That’s right folks, Pluto has offically been stripped of it’s planet classification! From the NY Times:“After years of wrangling and a week of bitter debate, astronomers voted on a sweeping reclassification of the solar system. In what many of them described as a triumph of science over sentiment, Pluto was demoted to the status of a “dwarf planet.”

In the new solar system, there are eight planets, at least three dwarf planets and tens of thousands of so-called “smaller solar system bodies,” like comets and asteroids.

For now, the dwarf planets include, besides Pluto, Ceres, the largest asteroid, and an object known as UB 313, nicknamed Xena, that is larger than Pluto and, like it, orbits out beyond Neptune in a zone of icy debris known as the Kuiper Belt. But there are dozens more potential dwarf-planets known in that zone, planetary scientists say, and the number in that category could quickly swell.

In a nod to Pluto’s fans, the astronomers declared that Pluto to be the prototype for a new category of such “trans-Neptunian” objects but failed in a close vote to approve the name Plutonians for them.”

This is insane!  Everything we’ve learned since first grade is now WRONG!  So, every solar system poster you now see in your classroom is now outdated and completly wrong.  That’s horrifying!  I mean, well it’s not that bad, but let’s say somebody just told you that your dog isn’t a dog.  You’d be like what?!?!??  That’s exactly my reaction…  But as the NY Times says:

“It was hardly the first time that astronomers have rethought a planet. The asteroid Ceres was hailed as the eight planet when it was first discovered in 1801 by Giovanni Piazzi floating in the space between Mars and Jupiter. It remained a “planet” for about half a century until the discovery of more and more things like it in the same part of space led astronomers to dub them asteroids. “