Just as the idea of Pluto as a dwarf planet began to sink in, researchers have started to lobby for a new definition that would reclassify the icy celestial body as a planet, along with more than 100 other objects in our solar system.

Johns Hopkins University scientist Kirby Runyon said in a release that Pluto “has everything going on on its surface that you associate with a planet. … There’s nothing non-planet about it.”

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union defined a planet as a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has enough mass for its self-gravity to form it into a round shape and has cleared the area around its orbit. These criteria demoted Pluto, which stunned many astronomers and skywatchers.

Pluto was demoted for not having a clear area throughout its orbit, but scientists now say no planet has a completely clear orbit, including Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune – all of which share their orbits with asteroids, according to the release.

Runyon and his team say the definition of a planet should be focused on the object itself and not its orbit or any objects around it. The proposed criteria would establish nearly 110 other celestial bodies as planets, including Earth and Jupiter’s moons.

Their new proposed criteria would define a planet as “a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion” which has enough gravitational weight to maintain a roughly round shape, the release stated.

This jump in the number of planets is part of the appeal for Runyon, who says the word “planet” carries a psychological weight that could spark more public interest.

Their new definition doesn’t require approval from a central governing body and has already been adopted by the educational website Planet Science Research Discoveries, which was established by scientists at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, according to the release.

"I want the public to fall in love with planetary exploration as I have," said Runyon. "It drives home the point of continued exploration."