Everyone Loves an Underdog Like Pluto

by Constance Lambson on March 11, 2011

Poor Pluto. Back in 1930, when the discovery of Pluto was announced, the little ball of ice and dirt on the outer limit of the Solar System became a big celebrity. The ninth planet! How exciting! But less than 100 years later, on August 24, 2006, the little planet that could was kicked out of the club, demoted despite its three moons.

Well, Seattle decided not to take that lying down. Not to mention, there is no such thing as a bad reason to paint banners and take to the streets. So tomorrow, March 12th at 2 p.m., the fourth annual Pluto is a Planet protest, march, and rally will be held in Greenwood. The protesters will begin at Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company, march up and down a couple of blocks, then “rally” at Neptune Coffee shop.

The rally will actually consist of young adults from 826 Seattle, the non-profit writing center, reading essays for or against Pluto’s planet-hood. The whole thing is kind of a front for 826 Seattle, to be honest, but it’s fun and educational, and who doesn’t love a good protest? Get to GSTSC early, around 1:30 p.m., to make your own sign, or bring one from home.

In fact, how about staging a counter-protest for Tyche? Next month, the first public release of data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is scheduled. Who knows what the survey recorded? So far, the mission has discovered 20 comets, 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs), and over 33,000 asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Maybe the “real” ninth planet is out there, just waiting to be found.

Filed under News, Science
  • bilco

    Let’s have a ballot initiative! I’m tired of these know-it-all scientists with their ‘astronomy’ making these decisions.

    Let the people speak!!!

  • josh

    this is cute, but I can’t agree about there being “no bad reason to paint banners and take to the streets”.

  • Laurel Kornfeld

    It is not just Seattle that continues to reject the controversial IAU demotion of Pluto. Only four percent of the IAU voted on this, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed in a formal petition by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader planet definition that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body in orbit around a star. The spherical part is important because objects become spherical when they attain a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning they are large enough for their own gravity to pull them into a round shape. This is a characteristic of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects. Pluto meets this criterion and is therefore a planet.

  • Anonymous

    The sad thing is that the people who most want Pluto to still be a planet are often the people who understand its place in the solar system the least (or, for the guy is is the head of the NASA mission to Pluto, the people who have most to gain). I suggest getting over it and learning about the real solar system instead. And, Laurel, your definition includes the moon. I don’t know too many people who deep down inside wish the moon were a planet. Certainly not me. So, please, move on in life!