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Pluto is no longer a planet!
Here's proof from the Philadelphia Daily News:
(and no, I don't live there. I just needed an article to use. My newspaper's website was being fussy)
PLUTO HAS just been sent back down to the minor leagues.
Yesterday's news that the world's leading astronomers decided that there are only eight true planets, and that Pluto is really something else called a "dwarf planet," sent shockwaves through our little outpost of the solar system.
This is no arcane academic debate. Well, OK, maybe it is... but the announcement by the International Astronomical Union still hit purists around the world like an asteroid to the gut.
Some have even rushed to set up Web sites to rally support for the Pluto Formerly Known as Planet.
So, what in the name of Uranus is going on here? Here are some questions and answers:
Q. How could this happen?
A. Over the last decade or so, astronomers have been handed better telescopes and equipment to track what is happening at the extreme edges of our solar system.
They already knew that Pluto, added to the roster of planets in 1930, wasn't much like the eight others; it's smaller than our moon, just 1,600 miles in diameter, and its orbit is odd and elliptical, crossing the orbit of the eighth planet, Neptune.
The other problem was this: Astronomers also were finding other celestial bodies in the icy, cosmic vicinity of Pluto known as the Kuiper Belt that were a lot like Pluto, including one nicknamed Xena that is even larger.
"Now we can see all sorts of stuff out there that's small," said Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, noting that a lot of the lingering public support for Pluto is what he calls "a social phenomenon."
Q. Oh, so is that why they were talking last week about adding new planets, for a total of 12?
A. Yes. One faction of astronomers at the international gathering - call them the pro-Plutonians - basically presented a resolution that argued that not only Pluto but Xena, and an asteroid named Ceres and even Pluto's largest moon, Charon, should also be planets.
Needless to say, the astronomers "decided to go in another direction," as they say in the business world.
Keith Johnson, the planetarium director at New Jersey's Rowan University, said the move shows that "our view of the universe is changing, that we don't know everything."
Q. So, if Pluto isn't a planet, what is it?
A. A "dwarf planet."
Q. Isn't the politically correct term "little planet?"
A. Don't be a wiseguy. The international astronomers say that planets are rounded by the force of gravity and have an orbit that has "cleared the neighborhood" around it.
Dwarf planets like Pluto aren't completely round, and haven't cleared the neighborhood - in its case, it overlaps with Neptune's orbit and the objects in the Kuiper Belt.
Q. How could the Walt Disney Co. allow this to happen?
A. Heh heh... Mickey Mouse's silent canine sidekick was also introduced in 1930, and truth be told, a largely washed-up minor cartoon character couldn't buy publicity like this.
A Disney spokesman told Reuters that "Pluto is taking this news in stride, and we have no reason to believe he might bite an astronomer."
We think he meant the dog, and not the dwarf planet.
Q. What about that pneumonic every kid had to learn for the names of then-nine planets, that "My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pies."
A. How about, "My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nunchucks."
Q. What are people unhappy with yesterday's vote doing about it?
A. A few are creating Web sites, including two Philadelphians, married artists Jennifer Rae Atkins and Ted Slampyak, who have FreePluto.com, which right now seems to largely sell pro-Pluto merchandise.
Q. Who's a big loser here?
A. For one, the ol' U.S. of A., since Pluto had been the only planet named and discovered by an American, the late Clyde Tombaugh, of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
Also, an 87-year-old woman living in Epsom, England, named Venetia Burney Phair, who was an 11-year-old schoolgirl when she successfully suggested Pluto as a name for the new object.
Q. Any winners?
A. Yes, the Franklin Institute. For years, it has displayed an orrery, a mechanical device depicting the solar system, that had only eight planets, because it was made in 1928.
Turns out, the thing was right all along.
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