Pluto Etc.

Who the Hell Do We Think We Are, Making Decisions About This?

By Dan Rattiner

“Do you think there should be more planets than nine?”

Two weeks ago, I was online, on AOL, reading the latest news. There had been a series of articles about Pluto, our ninth planet, and three more wannabe planets. Should our solar system allow twelve planets? AOL wants to know what the members think.

I remembered the slogan about planets from when I was a boy. It went “My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.” And it was a trick way of answering the question “please name all the planets, beginning with the one closest to the sun.”

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. That’s us. A happy little clan. Working together. At peace with one another. And in recent years, we’ve been sending space ships out to visit some of them.

I voted “yes.” Bring ‘em on. And then I clicked on “read results.” And what came up was a surprise. Of the 132,416 people who voted, 68% had voted yes. And 32% had voted no. Stop at nine.

Well, apparently there are scientists at a conference in Prague who have just voted that there shall be just eight. Pluto has gotten the boot. “My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine.” Nine what?

There was a considerable argument about Pluto, and about some other possible planets. The discussion raged back and forth. There were those that argued that Pluto should be stripped of its planethood because it is made of ice. When it was discovered, which was in 1930, they didn’t know that. All they knew was that it was circling the sun, it was round like all the other planets and the only reason we hadn’t seen it before was that we didn’t have telescopes powerful enough to notice it was ice.

Others argued that Pluto is, in fact, only 3,000 miles in diameter. If it hit the earth and smashed itself flat, it wouldn’t even reach from New York City to Los Angeles. It was smaller than our moon. And so very, very far away.

Furthermore, now that we have found it to be just a ball of ice and all, there is the obvious fact that if someday the solar system ever went haywire and certain highly unlikely events were to happen such as Pluto making a dive for the sun, it would, on the way there, melt. So who’s fooling whom?

The director of the Rose Planetarium in New York was on the side of those wishing to boot it from the solar system. And he had taken matters into his own hands. He had sent some workmen up on ladders to work on a large and proportionately accurate display just below the ceiling in the main lobby. The workmen took a screwdriver and wrench to Pluto, which was spinning smartly on a wire and circling the sun from a great distance as were the other eight spheres in this motorized display, and they took it down and out the back door and threw it into the dumpster as they were told. That was the director’s opinion.

So the arguments in Prague continued. And soon there were factions. One argued that no matter what it’s made of, even ice, if it circles the sun, it’s a planet. Another faction said that if it’s made of anything at all and it’s large enough for its gravity to have gathered it up into a sphere and it circles the sun, it’s a planet. Still another faction said if it circles the sun and it’s spherical and fits all the other parameters but it’s made of ice it isn’t a planet. And still another faction said if it’s not spherical, no matter what it’s made of, and even if it circles the sun, it’s not a planet.

I might add that a sort of curve ball thrown into this is that the first eight planets all circle the sun in the same plane, but Pluto doesn’t. At first it appeared it would be OK for it to do that.

And then there were other objects out there that had to be considered for our solar system. There was Ceres, the largest asteroid, circling the sun as part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. There was Xena, even smaller than Pluto at only 2,000 miles across, which was discovered in 2005 beyond Pluto by a scientist who looked very, very hard through his telescope, and there was one of the moons of Pluto, known as Charon, which scientists have just recently discovered is not actually circling Pluto, but is circling a spot between itself and Pluto. In other words, it looks to some scientists like two planets that got caught up with one another in a kind of dance. And from that perspective, if Pluto is a planet, then so is Charon. A boy and a girl.

Early on, these battling scientists agreed that whatever was decided would be accepted by all. You couldn’t have eight planets in the solar system according to the French, nine planets according to the Chinese, and twelve planets according to the Brazilians. And so the fat was in the fire.

They could compromise. Scientists can be democratic. Majority would rule. That’s the American way.

I think what might have put them off going up to 12 planets was the reality of what they would have to do next. They would have to write a letter inviting in Charon, Xena and Ceres. The invitation would be polite, would say that we on Earth have thought of them, and describe the benefits of joining our solar system. And then we’d ask these three to each in their turn take a vote. It would be a very awkward letter. We would have to describe the boycotts and so forth that would ensue if they continue to remain in our midst and choose to turn down entry. Perhaps one or two or even all three of these celestial bodies will ask to join. Or not. It could happen. Perhaps we would learn they belonged to another solar system and are just here temporarily as observers of ours. Or worse. Spies.

Then there was the issue of human rights. Or whatever rights. Had we looked closely at how the rulers treat the, uh, people? Maybe they’d like to be on some waiting list for an application at a later time when such things as torture and incarceration without legal representation, or censorship and other restrictions can be done away with. We do have our standards after all.

When you consider that among humans using AOL on the third planet from the sun, 31% voted no, it does give pause. It was complicated. And so they decided not to go up to 12. They’d come down to eight.

One final thought. You know that movie “When Worlds Collide” where the earth gets swept away by a passing meteor but the moon remains?

If that happened, could the moon apply to be a planet?