even planet earth which is bigger than Pluto circled the sun in Neptune’s orbit, it would not be able to clear off its neighborhood and would, thus, end up being disqualified as a planet. Finally, the voting at IAU convention at Prague that stripped Pluto of its planethood was attended by few scientists who secretly voted without consulting many other interested scientists and astronomers. Moreover, the scientists attending the Prague convention didn’t consider the basic physical characteristics that researchers use to define planets; thus, Pluto should be considered as the ninth planet once again.