As the International Astronomical Union gathered for a meeting in Prague, Czech Republic it was declared on August 24, 2006 that Pluto was no longer a planet.

Unfortunately, Pluto didn’t quite meet the “new set of rules” for planets nowadays which includes a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body force so that it assumes a…nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

In other words, Pluto just wasn’t good enough and has now been demoted to “dwarf planet” status and the solar system will be now known as the 8 planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and finally, Neptune. So it seems kids will now have to remember “My very eager mother just gave us nine.”

How unfortunate for students to wonder what the nine relates to. However, Pluto isn’t alone. Pluto will now reside in its little cluster of a “dwarf planet” neighborhood with Ceres, UB 313 and Xena which were all at one point on the brink of “planet hood,” even considered asteroids but remain as dwarf planets at this point...for now.

“It’s messed up [Pluto no longer being a planet], it seems as if the U.S. has too much power to all of a sudden say it’s not a planet. It was out of nowhere too, what’s up with that?” said senior Carlos Saviñon.

Ironically, a New Horizons Space Probe was recently released to perform a rendezvous with Pluto in 2015. What would the young man Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in the year 1930, think if he were alive today? His once beloved planet in which school children joyfully related to Mickey’s dog from Disney is now dead. Gift shops everywhere, textbooks, science posters and school projects will never be the same.

But wait…the new set of planet rules seem to be flawed. It is quoted that a planet must have “cleared the neighborhood around it,” yet Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune contain asteroids as neighbors. How were these new planet rules implemented in the first place? According to Mr. Alan Stern, who is in charge of the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the vote was “absurd.” Apparently only 424 astronomers were allowed to vote out of about 10,000 professional astronomers world wide.

“My question is why didn’t the other astronomers vote? It is a good point that we need to get to the bottom of. Was it NASA committing another publicity stunt to revive the American culture towards astronomy? It doesn’t seem proper and even damages the simple acronym many of us learned as little school children. However, I still remain unaffected on Pluto’s sudden demotion to a dwarf planet. Yet as long as Earth is still a planet everything’s ok,” said Mr. Carlos Escobar, Language Arts teacher.