If you talk to people about astronomy, you will often find a total lack of opinions, except on one issue. To some people, Pluto is a planet. To others, it’s just a largish rock in space. And we might be on the verge of settling this bar argument once and for all.
The fundamental issue, as we’ve noted before, is that what we call a “planet” doesn’t have a strict scientific definition. Or, rather, that definition is so fraught with ambiguities that it might as well just be “whatever we say is a planet is one.” But it’s one we’ll have to start discussing because the NASA research craft, New Horizons, is going to finally visit Pluto this July and start collecting data.
That’s really the thing; we just don’t know a lot about Pluto. This year will mark the first time any research craft has gone there, and it took years of fighting to get the craft built and launched. Needless to say, the team who has spent their entire careers sending a probe to Pluto think it’s a planet.
In short, it proves two important things: People can love a distant chunk of ice, and that scientists are just as prone to Facebook arguments as any other group of people. Expect the debate to pick back up in July, as we start learning more about said ice chunk.