Planetary Harmony

Do you ever look up in the sky and wonder:
- Hey, how come Pluto gets to be a planet? That's so unfair!
- You know, I really don't have enough planets to memorize.
- I'm deeply confused as far as what a planet truly is. I wish someone would clear it up for me.

Well look no further, the IAU is coming to your rescue!

The IAU (International Astronomical Union) is currently meeting in Prague to determine the fate of our solar system.

Among the things being discussed, is the definition of the word 'planet.' Roughly stated, they want to make any object that orbits a star and has enough self-gravity to pull it into a spherical shape.

Whew, glad that cleared things up.

Whoops..except that definition puts the number of "official" planets over 9! It would add the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's "twin" Charon, and 2003 UB313, aka "Xena." And that's just for starters. The definition could apply to other objects as well, placing the number of known "planets" to several dozen.

But to add even more "clarification," the IAU first proposed making Pluto, Charon, Ceres, and Xena "plutons," because they're so darn different from the other 8 "classical" planets. That idea was nixed, and now they're looking at a different term and definition for these objects, making them "dwarf planets," and essentially eliminating them from being "proper" planets. A "proper" planet must have "orbital dominance."

This has caused heated debate between the scientists at the assembly, which runs till August 25.

I don't know about the rest of you, but in school when we were learning the solar system, we learned the current 9 planets, and there were several clever ways to remember the names and the order..take the first letter of each planet.. MVEMJSUNP.. and come up with something like "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" and various iterations. That's the way it's been for decades. I shudder at kids these days trying to memorize new planets. 12 wouldn't be TOO bad..but somewhere in the 50s? It's not happening. What kind of clever way do you come up with to memorize MVEMCJSUNCU?

And now the scientists want to change that. It's understandable, for them.. they want to clearly define what a planet is, so that no further "confusion" will occur in the scientific community.

This is what bugs me, though. To me, the term "planet" has never been one rooted in scientific jargon. It's always been just a general term, or I guess you could call it a "public" or "cultural" term. I hate when scientists or politicians try to define things for the general populace.

If I could dare to bring up a reference from the show The Simpsons: their hometown was founded by a man Jebediah Springfield, who lives in myth and legend with his exploits and his character. Lisa Simpson, however, discovers he was truly a murderous pirate, who hated the town he founded. Lisa tries to expose him, but in the end, decides not to. Why? Because the legend has value just as much as the actual facts do.

I feel this is kind of the same for the Solar System. People have a classical view of it, and if someone tries to come in and change all that, then the view is tarnished. People have a hard enough time as it is getting excited about astronomy. Going and radically changing the definition of the cosmos would further decrease people's interest.

So, it's good that the scientists are trying to clear some things up for themselves. But maybe they can keep a separation of science and popular culture. Then everyone will be happy.