What gives, man? There I was, just sitting there. Actually just tilting there, 17 degrees with respect to the plane of the solar system, minding my own business, checking out Neptune's back side. And I get this call from the International Astronomical Union. I thought the same thing -- who? "You've been downsized," they tell me. "You are no longer a planet."Huh? You kidding me. I'll be the first to admit I am kinda tiny. So what if I am smaller than the Moon. And Io. And Europa. Okay, I admit it. I am smaller than Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, and Triton as well. So what? It's the motion in the Milky Way that counts, right?
And yes, I like the fermented Tang, and sometimes have an irregular orbit, weaving into Neptune, making him the ninth planet at times. Rules are made to be broken. Tell it to those heliocentrists, Copernicus.
Now my major concern is the kids. Pluto is always thinking about the kids. They're the future, you know. How are they gonna remember the planets now. The mnemonic device is just gonna go: My Very Educated Mother Just Sat Upon Nine .... "Nine what?" Timmy is gonna ask. It aint right. It doesn't make any sense.
Come on people. Throw Pluto a bone here. Write your congressmen or astronaut. Heck, write John Glenn -- he's both. Save yourself a stamp. See, Pluto is full of ideas. Just saved you 42 cents.
3 comments:
Because they have nothing better to do, the General Assembly decided on August 24, 2006, that in order to be a planet, Pluto must meet the following three criteria:
1 Orbit around the sun.
2 Have sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape.
3 Must reign supreme in its own orbit, having "cleared the neighborhood" of other competing bodies.
Pluto falls short on #3. It has not "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." A planet does this using gravity to gobble up or fling aside competing bodies. Pluto's gravity is too weak to clear out its part of the Kuiper Belt. The neighborhood is a mess and, thus, Pluto is not a planet.
Note: Ceres is not a planet for the same reason. It has failed to clear out its neighborhood, the asteroid belt.
Wait a minute. If Pluto stumbles into Neptune's orbit from time to time, wouldn't that fault Neptune for not having "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit"?
Let's apply these astronomical rules equally! And if you want to take it to extremes, nothing in the Milky Way would qualify as a planet 'cause nobody, not Mars, not Venus, not even Mighty Jupiter has "cleared its neighborhood" of asteroids and other space debris.
I think IAU should should shove their new planet rules up Uranus.
Only four percent of the IAU voted on this, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader planet definition that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body orbiting a star. This is because objects become spherical when they are large enough to be pulled into a round shape by their own gravity. By this definition, our solar system has 13 planets and counting: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. I encourage everyone who wants to support Pluto's reinstatement to visit http://www.dwarfplanetsrplanets2.com for contact information to email the IAU, asking that this issue be reopened at this summer's General Assembly. Also, visit my Pluto blog for more detailed arguments about why Pluto is a planet and worldwide efforts to reinstate it at http://laurele.livejournal.com
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