> > Story below--see also Phil Plait's thoughts:
>
> I pretty much concur with his last point and remain disinterested -- not neutral, disinterested -- in everything else. It is astronomically (!) silly to make an issue of this, and even sillier for anybody outside of IAU to care what they decide. Pluto remains a planet as long as I call it a planet. What difference does it make what arbitrary parameters some body of scientists somewhere places on terms whose distinction lacks practical benefit? Frankly, the word "planet" belongs more to common use than science anyhow, and so a particular scientific community doesn't really have the power to change its meaning except to itself.

I agree
Back in the old days, when the big news in the Solar System was that Jupiter had 12 moons instead of 11, the science books all said that the word "planet" came from a Greek, or maybe Latin, word that means "wanderer." This was because, to ancient eyeball astronomers, the planets seemed to wander around against the background of stars. So the name is very unscientific in these modern times.

Defining a planet is not easy. They differ from each other in size, composition, temperature, and density. Their orbits vary in size and while most are close to being in the same plane, some are way off. Their orbits are all eliptical, some are almost round, and others don't even come close. Planets seem to be more or less spherical, but just about everything else in that size range is too.

Mercury and Saturn, for example, have almost nothing in common.

So how can you define a planet? Pluto shares about as many charactistics with the other eight as they do with each other. It's too much for me.
Howard