Planet Pluto Lives

This is a day I long hoped would not come, a sad anniversary for astronomy, and one that could have been avoided if even one IAU member had had the courage to stand up at this month’s General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro and ask fellow members to admit the mistake made three years ago in the infamous vote on planet definition and take action to set it right. But out of 2,100 attendees, not a single person exhibited that courage. At a General Assembly that started with a lower attendance than the notorious one three years ago in Prague (that one began with 2,500 attendees out of nearly 10,000 IAU members and ended with 424), the major denial of this ongoing issue amounted to the huge elephant in the room that everyone pretended not to see. And so it is August 24, 2009, the third anniversary of the bizarre drama that resulted in a planet definition so poorly cobbled together that even dynamicists, who favor planet status for only the largest eight bodies in the solar system, admit is so flawed as to be practically useless. Instead of recognizing its mistake and making an effort to set things right, ...