seriously...?

I'm not sure if I can even talk about this without feeling like Jay Leno when he gives his opening lines - all intended to be funny observations about things going on in the world. Pluto's been demoted. Yup. You can no longer call Pluto a planet.

I'm not even sure where to start with that one. Part of me thinks it's completely absurd. Another part really does feel like Jay Leno when trying to discuss it. Part of me think it's kinda sad that these people have been working their whole lives on this.

So what will happen now? Well, I think scientists have felt a taste of power. I don't think Pluto will be the only one and more likely, there will be tons of new discoveries now that there's a set of "guidelines" to define it.

I wonder if Disney will start a petition to reinstate Pluto. :)

Will anyone think to create a grandfather clause on planets? :)

I also wonder if anyone in that community has thought about the financial impact that one sentence is going to have on the school systems around the world. What about the publishers of school books? Every single science book in every single language now needs to be updated. Hmmm, I guess they should be psyched.

I think of jokes "When I was a little girl, I had to walk to school in 2 feet of snow AND Pluto was a planet!"

When it comes right down to it though, all it really means is that a group of men & women sat around trying to define things they don't understand.

For it to be a classified as a planet it needs to be "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit" according to an article on CNN.

The reason for the demotion? Pluto has an oblong orbit that overlaps with Neptune's orbit. That's it.

I'll tell you though, if I was a mass of rock and ice and I had 3 moons revolving around me, I'd be pissed. ;)

D