What? Pluto! back as a Planet again?

Pluto, has a surface of methane ice (a celestial snowball) which is 3.6 billion miles away from the sun, might be back into the solar system July 2015.

Pluto was first discovered and classified as planet in 1930, Pluto was relegated to "dwarf-planet" status by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006. They booted it out because there appeared to be a bunch of other big rocks just like Pluto in the Kuiper belt. One of which is Eris.



A Debate between some scientists is ongoing for re-classification of Pluto as a Planet.

Harvard science historian Owen Gingerich, who chairs the IAU planet definition committee, argued at a forum last month that "a planet is a culturally defined word that changes over time," and that Pluto is a planet.

Another expert, Gareth Williams, associate director of the IAU's Minor Planet Center, said that Pluto is not a planet, citing the official definition, which states that a planet is a celestial body that:
• Is in orbit around the sun.
• Is round or nearly round.
• Has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit, meaning it is not surrounded by objects of similar size and characteristics.

Williams said Pluto failed on that third qualification, since it had several other "dwarf planets" near it and also overlaps Neptune's orbit at times.

So would Pluto be considered as a Planet again?
Answer to the question would be clear only after the next IAU General Assembly is in Honolulu in August 2015.



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