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  • BBC Science Focus Magazine

    Pluto is a planet. Get over it

    Oct 06, 2021 4 minutes
    PAUL BYRNE

    PAUL BYRNE

    Planetary scientist

    There are some topics that elicit strong opinions from people. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? (Yes.) Does pineapple belong on pizza? (Also yes.) Is Pluto a planet? I say that it is. But this isn’t a view that’s universally held.

    Those of us born in the latter part of the 20th Century grew up learning that there are nine planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, in increasing distance from the Sun. But in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) – the entity charged with, among other things, deciding what to call stuff in space – held a vote that overnight reduced the number of planets in the Solar System to

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