My daily dose of learning in recent months has come from Wikipedia, an ersatz attempt to document the entirety of human knowledge and evolve the WWW into some crazy hive-minded meta-brain. It's my off-site storage for all my Trivial Pursuit answers. I love it.
For the last week or so I've been eagerly awaiting the outcome of the proposed redefinition of what comprises a "planet" in the astronomical sense.
I must admit I am quite disappointed with the result. Perhaps this is illogical, out of a need to cling to what "facts" I "know" about the universe, or a gut-level emotional reaction that we have somehow shut some new friends out in the cold. But having it confirmed that Pluto is no longer considered a true planet is giving me an odd pang of grief.
Pluto is still out there, and I'm sure its fans and many researchers will find their admiration and their work undiminished. But I must admit, I am one of the faction who was cheering for the INclusion of not only Pluto but the three to twelve additional far-out objects which might have been defined to be new "planets" in our eccentric rotational system. Somehow the result of having the family reduced to an official Eight is even worse than the more harmonious status-quo of Nine, and an immense letdown when I thought I'd have an even dozen. I'd already memorized all the names and re-framed my recitation of their order, progressing outward from the Sun! Alas, where's the challenge in now having to forget one of the names I've known by memory since I was a wee thing reading Owl magazine and watching "astronomy for tots" on PBS?
Go hit Wikipedia, or even Google, if you want the details and exact reasoning for the decision. Me, I'm off to raise an icy cold, deep, dark drink in toast to Pluto's continuing, plodding, eccentric orbit out there in the icy cold, deep, dark reaches of of our neighborhood of the galaxy.
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