They Put the D'oh! in Pluto

When Pluto was stripped of its status as a planet in 2006, the public uproar was immediate and deafening. Disney fans, Scorpios, and third graders of all ages banded together in bewilderment and displeasure, flooding the International Astronomical Union (the scientific body responsible for having banished Pluto from the League of Planets) with entreaties to reconsider.

The newly fashioned "dwarf planet" categorization — awarded to Pluto in 2006, quite possibly as a consolation prize for failed planets — was based on a refined definition of planet as a body significant enough to clear other bodies and debris from its orbit. No man is an island, but if you want to be a planet, you stand alone, or you get sent packing.

Writing this week in New Scientist, Stephen Battersby informs us that the IAU may not have put the matter entirely to rest.

For the first time since giving Pluto the boot-o, the IAU will convene, and while it's not expected that the decision will be reconsidered in the immediate term, all indications are that it's not out of this world to suggest it'll be a ripe topic of conversation.

A big part of why many in the astronomical community expect the matter will continue to be discussed (if not altogether reversed) is that we're a few short years from getting our first good look at our very distant icy cousin: NASA's New Horizons probe will reach Pluto and send back postcards and other treats in 2015.

The unimagined findings we'll yield from our first up-close encounter with Pluto may very well provide solid scientific justification for welcoming Pluto back into the planetary fold.Photo courtesy of NASA, via Wikimedia Commons.