How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown

On the front page, a headline screamed, 'Three New Planets Added to Solar System.' A beautifully prepared graphic - courtesy of the IAU - showed the new solar system with the twelve planets all in place. The next morning, I went to the village of Eastsound, where I knew I could get freshly brewed coffee and a freshly flown-in newspaper. You always needed to do what's right.' And then she gave me her usual advice: 'Relax.' 'Relax' was her usual advice.īut this time, when I told her that I couldn't support Xena's becoming a planet, Diane simply said, 'Of course not, sweetie. 'Try not to worry about it so much,' she had told me all year. 'Just let it be a planet,' she would say. I told her that I was going to have to kill Pluto and that Xena would go down as necessary and important collateral damage.Īll along, Diane had been more practical than I was. I woke Diane and told her that when the press called tomorrow I was going to have to tell them why the new proposed definition of planet was no good and why, in the end, it made sense all along for there to be just eight planets. I hobbled back from the rocky beach up to the house. The idea that I was going to, overnight, become one of the most famous astronomers in the world on account of this criminal activity made me a passive accomplice. As someone who spends much of my life trying to be not just a scientist but an educator, trying to explain the universe and show the excitement without resorting to science fiction or trivial simplification, the idea that astronomers would actively encourage people to have the wrong view of the solar system seemed almost criminal. And the next day in Prague, astronomers were going to stand up and encourage the world to think of the solar system incorrectly.

That is simply a fundamentally incorrect description of it. The solar system does not consist of twelve planets and then everything else.

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown