The ugly aftershocks of Pluto’s demotion

I tell you what: you get these astro-types wound up, and they get one hell of a power trip going.

As you know, the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto in 2006, reclassifying it as a dwarf planet and instantly obsoleting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of science fair projects worldwide.

So now National Geographic holds a solar system mnemonic contest including this new classification of “dwarf planet” and the three known examples, including the recently stripped Pluto. A Montana schoolgirl named Maryn Smith came up with the winner: “My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants” for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres (which used to be just an asteroid), Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and, um…Edwina. Yeah, that’s it. Dwarf Planet Edwina.

Yeah, well, all y’all just shove it up your asses.  (The astronomers, not the contest winner.)

It’s like you got drunk with the power. You got to (holy shit) demote a planet, so now you’re going to fuck with the solar system every year? “Hey, let’s have a mnemonic contest and throw the dwarves in there! Woohoo, we are having some big fun now!”

Nope. Not playing. There are eight planets. You said so when you demoted Pluto. You can score your federal grants and wax philosophical about focal lengths and tell puns with “Kepler” in the punchline and grope each other’s naughty bits in the maintenance closet and whatever else you funsters do, but you don’t get to be in the news all the time. I mean, sheesh, the article above says there may be as many as 200 “dwarf planets” in our solar system, just awaiting discovery (and, one would presume, new mnemonics).

Stop the madness. Eight planets.

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5 thoughts on “The ugly aftershocks of Pluto’s demotion”

  1. Regardless of if Pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet,it still a facinating object on the outer fringes of our solar system.And it is still worthy of our scrutiny.Remember,the casini space probe is still earmarked for that planet.I,m really excited about the surface detail and topographical features that will be transmitted back to us upon its arrival.

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