And this just in from the space watching community: Pluto might be experiencing a really bad 21st Century, as the dwarf planet may not actually be even the largest dwarf planet as was originally presumed. Eris, a large rocky body within the Kuiper Belt, was found to be 100 kilometers wider in diameter, but was assumed to be less dense than Pluto.

Michael Brown, the original discoverer of Eris, along with Emily Schaller, both from the California Institute of Technology, also discovered that Eris is 16.6 billion trillion kilograms. Their estimate was derived from an observation of the body's satellite orbit through the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory.

Just last year, Pluto was demoted to what the International Astronomical Union called a dwarf planet, which in their eyes can't qualify as a true planet. People who've had a soft side for the former ninth celestial body of our solar system took this news for disappointment. And this new development may dampen their spirits even more.

But Frank Bertoldi of the University of Bonn in Germany believes that not everyone was fazed by the IAU's decision. "The schoolkids still like Pluto whether it's a minor planet, a dwarf planet, or a planet. Pluto is Pluto, and it will stay out there no matter what we call it," he said.

Bertoldi is sure that Eris will not be able to hold it's current crown as the largest dwarf planet in our solar system. There are other portions of the Kuiper Belt that haven't been explored, according to Bertoldi, and it's possible a larger one is hidden within its mysterious ring.

Last month, Pluto was tossed out of the family of planets by the International Astronomical Union - but perhaps its not all bad, because even as Pluto has lost one family, it seems to have gained another.

Today, the "hot new thing" in planetary science is the Kuiper Belt - a ring of icy debris that orbits outside the Solar System proper. Many of these "Kuiper objects" - of which Pluto is now considered a part - is the "attic of the solar system," a veritable archaeological treasure house of artifacts dating from its earliest days.

Astronomers have identified some 1,100 Kuiper Belt objects , and there may be has many as half a million more. Many of these bodies are larger than 20 miles wide. One appears to be mostly rock with a coating of ice. Some are big snowballs. Some are less dense than ice, indicating a Swiss-cheese-like structure. A lot of them have moons. "The more we learn, the weirder it looks," says Harold Levinson of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Many Kuiper Belt objects have orbits similar to Pluto’s, and have been dubbed the "Plutinos."

Like Pluto, these have orbits, often at a sharp angle to the rest of the solar system. At least one of these -  nicknamed "Xena" -  is larger than Pluto.

Less than twenty years ago, the Kuiper Belt was not even on  maps of the solar system. Pluto (actually Neptune at that time, since Pluto had slipped inside Neptunian orbit) marked the outer limit. An astronomer during the 1950's, Gerard Kuiper (for whom the belt is named) theorized that such a region of small objects had existed at one point, but that Pluto (at the time believed to be much larger than it is) had pushed them out of our region of space.

The existence of Pluto - being a "rocky" planet that is half ice, with its tilted and irregular orbit - provided the first clues to astronomers that there was something else out there beyond the known solar system. Considering was these objects are teaching scientists about the formation of the solar system, this would seem to more than compensate Pluto for its elimination from the planetary roll.

"I'm not heartbroken. I'm just shook up," said 93-year-old Patricia Tombaugh, wife of Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto back in 1930.

In a phone interview from her home in Las Cruces, the old woman was asked regarding her sentiments about Pluto losing its planetary status. She said that she is frustrated regarding the decision, but says that her husband would have understood. Awwww...

Clyde Tombaugh was 24 when he discovered Pluto while working at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona where he spent months examining images of the sky. He was the only person in the Western Hemisphere to have discovered a planet in our solar system, until the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of its planetary status.

Tombaugh, who died in 1997, had reportedly fought off previous attempts to demote Pluto from being a classical planet to a "dwarf" one, but his wife said that this time, Clyde would have probably agreed with the decision because other planetary objects are now seen in the Kuiper Belt, the belt of comets near the edge of the solar system where Pluto resides.

"He was a scientist. He would understand they had a real problem when they start finding several of these things flying around the place," Patricia Tombaugh said. Awww, very true Mrs.Tombaugh, there are a lot things flying around nowadays. And we're all shook up just like you.

The planet Pluto is facing a serious demotion.

Soon, school kids may have to get used to saying that the solar system is consists of eight planets, not nine. At an International Astronomical Union (IAU) conference to be held later this month at Prague, a resolution that defines a planet is scheduled to be heard and considered. Pluto has always been different from the other planets - too small, erratic orbit, not enough of a rocky center etc. And this conference might decide if Pluto is indeed the ninth planet of the Solar System or just one of thousands of small, icy objects in the decidedly less glamorous Kuiper Belt, just beyond Neptune.

The IAU faces a dilemma here, if they decide that Pluto is a planet, then they should also consider Pluto-like masses as planets. If they decide that it isn't one, then a major change in Science will take place, starting with the Science textbooks. Some speculations say that it is unlikely for Pluto to be demoted because "egos" have gotten in the way, specifically US pride. Pluto is the only planet discovered by an American - Clyde W. Tombaugh. Whatever the International Astronomical Union decides on, we will surely keep you posted.

One of the world's leading theoretical physicists, Dr. Stephen William Hawking, is urging all of us to pack up and leave our beloved planet and move into artificial habitats in space or in a deconstructed Moon. In his recent talk in Hong Kong, the famous physicist said, "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers."

He mentions the wrong shape of the earth as one of the leading factors on why we must flee. Mathematics will support this idea of Hawking's to an outstanding degree. Think about it. The earth is a sphere, and a sphere has less surface area than any other form of the same volume. This means that, in the near future we could have already occupied most of the existing land on the planet.

But, he also poses possible solutions to our dilemma. We could either occupy Mars now, and by the mid-century we'd already have it filled. And even that won't be the best solution, because we are still moving into a sphere, which the main reason why we are moving out. So, he then suggests along with physicists like Freeman Dyson, that asteroids and perhaps the diminutive worlds of the Kuiper Belt, could be the next best thing. Unfortunately, Dyson reckons that our descendants will migrate to where land is abundant.

Building artificial habitats in space could probably be the perfect solution to our realty needs. This is not an entirely new concept though. Building gigantic, rotation aluminum cylinders in orbit, has dated back to 1970s, when Gerald O'Neill and Tom Heppenheimer wrote speculative books on how it might be done. Or if that doesn't sound appealing to you, we can always take the moon apart and redevelop it as a dream suburbia.