But how many worlds are there? And is a double-planet system really
a planet? The IAU says yes. For those of you who don’t want to
read about it in the Bad Astronomy Blog, Pluto is a planet… but
so is Charon (it’s "moon", but their barycenter is not inside either
body) and Ceres. And they’re not real planets—they’re plutons, or
dwarf planets.
There seems to be some dissent, though—not everyone thinks there
ought to be more than 8 planets, and even some Pluto-lovers think that opening
the solar system up to thousands of new planets may not be a good idea.
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