A surprising number of people were outraged when a group of astronomers "demoted" Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006.
Passionate Earthlings launched protests and petitions. Popular scientists including astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson told us to get over it. And after this week's historic New Horizons flyby of Pluto, Tyson still hasn't changed his mind:
—Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) July 15, 2015
It's a planet. Science doesn't work by voting. Did people vote on the theory of relativity? No! It's either right or it's wrong. Do we vote on whether genetics is a good theory or not? Of course not. Either data supports the observations or they don't. Voting doesn't work in science.
Pluto is as far across as Manhattan to Miami, but its atmosphere is bigger than the Earth's. It has 5 moons, it has atmosphere, weather. If it walks like a duck, it's a duck. We're showing the world this beautiful planet. And it's a double planet, which is even more awesome.
Of course Stern has dedicated the past 26 years to a Pluto mission. So obviously this is a big moment for him. There was lots of fist-pumping and hugging from the guy when the New Horizons team confirmed that the spacecraft survived its Pluto flyby and had its data intact:
Stern isn't the only person (or scientist, for that matter) who thinks Pluto deserves planet status.
During a news conference, after the New Horizons team confirmed that the spacecraft survived the Pluto flyby, Charles Bolden — NASA's chief administrator — said he hoped Pluto's classification would change.
"I call it a planet, but I'm not the rulemaker," Bolden said.
Business Insider asked a few other astronomers to weigh in on whether they think this new data from New Horizons has the potential to change Pluto's planetary status.
Victor Baker, a professor of planetary sciences and geosciences at the University of Arizona, said the latest images could not tell us much about whether Pluto should be a planet.
"The classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet is really not based on criteria affected by the new images," Baker told Business Insider in an email. "The issue is that there are other planetary objects in the far outer system that are very similar to Pluto in size and general character."
He pointed to the dwarf planet Ceres as a good example of this. Classifying Ceres and Pluto as planets could greatly expand the number of bodies that fit into the category.
Others think the question is a little more complicated than just "planet or not a planet."
"I think that [data from the New Horizons mission] will have an effect, but I think eventually we have to change the definition of 'planet,'" Phil Metzger, a planetary physicist who recently retired from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, told Business Insider. "And that definition will end up including Pluto."
Metzger said the problem was that today's definition of "planet" doesn't work when comparing this solar system to others ones light-years away from the sun.
"When we try to do that, planets similar to Earth would not be called 'planets,' and really small rocky bodies would be called 'planets,'" Metzger said.
Tyson takes a different view. He recently told Colbert that small, rocky planets such as Pluto and Earth should all be classified as "dwarf planets," because they're so small relative to gassy giants such as Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter.
But astronomer Mike Brown, who goes by the handle "@plutokiller" on Twitter (for his direct role in the planet's demotion), made a really great point that should satisfy all the pro-planet-status folks:
—Sanden Totten (@sandentotten) July 14, 2015
