Quote:With the complicated history of the debate in mind, three experts put forward their opinions, and according to The Irish Examiner, they went as follows:
1. Historian Owen Gingerich argued: A planet is a culturally-defined word that changes over time. Pluto IS a planet.
2. Gareth Williams, from the IAU's Minor Planets Center argued: A planet is a spherical body that orbits the Sun and has cleared its path. Pluto is NOT a planet.
3. Dimitar Sasselov, the director of Harvard’s planetary program, the Origins Of Life Initiative, argued: A planet is the smallest spherical lump of matter that formed around stars or stellar remnants. Pluto IS a planet.
Argument number 3 was voted by the audience as most convincing, but with the understanding that things change in science where more information is discovered, and when it comes to, you know, THE UNIVERSE, there is still much to be learned. So Pluto should be considered a planet right now, the audience decided, but that could change in the future as our knowledge about planets and other cosmic bodies grows.
Well, that sounds "rational and well thought". Good job, audience. /sarcasm
"Thanks to a popular vote, the argument for Pluto being a planet came out on top." is the part where I stopped reading.
EDIT: By the third argument we can either consider every single asteroid in our solar system a planet if we leave the definition of "spherical" vague enough to include "geoid" objects, or not even Earth itself if we don't.