Poor Pluto

Presumably, you have been following closely the saga of whether Pluto is a planet. Yes, despite the fact that the vast majority of people who are alive grew up learning that Pluto is the ninth planet, the people in charge of these things -- the International Astronomical Union, I believe -- voted to adopt an official definition of "planet" that excludes poor little Pluto. The definition is something like "a planet is an astronomical body that orbits a planet, has sufficient self-gravity to be round and has cleared its orbital space." Apparently Pluto doesn't qualify because its orbit around the Sun intersects with Neptune's orbit, so Pluto hasn't cleared its orbital space. This whole mess started a couple of years ago when some astronomer at CalTech, I think, published a paper saying that he had discovered a new planet out beyond Pluto. He called it "Xena," after the Lucy Lawless TV show (you know, the one that used to come on the stations with no network affiliations at 3 p.m. on Saturdays that implied that Xena and her best friends weren't so much friends as something else, but then Xena got her head chopped off in the last episode). I'm not lying here. Apparently, a lot of astronomers didn't like the idea of making Xena a planet for whatever reason, but the problem was that they couldn't exclude Xena without excluding Pluto.

And thus began Pluto's downfall. Following Xena's discovery, some astronomers got all like "kick Pluto and Xena to the planetary curb," and some others got all like "don't be hatin' on Pluto and Xena" and some others got all like "yo, Pluto's old school, man." Anyway, all of this culminated this last week in a big astronomical conference in Geneva, I believe. First, there was some secret committee that was organized to make a proposal about defining "planet" to the big meeting. And the committee came up with a definition that would include Pluto. Did this end the static? Nooooo! A bunch of astronomers went all postal (I know, "postal" is so 1996) because the committee's proposal also would have included a bunch of rocks besides Pluto (including poor crazy Xena) as "planets." So the whole big group started thrashing around to define "planet." There was fighting and hair-pulling and noogie-giving and name-calling (like "you astro-dweeb, Pluto's orbit is far too inclined to be a planet" and "hey, Napoleon Dynonerd, Newtonian mechanics predicted Pluto's presence based on perturbations in Neptune's orbit, ha!"). Finally, after England's royal astronomer lectured the gathering that they would, quote, "look like fools," unquote, if they didn't adopt some definitions, the group adopted the definition above. But not before adding a footnote to the definition that clarifying that Neptune should be considered a planet because the adopted definition could be construed as excluding Neptune. OK, so that's all perfectly clear now.

Now all of this made me a little sad. I mean, poor Pluto, all this time it's been sitting out there all cold and far away and, first, it's a planet, yeah, then, 75 years later, it's not a planet. All because of that damn Xena. Now we all have to teach our kids that, no, there's aren't really nine planets, like we've been teaching you, but, really, there's only eight planets because a bunch of people in Geneva decided that. Yes, Mermaid and Enthusio will get this right off, I'm sure. It does probably increase the value of the little set of planet magnets that we bought at the science center in Baltimore. It has Pluto! Ha, they won't be making that anymore! Can you say collector's item?

But, really . . . it does make me a little sad because I'm guessing that, when they first declared that Pluto was a planet in 1930, it probably was really big news. And, man, people needed some happy news in 1930, I'm sure. We're talking bread lines, Hoovervilles. People probably thought that a new planet was kind of cool. And that should count for something.