You must be deliberately misinterpreting this, because I honestly can not believe you are being serious about this sentence. If you have actually been paying ANY attention to this whole thing you already know it's not "nine planets" that triggered them, it was the prospect of kids not being able to memorize the names of several hundred planets, not NINE fucking planets. They LITERALLY made that argument as a reason for holding the meeting. Please try to think about the arguments you are making.
All right so, the thing you posted yesterday had a headline that said "Planet Decision That Booted Out Pluto is Rooted in Folklore, Astrology, Study Suggests", and this is (part of) the argument it made supporting that:
Also at play, according to the study, was the effect of another type of publication about planets that had become extremely popular in the preceding two centuries —almanacs.
These annual books often contain information such as weather predictions that rely on astrological factors, such as planetary position, which requires an orderly, limited number of planets to make predictions.
“We found that there were enough almanacs being sold in England and in the United States that every household could get one copy every year,” Metzger says.
Even though the popularity of almanacs had declined by the time of planetary science neglect, their impact remained.
“This was a key period in history, when the public accepted that the Earth orbits the Sun instead of the other way around, and they combined this great scientific insight with a definition of planets that came from astrology,” Metzger says.
This is when astrological views, like that moons, or satellites, are not planets, crept into scientific literature, Metzger says.
“This might seem like a small change, but it undermined the central idea about planets that had been passed down from Galileo,” Metzger says. “Planets were no longer defined by virtue of being complex, with active geology and the potential for life and civilization. Instead, they were defined by virtue of being simple, following certain idealized paths around the Sun.”
Metzger says this continued until the 1960s when missions into space reignited interest and research into planets and objects in the solar system.
During this period of greater discovery, some scientists began using the geophysical definition proposed by Galileo again in scientific literature, while others dismissed moons and many other planetary objects as being less than planets, thereby holding onto the belief that there are a limited number of planets in the solar system.
It was this latter belief that surfaced when the IAU decided to vote on the definition in 2006, the researcher says.
The argument is that because Farmers' Almanacs were popular over 100 years ago, astronomers (who were born after they had declined in popularity) have inherited a hang-up on there needing to be only so many planets to keep the solar system "orderly", and the effect of that is that moons and other small critters in the solar system are considered "less than" planets.
I think that's a purely semantic argument. For one thing, the problem scientifically costs nothing; considering moons moons and not planets has not gotten in the way of any actual scientific work or discoveries at all. We have sent probes and robots to moons, we have studied them extensively and still do, not a single person ever was like "Hmmm, should we really be spending all these resources studying a
mere MOON?". I think it's actually the people making this argument who are investing the term "planet" with some higher-than-scientific meaning. Moons being "less than" planets? Nobody except maybe these people infers that. Everyone else just thinks moons are smaller than planets - and maybe smaller enough to justify their own category. Of course that doesn't mean they're less important.
You're right that people at least mentioned during the debate phase at the IAU meeting the whole thing about school kids and memorizing planet names. It doesn't appear in the resolution anywhere, but it WAS talked about at the meeting. But where it's not talked about much is in that article you posted. In fact this is the only mention of it:
“I’ve always been bothered by the argument to preserve the eight-planet solar system model for the sake of easy memorization for school children,” she says. “Imagine how much more perspective they’d have if they had a full understanding of the diversity of the universe and our place in it? We are not one of eight planets, we are one of upwards of 200.”
That's it. It's a single line in the whole article. Compare that to how much time is spent on the "astrology/there needs to be a limited number of planets" argument. So you can't say the school thing is the main concern of the article and the astrology stuff is just a distraction, like a LOT of time is spent on it. Maybe it's the least important part to YOU but it's the whole headline and the bulk of the article, and the article is what I've been arguing against.
The IAU convention is not primarily a planetological convention, and there were very few planetologists present at the main convention. The meeting was held after the main sessions were all over, and none of the attendees who happened to be planetologists were still around for the meeting. There were several complaints *by* planetologists after the meeting about this.
I still haven't seen any like lists of the voters or anything that could prove any of that; but even so, that's not really the IAU's fault. It was a multi-day meeting just like all the general assembly meetings, and everyone knew well in advance that all the resolution voting would be done on the last day, just like it always was. Yeah a lot of planetary scientists had gone home by then, but a lot of all the other types of astronomers had gone home by then too. Planetologists weren't excluded, they had every opportunity to be part of the process at all levels, including the final vote. I understand if a lot of them regret not taking it, but that's kind of the brakes, they can't just not hold the vote because particular members didn't stick around for it.
