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Plutonians vs. the Man who Delisted Pluto
By adamg on Fri, 02/27/2009 - 2:28pm
Michael Burstein, president of the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet, reports on his confrontation at the Newton Free Library with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of New York's Hayden Planetarium and the guy who basically got the ball rolling for reclassifying their beloved sphere as a "dwarf planet."
Well, OK, maybe "confrontation" is a bit harsh, but Tyson did try to ward them off with the sign of the cross (Ed. lame-o question: Would that work on Jewish vampires?).
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Comments
Pork
Sign of cross would only work if made in bacon.
I still can't believe Pluto lost that one
I still can't believe Pluto lost that one.
From personal experience
It will get you VERY MUCH yelled at if you do it on the bimah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to be one of the coolest guys alive. He's smart, he's a good talker, he's making a huge impact on his field, he's inspiring to kids, and he not only laughs at himself, but is genuinely funny in doing so. Every time I see an interview, I'm amazed.
Case in point... his inscription in Michael's book: "Pluto had it coming".
Tyson's smart but wrong about Pluto
And there are many of us "Plutonians" out there working to get the controversial demotion overturned. It's great that Tyson excites people about astronomy, but his claim that Pluto is a comet is dead wrong. Unlike comets, Pluto is spherical, meaning it is in a state of hydrostatic equilibrium. Objects large enough to attain hydrostatic equilibrium are shaped by gravity rather than by chemical bonds. And this is a characteristic of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and comets. As for having a "comet like orbit," well astronomers have found a huge exoplanet that also has a comet like orbit around its star. Does that make that object a comet? Not likely.
More on the efforts to reinstate Pluto can be found at my Pluto blog at http://laurele.livejournal.com . This debate is far from over.
Maybe we "Plutonians" should try warding off Tyson with the PL Pluto symbol, :)
Overstated
Dr. Tyson is a good guy, but his role here in demoting Pluto is being over-stated.
Changing the definition of what is a planet is the kind of process that obscure commissions of the International Astronomical Union ponder and consider over many years. It's amazing how contentious those discussions can be, and how long it can take for any change to make its way through the process.
What was unusual about the Pluto demotion is that it was the subject of a general vote at the General Assembly of the IAU in 2006 -- and that the proposed new definition was amended in days, not years, during that rapid process at the GA.
The people who really got the ball rolling for the planet definition were those who were studying -- and discovering -- Trans-Neptunian Objects, i.e., Michael Brown and collaborators at Caltech. Their work forced the issue upon the astronomical community.