From a scientific point of view, the status of Pluto and the newly discovered object - stuck with the cumbersome label 2003 UB313 until astronomers decide what it is - is easy to discern. If you were to look unemotionally at the hundreds of thousands of bodies orbiting the sun, only eight (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) would clearly distinguish themselves by their large sizes.
The remaining objects, which are significantly smaller, are mostly either rocky bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt in the distant regions beyond Neptune. Of the more than 1,000 known objects in the Kuiper Belt, 2003 UB313 and Pluto are the largest and second largest.
So why is there any debate at all, if the scientific view is so clear?
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