Even astronomers care about it. Well, a few. Back when the announcement came out, Dr. M-, our (former) Kuiper Belt/small objects/Mercury guy posted it to the elevator. Dr. B-, one of our Martians, then put up a 'Save Pluto' bumper sticker on his bulletin board. Dr. M- responded by making a 'Save Pallas' bumper sticker for his door. (We also suspect that Dr. M- was behind a special DPS session this year in which a bunch of people talked about why it was okay for Pluto to be a dwarf planet. We had been hoping that there would be a fight between Dr. M- and either Dr. B- or a Kuiper Belt person that disagreed.)
As for me, I tend to agree with Dr. S-, the other Martian, who said that Pluto does not care what we call it. I also think that it reflects the trends in planetary science -- if you are a dynamicist (you study how stuff moves), or work on the system as a whole, you're more likely to want to keep the Big Eight and put Pluto with all the other debris out there. If you're a planetary geologist, you want to study anything that's round (planets, dwarf planets, large moons) as geologically interesting, and tend to focus a bit more. (Somewhat -- there's not enough data to really focus on any single thing except Mars. If you like 'small things with ice', you hop to whatever place has a NASA probe there.)
(I don't know why I'm abbreviating the names -- five minutes on Google could tell you who I mean, and I give enough hints that even not knowing where I go to grad school would just add a couple of spots to your search.)
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As for me, I tend to agree with Dr. S-, the other Martian, who said that Pluto does not care what we call it. I also think that it reflects the trends in planetary science -- if you are a dynamicist (you study how stuff moves), or work on the system as a whole, you're more likely to want to keep the Big Eight and put Pluto with all the other debris out there. If you're a planetary geologist, you want to study anything that's round (planets, dwarf planets, large moons) as geologically interesting, and tend to focus a bit more. (Somewhat -- there's not enough data to really focus on any single thing except Mars. If you like 'small things with ice', you hop to whatever place has a NASA probe there.)
(I don't know why I'm abbreviating the names -- five minutes on Google could tell you who I mean, and I give enough hints that even not knowing where I go to grad school would just add a couple of spots to your search.)