I'm pretty happy with the current Pluto situation. Back when it was discovered, the astronomical community was just *itching* to find another planet, the discovery, by mathematical prediction, of Neptune having been so successful at demonstrating how smart we are. Pluto was a bit disappointing, being so small and all, but it sufficed. I think we were ready to call anything a planet. Then we taught generations of school children that "The Solar System Has Nine Planets" and there names are "...". (Please recite that until you've memorized it. Quiz on Monday.)

People don't like to let go of that sort of thing, any more than my countrymen and countrywomen in the U.S. want to let go of our ridiculous imperial system of measurements. There's not a big public outcry about Pluto, because by and large they don't care about science, either. (Just don't try to change the name of their favorite football team!) Just a bit of grumbling from people not so different than me bemoaning the fact that I learned that Saturn had 8 moons, and Jupiter had 12 (I even had a mobile in my bedroom to prove it!) and now... I can't remember how many they have. Though I do now have the satisfaction of knowing that Europa and Titan are *really* interesting.

I think of Pluto's reclassification in the same way as I think of phonetic systems of spelling and Metric units. They're not the way I first learned it, but they make more sense than what I learned, and they are a good idea, moving forward.

No, Pluto has not changed. But it never really belonged in the category they said it did when I was in elementary school. (OK, middle school, high school, college, and a couple of decades beyond that.)

Sure, Pluto is many things. Just like I am a programmer, a dog and cat lover, a man, a recluse, etc. But as long as Ceres and Vesta and others are not planets, a planet is one thing that Pluto is not, in the same sort of way that I'm not a brain surgeon or a Malibu Barbie.

Classifications are rarely neat and perfect. But they are useful for helping to organize information in our minds. And to be effective at that, they should make as much sense as possible. And sentimental nostalgia shouldn't get in the way of making our categorizations as logical as possible.

BTW, they probably should have chosen a more future-proof name than "Algol type" for those systems you mentioned. We programmers "refactor" our programs all the time. And "Algol_Type" jumps out as a *terrible* variable name to use in a program that is at all likely to be extended and modified in the future. You know... like science usually is.

i had watched the rucus about pluto and the "definition" debates and thought it was such a waste of time and money to be that precise with the "name" of a thing. on another world an orange could refer to a golf ball if such things existed and even though the language of and name of things were different essentially chemically they would be the same.

Bravo Sandman