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 (18 page)
“Planet X”
Complete lyrics © 1997, 2006 by Christine Lavin Music (ASCAP)
Administered by Bug Music http://www.christinelavin.com
Reprinted with permission
In Arizona at the turn of the century,
astromathematician Percival Lowell
was searching for what he called “Planet X”
’cause he knew deep down in his soul
that an unseen gravitational presence
meant a new planet spinning in the air
joining the other eight already known
circling our sun up there.
But Percival Lowell died in 1916
his theory still only a theory
’til 1930, when Clyde Tombaugh
in a scientific query
discovered “Planet X”
3.7 billion miles from our sun
a smallish ball of frozen rock,
methane and nitrogen.
It joined Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
our solar system’s newest neighbor
two-thirds the size of our moon
a tiny, barely visible speck
Cold! Minus 440 below.
Not exactly Paradise,
they named the planet Pluto.
That same year, 1930, Walt Disney
debuted his own Pluto as well
but a cartoon dog with the very same name as the CEO of Hell
was not your normal Disney style
most figured he was riding the coattails
of Pluto-mania sweeping the land
(not unlike our modern love for dolphins and whales).
For the next five decades mysterious Pluto
captivated our minds
as late as 1978 its own moon Charon
was seen for the very first time
but now telescopes and satellites
and computer calculations
say that Pluto may not be a planet at all,
creating great consternation.
(Some scientists say)
That Pluto is a “trans-Neptunian interloper”
swept away by an unknown force
or a remnant of a wayward comet
somehow sucked off course
others say that Pluto is an asteroid
in the sun’s gravitational pull
but if you ask Clyde Tombaugh
he’ll tell you “That’s all ‘bull’.”
“I get hundreds of letters from kids every year,” he says,
“It’s Pluto the planet they love.
It’s not Pluto the comet,
It’s not Pluto the asteroid
they wonder about above.”
And at the International Astronomical Union Working Group
For Planetary System Nomenclature
They too say that Pluto is a planet
reinforcing Clyde Tombaugh’s view of nature.
Norwegian Kaare Aksnes,
professor at the Theoretical Astrophysics Institute
He too says that Pluto is a planet
and a significant one, to boot
but at the University of Colorado
astronomer Larry Esposito
says “If Pluto were discovered today,
it would not be a planet. End of discussion. Finito.”
He says that it was not spun off from solar matter
like the other eight planets we know.
By every scientific measurement we have
is Pluto a planet? No!
and now 20 astronomy textbooks
refer to Pluto as less than a planet
I guess if Pluto showed up at a planet convention
the bouncer at the door might have to ban it.
St. Christopher is looking down on all this
and he says, “Pluto, I can relate.
When I was demoted from sainthood
I gotta tell you little buddy,
it didn’t feel real great”
and Scorpios look up in dismay
because Pluto rules their sign.
Is now reading their daily Horoscope
just a futile waste of time?
It takes 247 earth years
for Pluto to circle our sun.
It’s tiny and it’s cold
but of all heavenly bodies
it’s Clyde Tombaugh’s favorite one.
He’s 90 now and works every day
in Las Cruces, New Mexico
determined to maintain the planetary status
of his beloved Pluto.
But how are we going to deal with it
if science comes up with the proof
that Pluto was never a planet.
How do we handle this truth?
As the Ph.D’s all disagree
we don’t know yet who’s wrong or who’s right
but wherever you are, whatever you are,
Pluto, we know you’re out there tonight.
And in the year 2003
you’re going to see
the NASA Pluto Express
fly by and take pictures
of your way cool surface
to send to this web page address:
h t t p colon slash slash d o s x x dot colorado dot edu slash
plutohome dot h t m l
You’ve got your own web page!
For a little guy,
you’ve made quite a splash!
Yes, at the turn of the 20th century
astromathematician Percival Lowell
in his quest for “Planet X”
started this ball to roll,
but at the end of the 20th Century
we think he may have been a little off base
so we look at the sky
and wonder what new surprises
await us in outer space.
“I’m Your Moon”
Complete lyrics © 2006 by Jonathan Coulton
http://www.jonathancoulton.com
Reprinted with permission
They invented a reason.
That’s why it stings.
They don’t think you matter
Because you don’t have pretty rings.
I keep telling you I don’t care
I keep saying there’s one thing they can’t change
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
Promise me you will always remember
Who you are.
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.
We can only be who we are
Doesn’t matter if they don’t understand
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.
Promise me you will always remember
Who you are.
Who you were
Long before they said you were no more.
Sad excuse fore a sunrise.
It’s so cold out here.
Icy silence and dark skies
As we go round another year.
Let them think what they like, we’re fine.
I will always be right here next to you
I’m your moon.
You’re my moon.
We go round and round.
From out here, it’s rest of the world
That looks so small
Promise me you will always remember
Who you are.
“Pluto’s Not a Planet Anymore”
Complete lyrics © 2006 by Jeff Mondak and Alex Stangl
http://www.jeffspoemsforkids.com
Reprinted with permission
Since 1930, quite a run
It was always the smallest one,
And oh so distant from the sun
But Pluto’s not a planet anymore
Astronomers who had a look
Said “go re-write your science book”
They gave it the celestial hook
Now Pluto’s not a planet anymore
Listen James and Janet
Some experts said to can it
Now Pluto’s not a planet
No, Pluto’s not a planet
Anymore
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
They held the meeting here on Earth
Mars and Venus proved their worth
But puny Pluto lacked the girth
So Pluto’s not a planet anymore
Listen James and Janet
Some experts said to can it
Now Pluto’s not a planet
No, Pluto’s not a planet
Anymore
They met in Prague and voted
Now Pluto’s been demoted
Oh, Pluto’s not a planet anymore
Official Media Response from the Author Regarding the Rose Center’s Exhibit Treatment of Pluto
Submitted to CCNet, UK-based scholarly Internet chat group, February 2, 2001
Regarding our exhibits in New York City’s new Rose Center for Earth and Space, here at the American Museum of Natural History, I am surprised and impressed by the amount of recent media attention triggered by our decision to treat Pluto differently from the other planets in the solar system.
I am surprised because our exhibit has been in place since opening day, 19 February 2000, and our treatment didn’t seem to be newsworthy at the time. I am impressed that people feel so strongly about Pluto that much time and attention had been devoted to it in print and on the air.
The
New York Times
’ front page article, which ignited the recent firestorm, donned a title that was somewhat a-field of what we actually did, and which I would like to clarify. The title read “Pluto not a Planet? Only in New York,” which implied that we kicked Pluto out of the solar system and that we are alone in this action and that, perhaps more humorously, Pluto wasn’t big enough to make it in NYC.
I have written previously on the subject in an essay titled “Pluto’s Honor” (
Natural History
Magazine, February 1999) where I review how the classification of “planet” in our solar system has changed many times, most notably with the 1801 discovery of the first of many new planets in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. These new planets, of course, later became known as asteroids. In the essay, arguing in part by analogy with the asteroid belt, I argued strongly that Pluto, being half ice by volume, should assume its rightful status as the King of the Kuiper belt of comets. Apart from my views expressed there, I have a different sort of responsibility to the public as director of the Hayden Planetarium and as project scientist of the Rose Center for Earth & Space.
That responsibility is as an educator for a facility that has received an average of 1,000 people per hour over the past eleven months.
For the exhibit on planets in our “Hall of the Universe,” rather than use the word
planet
as a classifier, we all but abandon the ill-defined concept and simply group together families of like-objects. In other words, instead of counting planets or declaring what is a planet and what is not, we organize the objects of the solar system into five broad families: the terrestrial planets, the asteroid belt, the Jovian planets, the Kuiper belt, and the Oort cloud. With this approach, numbers do not matter and memorized facts about planets do not matter. What matters is an understanding of the structure and layout of the solar system. On other exhibit panels, in an exercise in comparative planetology, we highlight rings, storms, the greenhouse effect, surface features, and orbits with discussions that draw from all members of the solar system where interesting and relevant.
Our intro-exhibit panel meets the visitor’s expectations head-on:
W
HAT IS A
P
LANET?
In our solar system, planets are the major bodies orbiting the Sun. Because we cannot yet observe other planetary systems in similar detail, a universal definition of a planet has not emerged. In general, planets are massive enough for their gravity to make them spherical, but small enough to avoid nuclear fusion in their cores.
A second panel describes and depicts the layout of the solar system:
O
UR
P
LANETARY
S
YSTEM
Five classes of objects orbit our Sun. The inner terrestrial planets are separated from the outer gas giant planets by the asteroid belt. Beyond the outer planets is the Kuiper Belt of comets, a disk of small icy worlds including Pluto. Much more distant, reaching a thousand times farther than Pluto, lies the Oort Cloud of comets.
Our goal was to get teachers, students, and the average visitor to leave our facility thinking about the solar system as a landscape of families rather than as an exercise in mnemonic recitation of planet sequences. We view this posture as the scientific and pedagogical high-road.
That being said, I have benefited from some reasoned feedback on what we have done. As many are already aware, we use our giant 87-foot sphere (housing the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater in the upper half and our creation of the first three minutes of the Big Bang in the lower half) as an exhibit unto itself. We invoke it to compare the relative sizes of things in the universe for a walk-around “powers of ten” journey that descends from the observable universe all the way to atomic nuclei. About midway in the journey you come upon the size scale where the sphere represents the Sun. There, hanging from the ceiling, are the Jovian planets (the most highly photographed spot in the facility) while a set of four small orbs sit on view, attached to the railing. These are the terrestrial planets. No other members of the solar system are represented here. This entire exhibit is about size, and not much else. But the absence of Pluto (even though the exhibit clearly states that it’s the Jovian and Terrestrial planets that are represented) has led about ten percent of our visitors to wonder where it is.
In the interest of sound pedagogy we have decided to explore two paths: 1) Possibly add a sign at the right spot on the size scales exhibit that simply asks “Where’s Pluto?” and gives some attention to why it was not included among the models. And 2) We are further considering a more in-depth treatment of the life and times of Pluto to add to our kiosks, which contain our computer-searchable data base of current astrophysics news that we display in a timely fashion on a video “bulletin” wall. This material might even contain a sampling of the various points-of-view expressed on how planets should be counted for those who feel compelled to do so.
I close with the opinion that a mid-ex style mission to Pluto might resonate much more deeply with the public and with congress if instead of saying “we must complete the reconnaissance of the solar system’s planets by sending probes to Pluto” we say “we must BEGIN the reconnaissance of a newly discovered, and hitherto uncharted swath of real-estate in our solar system called the Kuiper belt, of which, Pluto reigns as king.
Respectfully Submitted,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Department of Astrophysics & Director, Hayden Planetarium
Division of Physical Sciences,
American Museum of Natural History, New York