There Goes Pluto

Geeez! There goes the solar system! It suffered a casualty today. Pluto's gone. It's just a big fat rock now.

I wonder what Mickey Mouse thinks of it.

I must say I am bummed.

Pluto has been a planet all my life, and it just don't seem right that someone had to go and change things...

It'll be weird, that's for sure. It's a good thing it's summer. I could just imagine this in elementary school. Today we're learning about he solar system! There are nine planets... until the next day... "Actually kids, there are only eight."

I'm not against it being reclassified. We're starting to have the technology to see farther and farther out from the universe as we know it. I imagine there will be more of these kinds of reclassifications of celestial objects as we get a better view of them. It's better to get our terminology straight while the craft is still young than to carry forth with ambiguities and exceptions to rules.

Wikipedia has an interesting background on how Pluto was discovered. An astronomer noted how Neptune's orbit appeared to be influenced by another large body that was yet undiscovered. Based on calculations of what would have to be present to influence Neptune's orbit, they watched a patch of sky for another planet. I guess they watched for a long time because they predicted the presence of another large mass in 1916 and discovered Pluto in 1930.

Now back to serious questions. What does this do to your astrological forecast now that Pluto is just a dwarf? I hope nobody's been betting his stars on Pluto.

Now we are going to have to change our planet song, posters, 3 part cards, papers and more! Does this mean Mickeys dog is a dwarf? What are the other 7 going to say about that!

There was a blurb in the Merc -- some one has produced a bumper sticker that reads: Honk if Pluto is still a planet!

This post has been edited by stone on Aug 26 2006, 04:33 PM

I can't wait to see the smart ass t-shirts that will be coming out over this issue.