2003 UB313's own discoverer on the IAU committee's proposal

What makes a planet?

Most people, when first confronted with a proposal to make 44 new planets in the solar system, seem to react by looking blankly for a second, then shaking their heads and muttering something about astronomers being crazy.

Astronomers are not actually crazy, at least most of them. Astronomers have needed a good scientific definition of the word 'planet' for many years now and this one works well for scientists. It doesn't, however, work terribly well for the rest of the world. The solution is the one that should have happened long ago: a divorce of the scientific term 'planet' for the cultural term 'planet.' No one expects school children to name the 53 planets (most, in fact, don't even have names). If I were a school teacher I would teach 8, or 9, or perhaps 10 planets and then say 'scientists consider many more things to be planets too' and use that opportunity to talk about how much more there is in the solar system. But at the end of the day I would talk about 8 or 9 or 10. Not 53.

Culture and science have always meant something different when they use the word planet, and with this new scientific definition so clearly far removed from what the rest of the world things a planet is there will no longer be any need to confuse the scientific word with the cultural one.

Dr. Brown says that, were he a member of the IAU General Assembly, he himself would vote 'no' on the proposal.