Comment by bryanlarsen
6 hours ago
There was no do nothing option, the IAU didn't open the can of words. 10 new objects that would be called planets under the old definition were discovered. "Doing nothing" would have led to far more significant changes.
Even if they had to do something, they didn’t need to do what they ended up going for — it was a pretty bad option from a scientific standpoint and a needlessly controversial one.
As the article here explains, the 2006 IAU definition doesn’t really make sense or function as a useful model for what a planet is.