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The Expansionist
Monday, September 18, 2006
 
Nonsense on Pluto. Late last month, a meeting of astronomers decided to demote Pluto from planet to "dwarf planet" or "minor planet", another term for objects like asteroids.

The vote involved just 424 astronomers [out of some 10,000 professional astronomers on Earth] who remained for the last day of a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague. * * *

"I'm embarassed for astronomy," said Alan Stern, leader of NASA's New Horizon's mission to Pluto and a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. "Less than 5 percent of the world's astronomers voted."

"This definition stinks, for technical reasons," Stern told SPACE.com. He expects the astronomy community to overturn the decision.

Pluto has three moons. If an astronomical object is large, but not a star, and has moons, it is absurd to call it anything but a planet.
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The sooner the ridiculous decision made by the remnants of the IAU that hung around Prague to the last minute should be reversed at the earliest possible moment, to restore some credibility to that group and to astronomy as a science.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,686 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:29 PM




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