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From SPACE.com:
Top astronomers and other planetary scientists will step into the ring this month to duke it out over a basic, yet controversial, question: What is a planet?
"The Great Planet Debate: Science as Process" conference will be held from Aug. 14-16 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md.
Some astronomers see the conference as a way of cleaning up the mess created by the organization that names celestial bodies, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which in August 2006 voted in a new definition of planet that demoted Pluto to "dwarf planet." (Under a more recent IAU decision, Pluto and similar objects are classified as "plutoids.")
Many planet scientists were disgruntled over the 2006 IAU decision, which they said involved a vote of just 424 astronomers out of some 10,000 professional astronomers around the globe. The most recent decision, to categorize Pluto and such as plutoids, further ticked off many astronomers, who felt the term was developed behind closed doors.
"We're going to do something that the IAU did not, which is discuss what we know about planetary bodies in the solar system and around other stars, and discuss the value of different ways of defining objects as planets and what that means," said Mark V. Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.
When the dust settles, those involved hope a consensus will stand, a classification scheme for all objects orbiting a star.
"If a new consensus emerges it will easily overturn the IAU. This is not an issue," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium in New York. "If not, they'll stick with what they've got until something better comes along."
Tyson said he doesn't see the IAU so much as a separate entity, but as part of and a reflection of the astronomical community.
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Re: Great Planet Debate: Scientists Could Overturn Official Definition
