Friday, March 9, 2007

Pluto: a matter of State?

The question of the planetary status of Pluto seems to persist beyond the reasonable. The state of New Mexico (U.S.A.) intends to declare Pluto as a planet and call March 13th the "Pluto Planet Day", apparently only during this year (see the links for this news and the legislative proposal ).

Pluto's discovery was announced on March 13th of 1930, by Clyde Tombaugh. The specific announcement date was chosen as it was Persival Lowell's anniversary. Lowell had proposed the existence of a planet beyond Neptune, calling it Planet-X. Despite his efforts to detect Planet-X, founding even the Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S.A.), he died in 1916 without observing it.

This planet definition issue may be somewhat subjective and delicate. But, actually, from the study of Pluto point of view it doesn't matter how it is classified. It is there, it is interesting, hence it is studied. The New Mexico's proposal may be funny if seen as a memorial service. But if it catches on one day we will start seeing the "Flat Earth Day", the "Geocentrism Day", or even the "Creationism Day".

2 comments:

Laurel Kornfeld said...

Actually, it matters a lot how an object is classified. How many people learned about Ceres in grade school? By "demoting" Pluto, we effectively consign it to oblivion by removing it from discussion of the major planets in the solar system. What this means is children are likely to learn the first eight and that's it. The definition itself is sloppy and makes no linguistic sense. There is absolutely no logic to saying a "dwarf planet" is not a planet at all. If the IAU had approved the resolution stating that "dwarf planets" are a subcategory of planets, that would have made far more sense. Then of course there is the fact that only four percent of IAU members voted, and most of them are not planetary scientists. Why is it so hard to imagine that there might be multiple subcategories of the broader term "planet"? The IAU royally messed up with this one, and it's obvious from the fact that some of the world's leading experts on Pluto, such as Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, quickly assembled a petition of an equal number of astronomers who stated they will not use the "new" planet definition. I believe this decision will not stand and look forward to it being overturned in 2009 and/or most of the world choosing to ignore it and consign the IAU to irrelevance.

Nuno Peixinho said...

Laurel Kornfeld left an interesting opinion, below. Although I am pro-demotion, I also consider that there is some sloppiness in the new definition. Yet, I feel the anti-demotion movement overreacted completely and in spite of good arguments available they seem to insist in using the bad ones. It is possible that the new definition will simply result in school children not learning anything about any dwarf planets or other bodies but it doesn't seem a good argument to me.

Let us wait and see what will happen in 2009.