"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Friday, January 12, 2007

What On Earth Are They Doing to Poor Pluto?

Not the newest story in the world, but, hey, things move slowly in astronomical time, right?

I'll be doing a podcast tomorrow on the demotion of Pluto to dwarf-planet status - happened this past summer. Michael Burstein, head of the Pluto Is A Planet organization, will be my guest.

Here's the background, in case you were on vacation this summer:

Pluto was discovered and named as a planet in our solar system in 1930. This past August, the International Astronomical Union voted that it wasn't really a planet. A variety of controversial reasons were brought into play: Pluto's moon is about as big as Pluto (ok - so make it a double planet - why strip it of planetary status?); Pluto's not that big in any case, so if Pluto's a planet, we might have to say a big asteroid or two is also a planet (ok - so what would be the problem in expanding our solar system to 12 planets?); well, you get the picture.

This might seem a bit arcane, but I think it actually gets at the problem of experts I discussed last week in my post about Digg: Who decides what is news? Who decides what is a planet? Who decides if a dog is really the same species as a wolf?

The IAU vote was apparently rife with political infighting. So while we might want to place our faith in experts, a vote by a group of wrangling scientists somehow seems not the way to go with this. I suppose that's an improvement over past procedures, in which new discoveries were named by monarchs, or on their behalves, but maybe in this our age of easy computer access a better way of proceeding would be discuss it for a year or so - that is, everyone discuss it - and then put it to a vote of the world.

Let science explain, people decide. (Hmm... almost sounds like a familiar cable news slogan, there...)

But this isn't a dispute about a medical procedure, or application of a new technology of transportation. It's a debate about definitions. Why not let humanity decide?

Useful links:

Is Pluto a Planet?: A Historical Journey through the Solar System good historical background

http://www.plutoisaplanet.org/ lots of info, including details on Feb 4, Save Pluto Day

listen to the podcast

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