Pluto

This is my call out to anyone with an interest in our solar system to stand up for the little guys.

OK - I "get" that Pluto occupies a different neighborhood of the solar system and its physical characteristics put it out of place with the other eight planets. However, in my mind it's extremely short-sighted to completely drop it from the "official" list (after 76 years), because of size.

I'm particularly upset about the rationale used, in particular the claim that Pluto hasn't sufficiently "cleared out" its orbit using Neptune as the "reason".

What a minute --- shouldn't it be Neptune that clears out Pluto (owing to its much higher mass) instead of the other way around? Of course this doesn't even get into the issue that the two orbits don't exactly intersect (they appear to in 2-d from "above" but since they're elliptical orbits you have to take all the elements into consideration).

So ... by their own definition, we can also eliminate Neptune from the list of planets too.

Hold on - but if that's true - what about Jupiter? Surely the encounter with Levy-Shoemaker 9 indicates that it's not completed the task of clearing out its own
orbit, so Jupiter is out too.

All the terrestrial bodies show cratering, and there's no indication that that process has completely stopped.

So that leaves Saturn and Uranus as the only two planets. Uranus' 98-degree axial tilt suggests an impact history, so it's suspect, and Saturn's grandiose rings definitely indicate an excess of debris in its area of influence.

Which means that there are no planets in our solar system at all now.

I hope the Belgians are happy.

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Instead, why not go with 11 planets using the other two criteria: orbits a star, and is large enough to be mostly spherical. That handles mechanics and some physical parameter to distinguish planets from other bodies.

Then you have five terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Ceres;
four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and at least two icy planets: Pluto and Eris (with others certainly to follow). Since they all nicely
"clump" into their various neighborhoods in the solar system, it won't be too taxing for astronomers to keep them straight and concentrate on particular classes of objects as desired.