Thursday, August 24, 2006

Pluto Relegated to Second-class citizen

My name is Jason Perry, and I'm here to tell you the truth.

Today, the International Astronomical Union made a mistake by demoting Pluto from a planet to a "dwarf" planet, a second-class citizen of the Solar System. Rather than basing their decision on the nature of the object in question, they included a discriminatory stipulation that a planet "must clear the neighborhood around its orbit". And rather than stick with this abomimation of a definition, they further go on to stipulate that 8 objects apparently fit this definition. This elitist attitude to our icy brothers and sisters is gross and tragic error that must be corrected. This defintion would not only prevent Pluto from being a planet, but would prevent currently undiscovered objects beyond Neptune larger than the current smallest, so-called "planet", Mercury, from being a planet.

I say that it is none of the IAU's business what a planet commingles with. Whether it is a gas planet with trojan asteroids, terrestrial "planets" with smaller "asteroids", or an icy "planet" with other icy objects. I say we stand up with our icy breathern and fight this embarrasing definition.

Viva las lunas rojas!