(Image: Andrzej Krauze)
INCREDIBLE images of Pluto captured by the New Horizons probe have reignited the long-running debate over its official status. Controllers of the craft cheered when NASA chief Charles Bolden pointedly referred to Pluto as a planet, not a dwarf planet, the label given when it was downgraded by the International Astronomical Union in 2006.
To advocates of full-planet status, photos showing ice mountains and a lack of craters make Pluto look like a bona fide world with active geology.
But the question of how to classify it is more than an emotional one for those of us…