At the bottom of the article is a link to a debate over the definition of a planet.
My thought is that they should restrict the term Planet to just our original nine planets (Mercury through Pluto).
My argument is that people are afraid of change or having to forget what they have learned and relearn it. So if you accept that statement, then you should hopefully agree that any definition of planet should include the nine planets of our solar system so people don't have to forget about any one of them being a planet. In addition, it would be a shock for people to suddenly go from 9 to 12 to over two dozen planets in our solar system, so it would probably be a good idea to restrict it to include only a couple more planets being added to our solar system (maybe 12 at most). This obviously makes the definition difficult.
My proposal is to keep the term 'Planet' restricted to just our 9 original planets as I stated before. Just Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, no others. Then just continue to define spacial objects as they already are, according to their physical properties, (weight, size, composition, movement, what they move about, etc). If the nine planets are given another term in addition to Planet, oh well. I think people would accept that more than any other definition of planet. Also, since the IAU has no formal definition of planet, the scientific community would hopefully not be rocked by this.
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At the bottom of the article is a link to a debate over the definition of a planet.
My thought is that they should restrict the term Planet to just our original nine planets (Mercury through Pluto).
My argument is that people are afraid of change or having to forget what they have learned and relearn it. So if you accept that statement, then you should hopefully agree that any definition of planet should include the nine planets of our solar system so people don't have to forget about any one of them being a planet. In addition, it would be a shock for people to suddenly go from 9 to 12 to over two dozen planets in our solar system, so it would probably be a good idea to restrict it to include only a couple more planets being added to our solar system (maybe 12 at most). This obviously makes the definition difficult.
My proposal is to keep the term 'Planet' restricted to just our 9 original planets as I stated before. Just Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, no others. Then just continue to define spacial objects as they already are, according to their physical properties, (weight, size, composition, movement, what they move about, etc). If the nine planets are given another term in addition to Planet, oh well. I think people would accept that more than any other definition of planet. Also, since the IAU has no formal definition of planet, the scientific community would hopefully not be rocked by this.