Pluto becomes a planet when it’s in Illinois
I was quite surprised when I read this bit of news today.
The state government of Illinois has recently declared that Pluto is a planet. The resolution was a way to sidestep the recent ruling of the International Astronomical Union that reclassified Pluto as a part of the Kuiper belt, removing it from the list of planets.
The specific decree reads as “RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois’ night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status, and that March 13, 2009 be declared ‘Pluto Day’ in the State of Illinois in honor of the date its discovery was announced in 1930.”
A big reason Illinois is desperately fighting for Pluto’s “planetary” status is because the man who discovered Pluto in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, is an Illinois native. Having said that I still find it quite hilarious that whenever Pluto passes over Illinois it goes from a part of the Kuiper Belt into a full fledged planet. They should’ve also changed its name from Pluto to Schizophrenia.
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Comments / What do you think?
March 12th, 2009
The Illinois legislature has way more sense than the International Astronomical Union has shown in two-and-a-half years. It’s the IAU who have acted like idiots, with one tiny group forcing a nonsensical planet definition on everyone. The truth is there is NO scientific consensus that Pluto is not a planet. The criterion requiring that a planet “clear the neighborhood of its orbit” is not only controversial; it’s so vague as to be meaningless. Only four percent of the IAU even voted on this, and the vote was driven by internal politics. A small group, most of whom are not planetary scientists, wanted to arbitrarily limit the number of planets to only the largest bodies in the solar system. They held their vote on the last day of a two-week conference with no absentee voting allowed. Their decision was immediately opposed by hundreds of professional astronomers in a formal petition led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto.
Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader definition of planet that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body orbiting a star. The spherical part is key because when objects become large enough, they are shaped by gravity, which pulls them into a round shape, rather than by chemical bonds. This is true of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and comets. And yes, it does make Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake planets as well, for a total of 13 planets in our solar system.
Even now, many astronomers and lay people are working to overturn the IAU demotion or are ignoring it altogether. Kudos to the Illinois Senate for standing up to this closed, out of touch organization whose leadership thinks they can just issue a decree and change reality.