Poor Pluto

Not keeping round enough and intruding into Neptune's path caused the ninth planet Pluto losing his coveted position as a planet. This distant tiny mass received his pink slip after 2500 brain stalwarts of IAU together made a decision that he no longer satisfies the criteria in order to be retained as a planet.

The new definition of a planet is, a celestial body that a) has sufficient mass for its self gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydorstatic equilibrium which gives a nearly round shape that is in orbit around the sun b) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit . In plain English it translates into " rotating around your sun boss is perfectly fine ,but to be in job you must keep fit and do not create problems to your neighbours". This is where pluto did not do well enough .Moreover few of the moving objects ,like Ceres,UB213(a.k.a Xena) and Charon in his neighbourhood (known as trans-Neptunian objects)also tried to creep into the planet family using their characteristics which were also similar to Pluto. IAU viewed this matter very seriously and hence in the recent performance review meeting held at Prague ,which would be written in golden letters in history books as the win of sensibility over sentiments, the IAU decided enough is enough in the case of pluto and they demoted him out of the family of what they call 'classical planets' . The word 'planet' translates into 'passively wandering object ' in Greek and pluto is the best one suited to become a planet if IAU had gone by the literal meaning(remember he occasionally wander into Neptune territory). However, in acknowledging Pluto's 75+ years of association with the planet family, the IAU has formed a new division called 'Dwarf Planets' and ,made pluto the head of the family as he is the most experienced one among all the others.

Now pluto is out of the conventional planet family.Obviously this would call for a 'mass edit' in all the school text books all over the world. Moreover, kids no longer need to remember this name for exams and this five bytes -pluto- gets free from every brain in the school world . If you consider all the kids who study space science, thats a huge amount of memory which is now available for some other creative thoughts. But not all memories can be free'd as pluto still has some stakes on this planet. Pluto would remain in the world through the inspiration he gave to Glenn Seaborg and team who were searching for a name for the element (Element -94)they discovered at that time. Plutonium ,as it known today ,would be thankful to the dwarf planet . Also the comic buffs will never free those five bytes from their memory as long as they get to see that lazy pup in Walt Disney comics.