No Planet For You!!

There has been a lot of blog space devoted to this topic in the last few weeks, but it’s now official. Pluto is a planet no more. A group of scientists at the International Astronomical Union in Prague voted to reclassify the celestial object as a dwarf planet. The term dwarf was decided on after “not good enough to be a planet” was rejected. There has already been outrage that such a small body of scientists voted on Pluto’s fate. I guess that’s what those scientists get for leaving the symposium early.  But it's fitting that such a small group voted about a small planet.  I wonder if they used those short pencils to vote...

Pluto is now scheduled for demolition next Thursday to make room for a bigger, glitzier and more luxurious planet named Harrah’s of the Milkyway. Oh, wait, sorry I was looking at a brochure for Vegas. Because Pluto shares its orbit with other space objects and has not cleared the space around it (to be scientific), it no longer meets planet criteria. The approval of the new criteria also means that Pluto’s moon Charon (isn't that an 80s song?) is no longer eligible for planethood. It will be promoted from moon to dwarf planet, if that’s a promotion. I guess it's now Pluto and the seven dwarfs (or however many moons are now classified as dwarfs or dwarves or whatever).

When asked how this will affect future exploratory missions or satellites to Pluto, NASA officials replied, “We really don’t care, we’re most certainly not going to spend millions of dollars to explore a rock.” “We did that 30 years ago, it was called the moon.”

Educational materials around the country will be updated as soon as possible. Graphic artists will airbrush Pluto out of all maps, textbooks, charts and guides. The scientific community is concerned about how Pluto, smaller than the size of the United States, will cope with the stigma of being a “former” planet. Concern has also been expressed about how it will feel to be a dwarf planet among the eight other “normal planets.”

To deal with Pluto’s new planet envy, astronomers expect within the next few years that dwarf planets will again be reclassified to a more politically correct term. At this time, the leading reclassification term is “planetcita.”