So Pluto Ain’t a Planet No More

It took a whole pile of astronomers sitting together in Prague last week to decide that after 80 years of being a planet, Pluto was no longer a planet but rather a “dwarf planet”.

Well, the first problem with this, of course, is that it’s fine for a pile of astronomers who spend their lives examining the night sky to decide that Pluto is no longer a planet but really, we’ve all grown up with it being a planet and regardless of what the definition may be now, it has been the 9^th planet to our solar system for long enough to be able to fly in the face of rules.

More importantly, the second problem is that of political correctness. “Dwarf planet” indeed. Surely it should be more correctly referred to as “size challenged planet”. Dwarf indeed. There are enough dwarfs floating around the cosmos now without adding to that number.

Still, the reassuring thing about all this is that it took a week of acrimonious debate before the final decision was made.

Go on now, back to examining the stuff of the cosmos and the origins of the universe but I am sure we’ll all still refer to Pluto as a planet for some time to come. Come to think of it, if it was CSI making the examination, would they be examining the “stiff of the cosmos”