Actually, I can't believe the IAU is wasting its time, and the world's press has showered so much attention, on this non-issue. Talk about a tempest in a teapot! What's worse, the lay public and school children are confused by all this, and really think this debate means something. It doesn't really matter what the IAU says, they're just a committee of bureaucrats who set standards. Can you imagine geographers and the press spending so much time trying to decide whether Australia and Antarctica are islands or continents? Are Borneo and Madagascar "minor continents"? Or where do we draw the line between an ocean and a sea, or a lake and a pond? It's strictly a matter of definition. It's purely arbitrary.

The sun is orbited by a variety of man-made objects and many natural ones, ranging from microscopic specks of dust to multi-world systems like Jupiter. These include rocky inner planets, gaseous outer planets, asteroids, meteoroids, comets, ring systems around several of these worlds, and a huge collection of icy things similar to Pluto, and many of these objects have satellites. There may even be others we haven't described or discovered yet. ANY definition or classification of these is bound to be preliminary until we have a better understanding of how the solar system was created and a definition can be based on how they were formed, not how big they are. Besides, the recent discovery of extrasolar stellar companions promises to soon add many other taxa to this planetary phylum. How do subdwarfs, brown dwarfs, hot jupiters, MACHOS, and other weird additions figure in to the IAU's scheme?

Astronomers already know this, and the IAU's pronouncements are not going to affect research or solar system origin studies, so it doesn't really matter to the professionals what they declare. But the debate is confusing the public, and worst of all, children. I say we accept a historical definition: there are nine planets, including Pluto, full stop. Astronomers will know there are many icy bodies similar (and maybe bigger) to Pluto in the outer solar system and they're not likely to confuse asteroids with rocky planets, and they will be aware of the status of any other worlds or rocks or whatever which may turn up in the future. In the meantime, kids can ask their teachers questions that really matter.