Back in 2006, poor Pluto was officially demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet. Generations of school children who had learned the mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" have had to re-learn it as "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing".
Not a big deal, you might think. But it was controversial then, and apparently it remains controversial to this day. The argument was that a planet has to fulfill three (admittedly rather arbitrary) criteria: to orbit the sun (not another planet), to be massive enough to have been made fully spherical by its own gravity, and to have cleared its orbit of debris. Pluto, they said, failed to fulfill the third criterion, sharing an orbit as it does with the asteroids, icy bodies and other dwarf planets of the Kuiper Belt.
The curremt (Trump-appointed) NASA chief Jared Isaacman is particularly exercised by the subject, and is making it his mission to reinstate Pluto as a full planet. The odds are against it, though, as the decision rests with the International Astonomical Union (IAU), a worldwide group of professional astronomers whose job it is to define and name celestial objects and surface features. (Isaacman, on the other hand, is a billionaire finance-bro and a "private astronaut" - a typical Trump nominee.)
It probably shouldn't surprise us that a Trump appointee is looking to turn back progress. It won't surprise me too much if he turns out to be a flat-earther too.
No comments:
Post a Comment