Posted on 08/18/2006 4:38:41 AM PDT by Clive
As usual, Pluto calls the shots at the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Why even convene IAU meetings at all? Why not just let it be resolved that Pluto gets whatever it wants and everyone goes home?
After two years of deliberation, an IAU committee has proposed a new definition of "planet," one custom-made to ensure the inclusion of the celestial fraud we call Pluto. Indeed, the committee has even created a new class of planets called "plutons" -- Pluto-like objects that conform to Pluto's deviant ways. This means that when the committee's proposal is passed by the IAU general assembly next week, as widely expected, the once-exclusive club known as our solar system will be a come-one-come-all freakfest that includes not only Pluto, but such no-names as "Charon," Ceres and "2003 UB313." The latter goes by the stage name "Xena." We once named planets after Gods. Now, we're naming them after sleazy TV characters.
Hey, we heard that there's an orbiting fragment of metallic space crap currently hovering 100 miles over the Pacific. Why not call that a planet, too?
Here's a fact the mainstream media doesn't want you to know: Pluto doesn't even have a normal orbit! It is heavily tilted compared to all its other normal, well-socialized counterparts. In our solar system's society of planets, Pluto is an eccentric hobo -- the muttering shopping-cart pusher of the cosmos. It might even be dangerous: Recall that the planet was named after the Roman god of the underworld. Why would anyone want to legitimize this weirdo demon sanctuary with the title of "planet"?
As numerous Hollywood movies have taught us, the solar system is literally teeming with intelligent extra-terrestrial life forms. But not Pluto: Its mean surface temperature is only 44 degrees above absolute zero. If life did exist on the planet, it would most likely resemble Horta, the deadly, rock-boring silicon-based creatures featured in the 1967 Star Trek episode The Devil in the Dark. Their presence would make mining the planet's frozen wastelands dangerous. Nor would tourism be an option: the face of the planet is a toxic mass of methane, nitrogen and carbon-monoxide ices.
Is this lifeless boulder the sort of place we want to keep in the brotherhood of planets? All Terran life forms should stand up and tell Pluto, "If you want to act like an asteroid, well then that's just what we'll call you." What a shame that in the IAU's upside-down world, Pluto's holding the leash, and Mickey's wearing the collar.
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The editors at the Post are chagrined that Pluto has clout.
Having originally immigrated from PLANET Pluto, a spokesperson for john kerry stated that he is highly offended by this racist article! ;-)
LLS
We need a fence to protect our way of life.
Just another plutocracy, nothing to see here.
Looks like someone has a chip (or pluton) on his shoulder.
Its Bush's fault!
algore invented pluto...
Currently they're operating with the idea that planets are round and are proposing keeping the eight main planets as the core planets and also including some trans-Neptunian planets. Under this arrangement Charon, Pluto's moon, is considered a trans-Neptunian planet because Charon and Pluto are essentially orbiting each other--their center of mass is outside the surface of Pluto and they both orbit this point.
This is a sham foisted upon a public by scientists that are unwilling to admit Pluto was mis-classified as a planet decades ago.
If a change is made, it should be to REMOVE Pluto from the listing of planets and add it to either the comets or the asteroids category.
Of course, removing Pluto would be an admission by science that it is wrong....so they will compound the error by bastardizing the definition of planet.
Any global warming/evolution fans out there want to say scienstists are unbiased?
It sounds to me like somebody's way too tolerant of a misbehaving dog. Maybe some obedience school is called for.
Mark
This new planet definition, pardon the pun, stinks to high Heaven. A new class of planetoid, fine. Honorary planet status for Pluto given it's history, but no more new planets, alright. But any freakin' snowball that managed to get itself rounded out? Gimme a break, we'll have hundreds if not thousands of "planets" by the time the cosmic dust clears.
Pluto, the dog, was named after the newly discovered planet, I read somewhere.
Clyde Tombaugh Forever! :D
Lotsa great tagline fodder there.
The term "pluton" is already in use in geology to mean an intrusive body of molten rock which cools and crystallizes at depth rather than erupting. Maybe they should call the new class of solar-system objects "pluted pups," after the term used for Pluto the dog in an early Mad comics Disney parody.
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