The International Astronomical Union will vote next Thursday on the reclassification, and are eyeing up to a dozen more bodies.

Trying to stir up some prurient interest in this sexy topic, Apo?

My guess is that the distinction intended by the IAU is that classic planets were formed with the solar system, while plutons, by their eccentricity, appear to have been strays from other systems that have been captured by ours.

Sometimes the capture of these foreign bodies can be quite dramatic and devastating, as was apparently the case of the collision that created a heavy Earth and a large, light Moon.

If Charon has been called a moon of Pluto, that must mean it orbits Pluto. Yet under this new system, they will both be "plutons". I'm no astronomer, but I don't like the idea of a body and the body that orbits it both being categorized as the same class of thing.

Charon is about 1/7 the mass of Pluto. It's more accurate to say that the two of them orbit around their common center of mass. If there were a binary planet, neither of them would be eligible to be planets?

So Pluto orbits around its common center of mass with Charon while simultaneously orbiting the sun in a Spirograph-type pattern? Cool.

Howabout we call 'em a "composite planet" or a "planet cluster" or something?

The time has finally come to wage war on that goddamned smug-ass motherfucking Kuiper Belt.

orbits of 200 years or more

Isn't an orbit one year by definition?

12 planets! Wow! Let's celebrate with a Uranus tart!

No you're a new start.

I can't believe you people are being so glib when the Kuiper belt is hurling comets at us. I don't want the something something to be in the form of a planet-killing snowball! Somebody strap some explosives to Voyager!

I'm so sick of these motherfucking plutons in our motherfucking spatial plane!

I'm proud our solar system has managed to capture a few plutons, and while I'm not particularly eager for the Earth to be smacked by asteroids or comets, I'm grateful for the legacy of water that comets have brought us.

Isn't an orbit one year by definition?

Only for the Earth. Orbits of planets inside us take less, and those outside take longer, depending on distance.

So Pluto orbits around its common center of mass with Charon while simultaneously orbiting the sun in a Spirograph-type pattern?

Same is true of the Earth-Moon system and all others, even though in many cases the common center of mass may be a moving position that remains inside the largest body.

Sure the orbit can take more or less time depending on how far from the sun the planet is; but regardless of how long it takes it lasts one year.

I see what you mean. A "year" is what we call the length of time for one complete revolution of the Earth around the sun; each planet of course has its own year for the period of its own revolution, but we call those its "planetary year" so we don't get too confused. Of course the inhabitants of such bodies may choose to call it something else.

Now wait a minute. Pluto has two other satellites besides Charon -- Nix and Hydra. Where does this leave them? Moons without a planet? And then there's Ceres, a good sized asteroid...

Oh Shit! Tyson's gonna freak! He's the director of the Hayden Planetarium who demoted Pluto down from being a planet. Now, they're puttin' Pluto back, and adding two more, just to fuck with him.

There's gonna be an astro-nerd rumble!

"Why do you hate Pluto? What's wrong with it? Is it too cold? Too small?"