08-15-2006, 03:28 AM
I was always under the impression that a planet was defined as a body that maintains some gravitational being & was formed by said gravity, and also orbits the sun. That being said, if the Hubble or whatever finds more bodies they should be labelled as such.
If anything call them 'maybe planets' or something, it's not like anyone in our lifetime will ever go there to confirm - even if we sent another Voyager out there, our grandkids would be long buried before it even reached there.
As for what the public can or can't accept, I think when it comes to planets the majority of people wont care enough to get mad or not - only the intarweb geeks like us would deabte it.
If anything call them 'maybe planets' or something, it's not like anyone in our lifetime will ever go there to confirm - even if we sent another Voyager out there, our grandkids would be long buried before it even reached there.
As for what the public can or can't accept, I think when it comes to planets the majority of people wont care enough to get mad or not - only the intarweb geeks like us would deabte it.