Editor's Notebook: In Defense of Pluto

Once Pluto, king of all the netherworld, got some respect among astronomers. In 1930, he joined his brethren as the namesake for the farthest planet in our solar system. But among some astronomical ingrates, Pluto has recently fallen out of favor. Two years ago Pluto was almost reduced to a mere "minor planet" by the International Astronomers Union, and last February New York's Rose Center for Earth and Space left Pluto off the list entirely, relegating him instead to a disk of icy comets known as the Kuiper Belt. One year later, passions still rage in the astronomical community over this manifest injustice to an honest planet.

Many would find it absurd to challenge Pluto's planetary qualifications. It circles our sun, it has a moon (Charon, the boatman of the Styx), it is roughly spherical, it has an atmosphere--and it has a cartoon dog named after it. If that's not enough for a planet, what is?

Without Pluto, the minds of a generation of schoolchildren raised on a steady diet of nine planets would go hungry. What will happen to the familiar "My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine..." Nine what? Kuiper Belt objects? No good mother would serve her children those.

Yet demoting Pluto would be even more grave for our spirit of discovery. Ever since Galileo trained his telescope on Jupiter and sighted, to his amazement, four Medicean stars never before seen with human eyes--ever since then we have been searching for new lights in the heavens. The discovery of Pluto inspired children's dreams of one day finding the newest Planet X.

But no more. The mood of these astronomical party poopers is to discard planets, not to find them; the children of tomorrow shall grow up to find all planets found, all lands mapped--all mysteries revealed as mundane facts. The new worlds we now seek ring not our own, but faint and distant suns--poor substitutes for Galileo's heirs.

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Let us save Pluto, the planet we have loved, and save the dream of planets yet unknown.