Pluto: Planet, “dwarf planet”, and now…plutoid
By Psyche | June 12, 2008
Kids, when I was your age, Pluto was a planet, but in 2006 the International Astronomical Union unfairly stripped Pluto of its planetary dignity and reclassified it as “dwarf planet”. Following that, the American Dialect Society voted “Plutoed” as the word of the year. (Ha, ha.)
In 2007 Pluto was further demoted when it was discovered that fellow “dwarf planet” Eris outranks it in mass, effectively confirming that Pluto was not even the biggest little planet.
Today’s news reveals that Pluto’s “non-planet status” (!) has prompted the creation of a new word: plutoid.
The cheeky BBC writes:
It is the new classification that has been sanctioned for the object that was formerly known as the “ninth planet”.
- BBC, “‘Non-planet’ Pluto gets new class“
There’s a “minimum brightness” requirement for the classification, which will be granted to both Pluto and Eris, but not Ceres, which is still classed as an asteroid (or is it still a “dwarf planet”, too?), but as the Beeb comments further in the article:
The classification will not placate those incensed by Pluto’s demotion.
I should certainly hope not.
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Whilst I can certainly see your personal objections to the reclassification of Pluto, I find it more than a little funny ;-)
Recently, when a couple of fellow Eugenies and I went on the Planet Walk in Eugene, Oregon (with a 1 Billion scale of the Solar System), I made a point of re-christening the plaque of “Pluto” as “Eris”. It was a rather fun Discordian Working (Playing?) that was performed the weekend of 5/23-25. Fenwick has since proposed that we should actually go out and measure the actual distance of Eris from the Sun, and make our own little Shrine to Her, which is an eventual goal of mine before the summer is over. Interestingly enough, when we got to the plaque for Pluto, which was 2.7 miles (?) from the Sun, someone had already covered up the “Pluto” inscription with a bright orange traffic cone, as if I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.
Hail Eris!!!!!
All Hail Discordia!!!!!
Hell Yeah!!!!!
This post was a little tongue in cheek, but I do find it silly that, after more than seventy years, scientists felt to reclassify Pluto as a “dwarf planet” and again as a “plutoid”.
Why not use it as a standard going forward rather than demote it?
And how exactly do all these reclassifications affect astrologers…? ;)
[...] The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum was ok, but they had little cardboard notices plastered all over the place advising that Pluto was no longer a real planet, just a “dwarf planet”. Man, not only is that just plain wrong, it’s also, like, so so out of date. [...]
[...] you may recall June’s announcement that Pluto had been reclassified from a “dwarf-planet” to a…”plutoid”, a status it shares with Eris, [...]