Pluto Has Been DEMOTED!

I feel like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes when he discovered the truth. I feel like screaming what he screamed. This is terrible.

I am traumatized, seriously. Our solar system now only contains 8 official planets. Textbooks will have to be re-written (not to mention my brain). I've been a space nerd ever since I was a kid, and I always feared this day would come. Now, a bunch of eggheads have taken Pluto away from me.

CNN REPOERTS:

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is -- and isn't -- a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.

Although astronomers applauded after the vote, Jocelyn Bell Burnell -- a specialist in neutron stars from Northern Ireland who oversaw the proceedings -- urged those who might be "quite disappointed" to look on the bright side.