Read The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet Online
Authors: Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet (15 page)
This analysis notwithstanding, rather than pit petitions against votes, what should happen, and what Sykes calls for, is the search for consensus. And until one is obtained, nobody should be defining anything.
Pluto the Dwarf Planet
T
HE WORLD COULD NOT STOP REACTING TO
P
LUTO’S
new dwarf planet status. As though August 25, 2006, the day after the International Astronomical Union’s vote, heralded a new zero point on the planetary calendar, giving us BD (Before Dwarf) for all dates prior and AD (After Dwarf) for all dates afterward.
After the IAU vote, Bill Nye immediately returned to my e-mail in-box with further critical observations of the way things were going:
The current International Astronomical Union (IAU) proposal to refer to Pluto as a “dwarf planet” will not be useful, because the word “planet” appears in a designation that is intended to explain that bodies like Pluto are not planets—a remarkable failure of a committee trying perhaps to please too many people.
Bill was not alone in his sentiment, although this widespread meaning was not the committee’s intent. They added the word “dwarf” the way astrophysicists have used it for dwarf galaxy (which is still a galaxy) and for dwarf star (which is still a star). But to no avail. As far as anyone was concerned, the IAU killed planet Pluto.
During the demotion commotion, singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton posted an ode to Pluto as sung by a loving Charon, titled “I’m Your Moon” (see complete lyrics in Appendix C).
36
The song opens with reference to Pluto’s lack of a ring system. While not a criterion for planethood, Coulton was just warming up:
They invented a reason.
That’s why it stings.
They don’t think you matter
Because you don’t have pretty rings.
He then poetically indicts the cavalier behavior of warring astronomers:
Let them shuffle the numbers.
Watch them come and go.
We’re the ones who are out here,
Out past the edge of what they know.
The refrain captures the important fact that among moons in the solar system, Charon and Pluto come closest to each other in size, allowing Charon to affectionately think of Pluto as its moon too:
I’m your moon.
You’re my moon.
We go round and round.
From out here,
It’s the rest of the world
That looks so small.
Amid the romance, Coulton offers a blunt reality check:
Sad excuse for a sunrise.
It’s so cold out here.
Icy silence and dark skies
As we go round another year.
My favorite part of the song resembles what might transpire in a self-help therapy session:
Promise me you will always remember
Who you are.
Who you were.
Long before they said you were no more.
These are surely the most sensitive words ever shared between two inanimate cosmic objects.
In another Pluto-inspired song, going by the plain and simple title of “Pluto’s Not a Planet Anymore” (for complete lyrics, see Appendix D), Jeff Mondak collaborated with Alex Stangl.
37
Mr. Mondak lives in Champaign, Illinois, where he is a children’s poet and songwriter and a professor at the University of Illinois. Mr. Stangl lives in Peterborough, Ontario, where he is a singer, songwriter, musician, and music producer. This duo had collaborated on several songs before. They wrote and composed “Pluto’s Not a Planet Anymore” on the suggestion of students at Barkstall Elementary School, in Champaign.
The song is upbeat, invokes catchy phrases, and revisits the line “Pluto’s Not a Planet Anymore” enough times that you can just hear a classroom of kids belting it out in unified chorus. Here are my two favorite stanzas:
Uranus may be famous
But Mercury’s feeling hot
For Pluto was a planet,
And somehow now it’s not
Neptune’s nervous, Saturn’s sad,
And jumpin’ Jupiter is hoppin’ mad
Eight remain of nine we had
Pluto’s not a planet anymore
The song ends with a clever, simple rhyme:
They met in Prague and voted
Now Pluto’s been demoted
Oh, Pluto’s not a planet anymore
Apart from songwriters inspired by personified dwarf planets, the next best sign that an obscure subject, or any subject at all, has entered the realm of pop culture is when that same subject becomes comedic fodder for humorists. A joke is funny only when everybody already knows the foundations of its content, allowing the writer to offer fresh comedic vistas without the burden of establishing context. Is there anything knee-slapping about the planet Mercury? Or Neptune? Or Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the Sun? Can’t say I’ve ever heard a joke about any of them. But what humorist could possibly resist the parody of learned scientists carrying on like children as they argue about Pluto’s status? And be they humorists or not, who could resist the playful personification of Pluto: simultaneously a planet, a nonplanet, a dog, an underdog, and an ice ball?
Figure 7.1.
Political cartoonist Bob Englehart, of the
Hartford Courant
, chose to exploit the “farthest planet” contest by making a larger political statement.
As we have already seen with media headlines, Pluto’s demotion became a window on who and what we are as a culture, blending themes drawn from party politics, social protest, celebrity worship, economic indicators, academic dogma, education policy, social bigotry, and jingoism.
As if regional
lawmakers had nothing better to do with their time, at least two state legislatures decided to take the Pluto problem into their own hands. New Mexico is longtime home of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh and, with its clear nighttime skies, location to world-class astronomical facilities, including the Apache Point Observatory, the Very Large Array, the Magdalena Ridge Observatory, and the National Solar Observatory (located by the way in the town of Sunspot, New Mexico). The state legislature felt that the IAU had unjustifiably dissed Pluto and, by association, their great state. So on March 8, 2007, their 48th Legislature, in a bill introduced by Representative Joni Marie Gutierrez, passed a Joint Memorial declaring Pluto a planet within state borders and making March 13, 2007, “Pluto Planet Day” statewide. (See Appendix G for the full text.)
The bill is not all grumpy complaints. Under several of the various paragraphs that begin with the ubiquitous “Whereas…,” one learns a bit of astronomy in the process:
WHEREAS
,
Pluto has been recognized as a planet for seventy-five years; and
WHEREAS
,
Pluto’s average orbit is three billion six hundred ninety-five million nine hundred fifty thousand miles from the sun, and its diameter is approximately one thousand four hundred twenty-one miles; and
WHEREAS
,
Pluto has three moons known as Charon, Nix and Hydra; and
WHEREAS
,
a spacecraft called
New Horizons
was launched in January 2006 to explore Pluto in the year 2015;
What I don’t know is this: if I shout “Pluto is
not
a Planet!” in a public theater in New Mexico, could I get arrested?
California was apparently way ahead of New Mexico in Pluto legislation. Its state legislature had a bill ready to go on August 24, 2006, practically minutes after the demotional vote was cast in Prague. While it did not ultimately pass, the bill was enthusiastically introduced by Assembly Members Keith Richman and Joseph Canciamilla. Bill HR36 (see Appendix H for the full text) calls the International Astronomical Union “mean spirited” and formally condemns the IAU’s decision to strip Pluto of its planetary status for its “tremendous impact” on the people of California and the state’s “long term fiscal health.”
Tremendous impact on the people of California? It’s all there nestled within the multiple appearances of “Whereas…”:
WHEREAS
,
Downgrading Pluto’s status will cause psychological harm to some Californians who question their place in the universe and worry about the instability of universal constants;
Fiscal health of California? That’s there, too, couched in terms of the California educational system:
WHEREAS
,
The deletion of Pluto as a planet renders millions of text books, museum displays, and children’s refrigerator art projects obsolete, and represents a substantial unfunded mandate that must be paid by dwindling Proposition 98 education funds, thereby harming California’s children and widening its budget deficits;
How about shady politics?
WHEREAS
,
The downgrading of Pluto reduces the number of planets available for legislative leaders to hide redistricting legislation and other inconvenient political reform measures;
And then there’s the matter of Mickey’s pet:
WHEREAS
,
Pluto, named after the Roman God of the underworld and affectionately sharing the name of California’s most famous animated dog, has a special connection to California history and culture;
Unlike their own state’s legislature, the Disney Company of Burbank, California, accepted Pluto’s demotion to dwarf status with grace and aplomb. In an official internally distributed memo titled “Despite Planetary Downgrade, Pluto Is Still Disney’s ‘Dog Star,’” apparently issued by the Seven Dwarfs (who have been dwarfs from the beginning), they console Pluto in his time of need:
38
Although we think it’s DOPEY that Pluto has been downgraded to a dwarf planet, which has made some people GRUMPY and others just SLEEPY, we are not BASHFUL in saying we would be HAPPY if Disney’s Pluto would join us as an 8th dwarf. We think this is just what the DOC ordered and is nothing to SNEEZE at.
The release continues:
As Mickey Mouse’s faithful companion, Pluto made his debut in 1930—the same year that scientists discovered what they believed was a ninth planet. Said a whitegloved, yellow-shoed source close to Disney’s top dog, “I think the whole thing is goofy. Pluto has never been interested in astronomy before, other than maybe an occasional howl at the moon.”
Remember that unlike canine Goofy, canine Pluto is a pet and so does not speak: hence the reference to Pluto howling at the Moon rather than offering an informed reaction to an inquiring press.
To Northeasterners, Californians
have always looked (and behaved) a bit odd. In the days that followed the IAU vote to demote Pluto, Caltech media reported on a parade of a different kind through the streets of Pasadena:
39
F
UNERAL FOR A
P
LANET
Their heads hung low, accompanied by black-clad mourners and a jazz band, eight planets marched in a New Orleans–style funeral procession for Pluto in the 30th annual Pasadena Doo Dah Parade. They were joined by more than 1,500 parade participants, among which were the Marching Lumberjacks, guru Yogi Ramesh, Raelian devotees, the Zorthian nymph snake sisters, and the Men of Leisure and their Synchronized Napping Team, who stopped every now and then to recline.
The parade participants were mourning the open casket carrying Pluto:
Marching Lumberjack Karolyn Wyneken, who drove 700 miles from Humboldt County for the event, exclaimed, “Wow, that is awesome! That is so good, and necessary,” upon seeing the open casket with its papier-mâché Pluto.
