Posted 8/23/2006 05:30:00 PM by Douglas

Are there any sweeter words in the universe?

“I think that today can go down as the ‘day we lost Pluto,’ ” said Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., in an e-mail message from Prague.

Good riddance and good news, but it will never happen. Too many 3rd graders will have damaged self-esteem. Pluto will survive, but the other three floating turds won't make it in the catalog. Which is ironic, since some of those other ass-teroids up for planetary status are actually larger than Pluto.

Under fire from other astronomers and the public, a committee appointed by the International Astronomical Union revised and then revised again a definition proposed last week that would have expanded the number of official planets to 12, locking in Pluto as well as the newly discovered Xena in the outer solar system, as well as the asteroid Ceres and Pluto’s moon Charon.

The new definition offered yesterday would set up a three-tiered classification scheme with eight “planets”; a group of “dwarf planets” that would include Pluto, Ceres, Xena and many other icy balls in the outer solar system; and thousands of “smaller solar system bodies,” like comets and asteroids.

Once again, there are only eight planets. If these eggheads want to create another subset of planets called "dwarf" planets, why not just go all out and call them "fake" planets? And if they do, then our Moon is now a planet. A fake planet.

Labels: Pluto