Pluto is a Planet!

As a reporter who has covered Pluto´s career for decades, it hasn´t been easy watching the smallest player on the planetary team (0.0021 Earths) being blind-sided and gang-tackled by 424 heavyweights from the International Astronomical Union. (IAU)

It started when Pluto was in the deepest part of his orbit two years ago. That´s when these opportunistic and misguided scientists decreed that he was no longer a planet!

That set off a meteor shower of bad publicity: "Pluto Demoted!", "No Longer a Planet!", "Pluto Stripped of Planetary Status!" That kind of crowd psychosis and Monday-morning quarterbacking has continued to this day, but Pluto´s back in the old neighborhood and ready to tackle the opposition.

Today he held a jam-packed press conference on his only moon, Charon, and fired back at his detractors:

"These astronomers say I´m distant, cold, dark and frozen, and that I don´t have sufficient mass. They are calling me a dwarf planet - and worse - plutoid! That´s a lot of methane in my book!

I´ve been a consistent franchise player since 1930, and now all I hear is ´What have you done for us lately?´

They say the big planets in the outer solar system are gaseous and I´m mostly ice and rock. So what? I´m different. Diversity makes for an interesting team.

They say I don´t have legs anymore. Yeah, I been around the galaxy a long time, but nobody has had to run the routes I´ve had to run. It takes me 248 Earth-years just to get around the sun. You try it!

Plus, all the other planets are orbiting on the flat plane of ecliptic. Me, I´m 17.1 degrees off of that – always have been! If you can´t respect that, I´ll clean out my locker right now."

With emotions running high, we need to come back to the main complaint from astronomers at IAU. They say that Pluto "has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit". They say the former planet is adrift in a sea of comets and ice balls, and doesn´t stand out that much.

But one of Pluto´s earthly supporters, Alan Stern, begs to differ. He´s the man in charge of a NASA probe currently on its way to Pluto. He points out that Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune all have asteroids as neighbors, and that "Jupiter has 10,000 Trojan asteroids orbiting in lockstep with the planet." Do you call that "clearing the neighborhood?"

Ordinary citizens have greeted Pluto´s dismissal with shock and disbelief. Billions of people are accustomed to a quota of nine planets, and no one wants to disqualify Pluto on a technicality. Think of the detrimental effect that would have on Earth Science mnemonics like, "My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Pizzas"!

There are other reasons for keeping the status quo and they have nothing to do with science.

Dava Sobel, author of The Planets, says: "Pluto has a tremendous sentimental, historical and emotional kind of attachment. It retains an emotional hold on planethood. People love Pluto. Children identify with its smallness. Adults relate to its inadequacy, its marginal existence as a misfit."

We love the underdog and we´ve got the numbers. Pluto is an icon, and he can´t be swept up and thrown out in the dark matter dumpster. Oh, no! We´ll fight to keep him alive and a full member of the planetary team. If he becomes a free agent, he might spin off to another solar system. We can´t let that happen.

Rally the schoolchildren! Pluto is a planet! PIAP!