1 I agree that Pluto's a planet. 

Is the Illinois Senate overstepping its bounds here?  Is it really their job to determine planetary body status?

2 They have to; Pluto is where Obama's gotta go to pick up our unicorns and rainbows.  

3 Outstanding!

I was visiting a friend who has a 4yo son a few weeks back and they were talking about planets. My friend is a great dad (he has his son watch Loony Tune cartoons every morning on Youtube during breakfast so the kid is educated in the classics) but he described Pluto as a 'planetary body' or some such crap. I almost called Child Protective Services. Needless to say, I think much less of my friend now.

4 Is the Illinois Senate overstepping its bounds here?  Is it really their job to determine planetary body status?

I'd rather have them doing this than spending time performing actual legislative tasks. 

Apparently the guy who found Pluto is from Illinois and the GOP state senator from his hometown district is the sponsor.  GOP Win!  GOP Win!  I'll take it where I can get it. 

5 Forget whether Pluto is a planet or a minor planet or a Kuiper Belt Object; your Moronosphere News Network logo is racist.

6

I'm not in Illinoyz but I thank you Great Lakers for your leadership on this issue.  When I was a kid I worked damned hard on that built-to-scale model of the solar system for my Science Fair project, but then some jokers in white lab smocks look away from their telescopes just long enough to declare that Pluto doesn't qualify as a planet -  and ruin everything.  Hey science guys, why doncha go piss into a stiff breeze and leave Pluto alone?

Illini Congressfolk: More like this please.  Less Obamas and Daleys. Thanks.

7 As silly as this may sound, it's the first step in putting Pluto back into planet-status and reversing the anti-Americanism of the European science community. They can't stand the fact that Pluto was discovered by an American. 

8 Obviously, Pluto is where our additional 7 - 10 states are located.  Of course it would be a planet.

9 That's just Goofy.

10

I'm of two minds on this:

1. I can't believe the state legislature is wasting time on an issue as insipid and pointless as this one.

2. Thank God the state legislature is wasting time on an issue as insipid and pointless as this one as it keeps them, for at least a few hours, from doing more meaningful, permanent, damage.

11

The Illinois Senate has way more sense than the International Astronomical Union has shown in two-and-a-half years. It's the IAU who have acted like idiots, with one tiny group forcing a nonsensical planet definition on everyone. 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. A small group, most of whom are not planetary scientists, wanted to arbitrarily limit the number of planets to only the largest bodies in the solar system. They held their vote on the last day of a two-week conference with no absentee voting allowed. 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.

Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader definition of planet that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body orbiting a star. The spherical part is key because when objects become large enough, they are shaped by gravity, which pulls them into a round shape, rather than by chemical bonds. This is true of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and comets. And yes, it does make Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake planets as well, for a total of 13 planets in our solar system.

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.