Personal Essay: Pluto Is Not A Planet

Pluto is not a planet For my whole life I have been taught that there were exactly 9 planets in the solar system. I had learnt this at a very young age and the number 9 had often been stressed to me. I can't believe the amount of tests that I had failed on the subject because I had failed to remember one of these planets. My excuse had always been, "No! That's not a planet!". If I had forgotten Saturn then I would say, " Oh sir! Saturn's not really a planet, it's yellow and everyone knows that anything yellow is worthless." or if it was Mars, " But sir! Mars is made out of chocolate, how can it be a planet!". But the planet I forgot the most was, Pluto. That little spec floating of into the distance of my galaxy map had always eluded me. I wanted to get rid of it. It had
Now although I had hated it, after awhile I had begun to forget about it. Now imagine my shock, when I turned on the news on August the 24th 2006 and saw the headline "Astronomers Rule, Pluto is not a Planet". Supposedly a clear majority of researchers voted for the new definition at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague, the day before. According to the new definition, a full-fledged planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large enough to have become round due to the force of its own gravity. In addition, a planet has to dominate the neighbourhood around its orbit. Now obviously to me this didn't make much sense. I was still shocked by the news. I may have had my differences with Pluto in the past, but now that it's gone, I kind of miss it. But then it leads me to ask the question, "Who