A mildly drunken rant.

[gridlore]

Will everyone please get over the IAU's decision on Pluto? Seriously, I'm seeing Pluto being used in columns about baseball! Every ill-informed yahoo is jumping up and down about this. Reactionary Christians are screaming that this proves that science is wishy-washy, and evolution is a fraud. (Do not ask me to explain the logic there.) People are making countless "save Pluto" products, actual news programs have wasted hours on the subject.

Ladies and gentlemen, Pluto is still there. It is still 2274 km in diameter, and still orbits with a period of 248.54 years. To quote The Nine 8 Planets:

"The IAU has changed the definition of "planet" so that Pluto no longer qualifies. There are now officially only eight planets in our solar system. Of course this change in terminology does not affect what's actually out there. In the end, it's not very important how we classify the various objects in our solar system. What is important is to learn about their physical nature and their histories."

This is science at its best. We have learned new things and change our definitions to match those findings. I'm sure as we learn more about our solar system we will run up against more objects that challenge our established views. Good. Astronomy has been doing that since Galileo noticed that Jupiter had moons.

Comments

This has all happened before, you know

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Ceres was originally designated a "planet" when it was discovered, in part because by Bode's law, they expected a planet to be about there. When they figured the size of it, they decided that it didn't count. It just took a bit longer (80-odd years?) for this to happen to Pluto.

That doesn't even mention the REAL planet Vulcan (which was named before discovering it was NOT there.)