Thank goodness they’ve decided to go with only eight planets:
After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn’t — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.
Phew! There for a little while, there was real risk that our solar system might actually possess as many as 24!
This is wonderful news for AC, who’s studying astronomy this semester; her model won’t take nearly as long to create.
I wonder whether they went with this approach (rather than the broader “orbit a star and spherical due to self-generating gravity”) to avoid admitting that nobody would have been able to learn the names of that many objects.
And, in other news, the IAU announced that they have determined that the Earth is, in fact, the center of the Universe, and that the sun and the stars revolve around it.
Actually, they reclassified Pluto as a “dwarf planet” - whatever the heck that is!
~EdT.
Aww…. c’mon, Ed — you know what that is. Remember Sleepy and Dopey and Grumpy… ?
So — Does that mean there are now eight Dwarves? And we’ll have to re-write Sleeping Beauty, too? (Bad enough they have to re-do all the textbooks!)
Look, Micky’s dog wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box but demoting him seems harsh.
Dopey - the folks at the IAU who spent all that time arguing about this.
Grumpy - the taxpayers who now have to buy new science textbooks.
Happy - the publishers of science textbooks, and the children who have one less planet to memorize (and put on their models of the solar system.)
Sleepy - the folks who watched “The IAU Proceedings” on the Science Channel.
Doc - the title of most of the attendees of the IAU conference.
Maybe that is what the IAU should have done - changed the naming convention for planets from Greco/Roman mythological beings to Walt Disney fairy tale characters.
~EdT.