Thank goodness they’ve decided to go with only eight planets:
After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn’t — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.
Phew! There for a little while, there was real risk that our solar system might actually possess as many as 24!
This is wonderful news for AC, who’s studying astronomy this semester; her model won’t take nearly as long to create.
I wonder whether they went with this approach (rather than the broader “orbit a star and spherical due to self-generating gravity”) to avoid admitting that nobody would have been able to learn the names of that many objects.