Posted 1/11/2009 05:03:00 PM by Douglas

Once and for all, Pluto is NOT a planet. It never should have been a planet, so spare me the weepy-eyed fourth-grade science teacher that has to explain why her book is wrong. It was never right.

There’s an appeal to that argument. Most people would probably regard something intrinsically planet-y about Earth and think it odd that it would not be regarded as a planet if it were stuck out by Pluto (since it probably would not clear out all the debris out there).

Now that's just stupid. It's not that it's so far away from the sun that makes it a non-planet. Its size (it's smaller than Jupiter's four biggest moons) and its orbit looks like the path of a drunken frat boy on his way home from the bar compared to the other eight "real" planets (why do you have to get closer to the sun than Neptune for some of your orbit, huh, Pluto? And why is your orbit plane tilted 27º from the plane of the ecliptic, where the other, "real" planets like to orbit?)

There's just not a compelling case to include the Pluto/Charon system in with the other eight planets. Face it, the Solar System is an Oxygen atom, not fluorine. Can't the scientific do-gooders sleep better with the notion of our celestial existence riding around on a life-sustaining Oxygen atom, as opposed to corrosive and toxic fluorine atom?

Labels: Pluto