Astrophysicist and science educator Neil deGrasse Tyson is notorious for advocating Pluto’s demotion from full planet status, something a lot of people intensely disliked, especially when the International Astronomical Union voted to formally reclassify it as a “dwarf planet” in 2006. (You can read IAU’s page on Pluto at this link.)

Here Tyson amusingly reads and responds to complaints and even issues a joke threat. I hope it’s a joke, anyway…

As an aside, it seems to me there’s a pretty big difference between gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the last two sometimes distinguished as “ice giants”) and the rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars). If we’re going to have “dwarf planets” (Ceres, Pluto, and some spherical trans-Neptunian objects), why not “giant planets” as well? Then we could cut the count of plain old planets to just four…

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