With the New Horizons spacecraft flying by Pluto and last months's discovery of a possible second Earth about 1,400 light years away, astronomy has really been in the spotlight this summer. Sometimes, people wonder why we pay so much attention to places most of us will never go to, and why there's such a debate about the definition of "planet." Are things like Pluto planets, so-called dwarf-planets, or just giant rocks in space? This debate has been going on since people began looking at the night sky thousands of years ago, and NASA defined it about ten years ago. With everything going on here on our own planet, what makes us wonder so much about everything else? Why do we love Pluto?

We love Pluto because of everything it represents to us: the shared curiosity of humanity, and the idea that anything, or anyone, no matter how small, can be great.

Remember when you were a little kid, and had to sit at the kids' table at family gatherings? That's how a lot of people feel Pluto has been moved: that dwarf planets are the kids' table of the solar system. We all wanted to feel mature and grown-up by being promoted to the adults' table, only to find out that there, people were all uncomfortably reacting to an uncle's racist tirade after the small talk about sports and how the weather's been lately inevitably turned to politics and religion — very controversial issues. Another controversial issue is about how to categorize Pluto,albeit less divisive and uncomfortable. Neil deGrasse Tyson and other important astrophysicists have been labelled Pluto-haters for categorizing Pluto as a dwarf planet. Meanwhile, many of us felt, and still feel, nearly betrayed by NASA for having downgraded Pluto. Before delving into this debate, what is a dwarf planet, and how did that term come to be?

In 2005, what was then considered the tenth planet of the solar system, Eris, was discovered. It is of comparable size and mass as Pluto, and is even farther away from the Sun than it. Like Pluto, it is very distant, and so it was difficult to discover as it is so far away. Because it was considered a planet at the time, this tenth planet was ultimately named after a Greek goddess, Eris - the goddess of chaos and discord, which is fitting, because this discovery led to a lot of chaos and discord among astronomers. Quickly, many new objects that were massive enough to be spherical by their own gravity were discovered far beyond Neptune. Before they too would be classified as planets, astronomers met on August 24, 2006 to define planets and this led to the controversy:

1. A planet must orbit a star.

2. It must be massive enough that its own gravity makes it spherical.

3. It must clear its neighborhood and be the most dominant in its whole orbit.

Part 3 of this is the most controversial, as it makes Pluto not a planet anymore, as it crosses Neptune's orbit, so has not "cleared its neighborhood." Although Pluto had been a planet since it was discovered in the 1930s, it was downgraded in 2006, making people very unhappy. Aside from the obvious answer of people not liking change, here's why people love Pluto:

We all identify with the little guy who's away from everyone else and feels excluded. In our minds, Pluto represents that one kid who wants to play with everyone else, but can't for some particular reason (such as being billions of miles from everyone else). Excluding the lovable and adorable Pluto feels like a rejection of shy kids everywhere, as we most of us either are, or once were.

Being at the end of the solar system, as far as we thought, it feels like the frontier of space. We explore Pluto for the same reasons we went to the moon, and for the same reasons ancient people looked up at the sky all those centuries ago: curiosity about what lies up there, far, far, away from where we are now. Although it's highly unlikely we will ever go there anytime soon, it's still great to know what's out there. Although all of space is considered the final frontier, because of the finality of Pluto as the end of the solar system as far as we knew while growing up, it represents all of humanity's aspirations. When people aren't happy where they are, they look to other places, sometimes up at the sky, and wonder what lie beyond us, beyond everything we've seen, touched, and experienced. For Medieval Europeans, it was the mysterious land beyond the Atlantic. For the pioneers, it was the land west of the Mississippi, full of potential and freedom and opportunity. Out there, people could look up at open skies and see one last place where all humans had marveled at: space. Wherever you are, you can look up and know that everyone else, all your loved ones, family, and friends, as well as everyone on Earth, can see the same moon, and everyone is in awe of the night sky. Whoever you are on Earth, wherever you come from, and whatever problems you're going through, you can be in awe thanks to the wonderful, nearly-infinite world we live in, and love the world and everything in it, whether it's a planet or not. Whatever we do, we must work together, and never give up on learning about the wonderful world around us.