Actually, I got more irked about this after hearing about the way the process happened: by popular vote. Total votes: 424 out of 2700 attendees at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague.
So, if I understand this correctly, Pluto got downgraded by the same mechanism that a rule change is voted on at a science-fiction convention. That's not so much about science as it is about the feelings of people who come to the business meeting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_redefinition_of_planet makes for entertaining reading on the topic. It doesn't include the post-vote comment by astronomer David Brown (in a USA Today article for which I can't find the link at the moment), who said that the new definition "brings magic back into the solar system."
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So, if I understand this correctly, Pluto got downgraded by the same mechanism that a rule change is voted on at a science-fiction convention. That's not so much about science as it is about the feelings of people who come to the business meeting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_redefinition_of_planet makes for entertaining reading on the topic. It doesn't include the post-vote comment by astronomer David Brown (in a USA Today article for which I can't find the link at the moment), who said that the new definition "brings magic back into the solar system."