Nine Planet Agony

Well, just color me all sorts of relieved.

Hoping to end the agonizing over whether Pluto is really a planet, an international committee of astronomers has come up with a new definition that would save the tiny body’s place in the sun’s family.

Under the long-awaited proposal, Pluto would remain in the pantheon of planets by becoming the prototype of a new subcategory of small, outer solar system objects dubbed “plutons” — planets, but distinct from the eight larger “classical” planets closer to the sun.

Did you catch that? There was “agonizing”!

I don’t know about you guys but I’ve never for a moment agonized about whether Pluto is a planet or not. It’s a planet. Why? Because we said it was and that ought to be sufficient. Does it look like the other planets, or act like them? Well, no, but that’s immaterial. As long as we call it a planet, it’s a planet. Besides I like the idea of honoring the painstakingly hard work that Clyde Tombaugh did to find Pluto in the first place.

End of agonizing.

Well, that is unless you’re a scientist. If you are, you grab 19 guys, toss them in a room for a couple years and let them agonize. When they’re done, you get to keep Pluto, but you have to add a couple more like Ceres, which used to be an asteroid (you know, since it lies pretty comfortably in a whopping huge asteroid belt and all) and Charon, which used to be Pluto’s moon but apparently got good enough performance reviews to earn a promotion.

Oh, and let’s not forget the imaginatively named “UB313″. Ah just imagine the romance of gazing upon the distant pluton UB313.

But the scientists are happy and I suppose that’s worth it. Now they can get around to doing things like building space craft that will actually get us out to those planets.

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Category: Hey, Mr. Science Guy!, Out in the Black