Illinois restores Pluto's planetary status
The State of Illinois has decided it's unhappy with Pluto's 2006 expulsion from the league of planets and has decreed that as it "passes overhead through Illinois' night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status".
In case you're wondering why Illinois wants to mix it up with the International Astronomical Union - the body responsible for Pluto's demotion to dwarf planet, or "plutoid" - the senate resolution notes that "Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the planet Pluto, was born on a farm near the Illinois community of Streator".
The resolution (pdf) continues: "Dr Tombaugh is so far the only Illinoisan and only American to ever discover a planet."
Well, this assertion has caused a few raised eyebrows across the internet, since Americans have been discovering exoplanets in their droves for quite a few years. A minor detail, though, because Illinois clearly feels local pride has been dented by the by the IAA vote "in which only four per cent of the International Astronomical Union's 10,000 scientists participated".
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The Illinois legislature has way more sense than the International Astronomical Union has shown in two-and-a-half years. The truth is there is NO scientific consensus that Pluto is not a planet. The criterion requiring that a planet “clear the neighborhood of its orbit” is not only controversial; it’s so vague as to be meaningless. Only four percent of the IAU even voted on this, and the vote was driven by internal politics. Their decision was immediately opposed by hundreds of professional astronomers in a formal petition led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto.
Even now, many astronomers and lay people are working to overturn the IAU demotion or are ignoring it altogether. Kudos to the Illinois Senate for standing up to this closed, out of touch organization whose leadership thinks they can just issue a decree and change reality.