2006-08-25

Free Pluto!

Pluto is having the WORST WEEK EVER.

Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

And wasn't it a week or so ago that they were thinking we had TWELVE planets? I was totally down with that, and now this has to go and happen...

Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Come on. What the fuck? Can't they, like, grandfather that shit? Pluto's been a planet for over 75 years. That's not fair!

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets."

Now that's the astronomical equivalent of the Sooper Dooper Giant Tootsie Roll "consolation prize" that the loser always got on the Bozo the Clown show.

The decision at a conference of 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries was a dramatic shift from just a week ago, when the group's leaders floated a proposal that would have reaffirmed Pluto's planetary status and made planets of its largest moon and two other objects.

That plan proved highly unpopular, splitting astronomers into factions and triggering days of sometimes combative debate that led to Pluto's undoing.

Okay, who else here immediately pictured a bunch of geeks in lab coats throwing chairs at one another? Awesome.

But.....man. I'm actually pretty bummed out about this. I think we should start some kind of grassroots campaign. For real. Should I have these made up?

lisamcc at 1:19 p.m.



4 comments so far
Lexi
2006-08-25 14:25:48
I like the idea of the shirt, but that graphic looks like Free The Cotton Ball I Cleaned My Face With After A Day At The Coal Mine.
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Tina
2006-08-25 16:16:08
I'd buy one.
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Jess
2006-08-25 19:42:20
OR, you get buy THIS one! http://yque.com/plplnefoblt.html
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Bill
2006-08-27 18:49:43
It's all a cynical plot to sell brand new science and astronomy textbooks to cash-strapped elementary schools around the world. Not to mention the utter distruction of one of the great pneumonic devices of our time... the one about Mother and the nine pizzas. Bastards.
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