Aug 14, 2008 04:28 PM | 2 Many researchers were none too happy
when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted in 2006 to
cast Pluto out from among the planets, demoting it along with
similar bodies in the solar system to the status of mere dwarf
planets. Some of them would still like to reverse that decision,
or at least convince the public that the IAU process did not
reflect the give and take of workaday science. Hence "The Great
Planet Debate: Science as Process," a three-day conference under
way right now at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory (APL). As I write, conference co-organizer and vocal
Pluto booster Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science
Institute, Tucson, Arizona, is set to duke it out this afternoon
in a public debate with dwarf planet-proponent Neil deGrasse
Tyson, director of the American Museum of Natural History's
Hayden Planetarium in New York. Sykes is promoting the view that
a planet should be construed as any object in the solar system
massive enough t