For years now a war has been raging among astronomers about the definition of a “planet”. As BBC news reports, some sort of a solution is attempted next Tuesday, when experts gather in Prague to vote for a definition that would not only keep Pluto, but also include its twin Charon, the larger object 2003 UB313, as well as the largest asteroid, Ceres.

If the vote is passed, it would potentially open a can of worms, as the list of planets in our solar system would suddenly not be fixed, and new planets could be “discovered” as the new definiton would be applied to bodies found in the Kuiper belt. My opinion, therefore, would be to just keep the list of planets as it is, and decide that Pluto is on the list because of historical reasons. This may not be very scientific, but then again I’m not sure whether the whole issue is a scientific one, or rather one of purely linguistic nature.

NASA has finally got the New Horizons mission off the ground and towards Pluto. If everything goes as planned, we’ll know more about Pluto in July 2015. (Although I must say I am personally more interested in what lies beyond it in the Kuiper Belt: the probe should look into that as well between 2016 and 2020.)