the Unexpressed Advantage

I think the fact that Astronomers decided this week that Pluto is no longer a planet is just plain stupid.

I'm sitting here reading articles about how scientists have demoted Pluto’s status to dwarf planet and as it joins the ranks of other smaller "dwarf" planets our solar-system will be left a little less interesting to your typical grade 4 space enthusiast with only 8 planets left.

Ridiculous. I'm sure Pluto really cares about this. I mean, what if scientists on Pluto came up with some other set of requirements for being a planet. They might require that planets, "don't have the capability to sustain life," to be called planets. Yeah great, now on Pluto earth would no longer be considered a planet. Imagine the sadness an 8 year old Plutonian girl will experience when her dad takes the 3rd planet out of her solar system an all that is left is a gaping hole between Venus and mars (which according to some experts may be capable of sustaining life itself, thus leaving an even bigger hole).

My point of course, is that all of these scientists are asses. "Here comes the science," you say. Well I don't care. I'd rather be ignorant and not have to explain to my children why I believe there are 9 planets and their teacher is telling them that there are only 8 and why their teacher is wrong. In my world Pluto will always be a planet and it got named after that Disney dog. So there.

Besides. Astronomy isn't really a science anyway, is it? Not like real science like biology or animal science. This is a bunch of guys sitting around a room staring at a big black picture with little white dots, punching numbers into calculators and speculating about things millions of years away, like, whether Pluto's still a planet. And they are the one's making up the criterion, anyway. I'm sure it all boils down to one powerful long-time member who has some unknown grudge against Pluto and/or plutonians. He decided to exercise his influence and now you have 400 so called experts telling us something that 400 other so called experts told us was exactly the opposite not more than a week ago. To top it off the media is consulting just as many Astrologists on this issue. Great, now here comes the pseudo-science.

So here's what i say. I'm an expert too. I look at the sky, can name some constellations. I built a model of the solar system in my youth. I'm an expert so I say that if it has a name, it's a planet. And also if it's been depicted in sci-fi movies. Those are my planetary requirement criterion. Under those guidelines Pluto is clearly a planet, so let's not trick ourselves into thinking otherwise just because somebody smarter than us (supposedly) says so. And let's not confuse our kids. There are nine planets, Santa is NOT real, and I put all the eggs out there, not some immortal hyper speed bunny that works in a basket factory.

Save Pluto, – dan