Celena Chong
Textbooks had to be rewritten. Members of the public were outraged. Our understanding of thesolar systemitself was forever changed on Aug. 24, 2006, when researchers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU)voted to reclassify Pluto,changing its status from a planet to a dwarf planet — a ...
One version of the definition would have actually boosted the number of planets to 12; Pluto was still a planet, and so were Eris and even Ceres, which had been thought of as the largest asteroid. A different proposal kept the total at 9, defining the planets as just the familiar ones ...