Please, Bring Back Pluto as a Planet!
Sometimes, when you hear earth shattering news,
you just want to
draw the blankets up over your head and retreat to a safe place.
The people of Jimmie Dean Foods omitted Pluto from a recent commercial.
Yes, I have counted the planets 143 times to be sure.
You know the one I'm talking about?
Eight planets attempting to rotate around the sun.
Sun asks if anyone has had their Jimmie Dean Sausage Biscuit today.
Yeah, that one.
Next thing, someone will tell me that Atlantis, the Loch Ness Monster,
Big Foot and Santa Claus are not real.
Gah!
Comments
Some key points: the controversial demotion was done by only four percent of the IAU, most of whom are not planetary scientists. It was opposed immediately by hundreds of professional astronomers led by New Horizons Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern. That petition can be found here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/planetprotest/
The IAU definition makes no linguistic sense, as it states that dwarf planets are not planets at all. That’s like saying a grizzly bear is not a bear. Second, it defines objects solely by where they are while ignoring what they are. If Earth were placed in Pluto’s orbit, by the IAU definition, it would not be a planet. That is because the further away an object is from its parent star, the more difficulty it will have in clearing its orbit.
For more resources supporting Pluto's planet status, visit my Pluto blog at http://laurele.livejournal.com and check out the books "The Case for Pluto" by Alan Boyle and "Is Pluto A Planet" by Dr. David Weintraub.