There is a reason that it seems so absurd to many people that the scientists have demoted Pluto and consider Pluto to no longer be a planet. And that is simple: we know what a planet is: a planet is a big round world. We know Pluto is a planet.
As a writer I have a reasonably good understanding of the way the language works. And there is something very real behind this feeling that we know what a planet is.
Planet is a popular term. It was used by the general public thousands of years before modern science, thousands of years before we began to study other worlds. If the scientists were to define the term scientifically, than they have a responsability to not contradict the popular definition, because the word belonged to us the public before it belonged to the scientists.
What if scientists decided to redefine house, and left out the kind of house that most people, say, in the countryside of Nigeria lived in, or the kind of house that most people in the suburbs of LA lived in? That's exactly what they did. We know that Pluto is big and round enough to be a planet. And if that means that we have to accept all those 'dwarf planets' as true planets, then fine.
That's exactly what I think we should do: define all those 'dwarf planets' as true planets. Or better yet- a definition that I think is better. A planet is a big round world. So any world big enough to make itself round is a planet. That is, any body large enough for its own gravity to pull it into a sphere is a planet. Thus, a big round world.
Until then, I say we consider all those 'dwarf planets' to be true planets, including the largest few asteroids such as Ceres. If keeping Pluto as a planet makes Ceres and Vesta planets, that's fine with me. Their gravity has pulled them into spheres- it makes purfect sense to me if they are planets.
Which I suppose makes Jupiter the 9th planet of the Sun.
Well, here's hoping we get to keep using our nice popular term and don't have to accept the astronomer's union telling us how to speak when they aren't even linguists.
Have fun anyway!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson