Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Pluto’s status as a ”planet’ always a bit dubious, due to it’s size and weirdness of it’s orbit?
Either way this is just a good example of refining classifications. To start with all planets that we knew about were just planets. (ok celestial bodies and assigned to gods) but then as knowledge increased we realised that the big ones were not solid but huge balls of gas. In the advent of this they were renamed ”Gas Giants’. Fair enough, no one complained much about that.
Pluto got discovered and was called a ”planet’ (despite its weirdness) and then there were nine.
So now we have discovered more objects that are Pluto-esque but don’t behave as planets (pluto’s ”moon’ being one) what are we to do? Call all these new un-planet like objects planets, or give them and Pluto a new designation of ”Dwarf Planet’?
This group doesn’t fit the definition of planet and thus deserves their own classification. As Pluto is more like them than any of the other planets it makes more sense to also move it to the new classification.
In a very real sense this makes not one jot of a difference, as re-classifying an object doesn’t alter the object in any way shape or form, it’s still out there doing what it does, just it now goes to a different school and has a different set of classmates.
I guess it is those people who tend to operate on Binary Logic (wrong or right, no grey) who have a problem with this aspect of science, as they take the current state of scientific knowledge as given fact when all science is stating is “this is what we currently think . ” So when Science turns round and goes “oops, that should be in this group, not that one” those of a BL mindset go “YOU LIED to us! Therefore nothing you say can be trusted. Science is wrong, and if science is wrong . .
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