Astronomer Mike Brown recently wrote a book in which he describes the part he played in that whole messy debate about whether Pluto is really a planet or not. It’s called How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming and it led to an interview with WIRED Magazine along with some rough questions:
Why does Pluto not deserve to be a planet?
Pluto as an individual is absolutely not as important as the other eight planets. If it were to disappear suddenly tomorrow, it would not change anything dramatic about the solar system. We wouldn’t even feel it. You can’t say that about the eight real planets.
What does your 5-year-old daughter think of having a planet-killer for a father?
She has learned from general discussions that I killed Pluto and that killing is bad. Therefore, I’ve done something bad, and so she’s kind of mad at me.
You can read the rest of the interview over at WIRED, but be sure to come back and tell us what you’d tell your kid about a planet-murder. [Wired]
Laurel Kornfeld
Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 9:25 AMPluto DOES deserve to be considered a planet, as it is the prototype of a third class of planets, the dwarf planets. Dr. Alan Stern coined this term in 1991 to indicate objects large enough to be rounded by their own gravity but not large enough to gravitationally dominate their orbits. He never intended for dwarf planets to not be considered planets at all. Significantly, in astronomy, dwarf stars are still stars, and dwarf galaxies are still galaxies.
Pluto is not dead; Mike Brown tried but failed to “kill” it. The IAU demotion was done by only four percent of its members, most of whom are not planetary scientists. It was opposed by hundreds of planetary scientists in a formal petition led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Even Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson admits the debate is ongoing. I encourage people to learn both sides of the issue. Some good pro-Pluto as a planet books are “Is Pluto A Planet?” by Dr. David Weintraub, “The Case for Pluto” by Alan Boyle, and my own book, hopefully out next year, “The Little Planet that Would Not Die: Pluto’s Story.”
Ellie Hale
Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 11:02 AMLaurel –
I think you mostly miss the point. While there are a lot of emotional issues around the loss of Pluto as a planet, it is a simple fact that by standard astronomical usage (which is what the IAU votes on) Pluto is not a planet. So you and your small group are welcome to continue protesting, but it’s pretty clear that you have lost the argument.
Plus, your grossly mischaracterize the petition by suggesting that people who signed it are in favor of Pluto being a planet. A bad logical fallacy on your part, for sure. I recommend getting that right if you’re writing that book of yours.