Friday, August 25, 2006

Pluto--not a full-fledged planet.

Well, well, well, they've finally decided to drop Pluto's status to "dwarf planet." This seems to be causing a bit of hubbub in society. I don't see a reason to remove it from everything--afterall, it is still a "planet" albeit a dwarf one.

What concerns me about this is the fact that 40,000 astronomers got together to define this once and for all. How do you actually define a planet when we have never been to Pluto, never sent a probe there to examine it, and may never send anything? How can we be so blatantly egotistic as to believe that we know what a planet actually consists of when we are only just now able to peer into the vastness of space to see other "planets" but not know what they are made of? We can't even be absolutely positive of what the planets in our own solar system are made of. Oh, there are the educated scientific guesses that have been handed to us as truth, but is it really the truth? Our own history changes every day. Scientific "facts" change weekly. Nothing is solid because we are still learning.

And why are we worried about Pluto anyway? How much taxpayer money was spent on this planetary definition? Shouldn't scientists and astronomers be more concerned with what affects our own planet? Why worry about definitions? Reasons why seem more important today. Why does Pluto have an eccentric orbit? Can it collide with us in some fluke turn of events? Is Pluto actually in the Kuiper Belt or outside of it? There are definitely other things I would like to know other than what some group "thinks" it should be.

And how much did we pay for that, again?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I know isn't that bullshit...ooooo we found two more planets, so pluto you're out...thats retarded. If any thing Ceres shouldn't be a planet, it not even that big.