The International Astronomical Union, in a blatant act of planet-ism, downgraded Pluto in 2006 from the full-fledged planet status we’d come to know and respect and painted it with the stigma of a lowly “dwarf-planet.”
This second-class status effectively gave all of the other planets free reign to laugh and call it names. They’d even go so far as never letting poor Pluto join in any of their planetary games.
However, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysicists has taken up arms in defense of the once, proud hunk of ice: “Is a dwarf planet a small planet? Not according to the IAU. Even though a dwarf fruit tree is still a small fruit tree, and a dwarf hamster is still a small hamster.”
Science historian Dr. Owen Gingerich, who chaired the IAU planet definition committee, has since stated that “a planet is a culturally defined word that changes over time.”
In hopes of reversing the IAU’s near-decade long discrimination against Pluto and other dwarf planets, the Harvard-Smithsonian held a debate aimed at finding a politically correct, culturally sensitive definition of planet.
WATCH:
In the end, the audience decided that Pluto fully deserved to be considered a real planet.
I mean, who are we to decide which “spherical lump[s] of matter that formed around stars or stellar remnants” are deserving of being called planets?
While the results of the debate are far from binding, they will invariably help Pluto be accepted as a full-fledged member of our solar system. Additionally, this debate will ensure that it receives all the fundamental rights afforded to those of planet-hood status.
The Guardian asked Pluto what this meant for dwarf-planets in the future but realized that “Pluto is a massive clump of rock and ice trapped in a lonely silent orbit through the dark recesses of space several billion miles away from Earth. As such, it could not be reached for comment.”