The Planetary Controversy

I realize that I'm a bit late on this discussion, but every now and then I see it brought up by some idiot stand up comic or radio dj who think they are the authority on what is happening in the world. Earlier this year the planetary body in our solar system known as Pluto was officially declared not a planet by the scientific community. This caused great nashing of teeth by laymen all over the country who had supposedly grown up with the knowledge that Pluto was the 9th planet in our solar system.

I honestly don't see what's so upsetting. I know that a lot of people thought that Pluto was always a planet, but the fact is it never was officially a planet, it was only included as the 9th for the possibility that it is a planet. The status of Pluto has always been up for question. What most people don't seem to realize is how different Pluto is from the rest of the planets, and it's those differences and not the mere fact that it is smaller that excludes it from the exclusive planetary club in our solar system. It doesn't even orbit the sun on its own. It shares the orbit with its smaller partner, Charon, which can not be considered Pluto's moon as thought before because Charon does not orbit Pluto, but rather Charon and Pluto orbit each other in a kind of cosmic dance. There are two smaller satellites called Nix and Hydra that orbit around both Pluto and Charon.

The biggest problem with calling Pluto a planet is that not only is it so different from the other planets, but there are dozens of other objects in the solar system that are just like Pluto, and if we're to label Pluto as a planet we would have to label them all planets, which would increase our planetary count into the 20s. Your kids have trouble enough memorizing 50 states in school. How do you think they'll like wrangling twenty-something names of planets?

So don't be so pissed off about Pluto not being a planet. There are very good reasons for this decision. Pluto is still there, it's still called "Pluto", and not being a planet doesn't make it any less special.

Read more about Pluto.