Planned planethood: Our solar system just got a little smaller. Scientists have downsized the solar system, declaring that Pluto — that distant little lump of frozen stuff — no longer deserves the moniker “planet.” It is now, as of today, a “dwarf planet” or a “plutonian object,” and our little corner of the universe just got a little lonelier, if you ask me.
I guess Pluto had a pretty good run for a binary planet with a moon almost as big as itself. Discovered in 1930, it was one of The Nine for nearly 80 years. But times change, styles change, and what was a planet yesterday is a has-been dwarf object today.
I’ll miss Pluto, which I always found fascinating as a kid. Remember that solar system model that you could crank with all the planets represented at their relative distance from the sun and their relative sizes? Pluto was so small and so far away that it always struck me as kind of the underdog planet. And now it’s been kicked out of the club entirely.
Oh well, I look forward to 2015 when the New Horizons spacecraft that was launched in July becomes the first spacecraft to pass by Pluto. Maybe it will discover something about the dwarf that will convince the astronomers that we should let it be the ninth planet again in our little club out here on the edge of the Milky Way.
