There's only Eight Planets now ...

Pluto's recent demotion from planetary status will result in $23 million in changes to public school text books over the next 18 months.

Hmm...

23 million isn't that much.

Think about it, thats less than a dollar a book.

. . . it might not be much in that sense, but still . . . my gosh . . .

Was it really necessary to go into such specifcs? I feel sorry for Pluto really. I mean, Neptune is my favorite planet, but I still feel sad for it. Pluto has feelings, too (and so do the people who have to correct all of those books)!!!

I wouldn't feel sorry about the people who have to change those books. They'll have to write a paragraph or two of material, maybe alter a picture, and then loads and loads of schools will be buying their updated book.

This is the sort of thing that starts interplanetary wars. Just think yourself lucky that we haven't offended Mars yet; he is the mightiest of all planets.

Seriously though, I think the move was unnecessary, but astronomers had a choice between excluding Pluto or including like 3 other planets in our solar system. They made the right decision as far as peoples' ability to adapt goes.

if our textbooks didn't get updated when the soviet union broke up, they're not getting updated because pluto isn't a planet.

inertia is right. we had best be careful, or this could get out of hand. if jupiter got angry with us *shudder*

... and no one's even brought up what might happen if Uranus gers tetchy about us demoting Pluto ...

I liked Pluto. That was my favorite planet by far. Oh my, what about sailor moon?! They're all named after planets! What happens to sailor Pluto? Dun dun dun...

Everything changes with texhnology. They made a judgement, and they changed their judgement when new facts arose. I support it. Pluto is not a planet.

I'm more troubled by the amount of money these guys get to debate such trivial things.

- FoY

It's not quite as trivial as it may seem. There are a large number of large objects within the Solar System, and before this we didn't have a clear definition of what a planet was. This naturally lead to much confusion. By now having parameters of what constitutes a planet, it will make future research (and subsiquent publication of said research) into our Solar System far easier.

Add in the problem that we are discovering more and more planets outside of our Solar System, plus the fact that soon a satalite is being lauched that will be able to identify 'small, earth like' planets (that are around twice the size of Earth)... without a clear definition of what a planet is, astromoners (and school children in classes) would have a much harder time.