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Ex-planet’s fans voice dismay
Sitting in Pluto’s, a salad and sandwich shop in San Francisco’s Marina District, John Neal summed up his feelings, and those of many other earthlings, about the sudden shrinking of his solar system.
“Pluto gets no respect, man,” Mr Neal, 23, said. “I mean, I took an astronomy class in college, and I still don’t know anything about it.” Pluto, we hardly knew you.
Indeed, across the country, and presumably the universe, the news that Pluto was no longer considered a full planet was met with a mix of surprise and shrugs, even as people struggled to eulogise a cosmic entity that most know very little about except its size (small), its distance from Earth (great) and its weather (terrible).
The main effect, in fact, seemed to be to mystify further a populace that already seemed almost universally confused about the former planet. “I think it’s probably a star,” said Nick Sbicca, 22, who was visiting the Exploratorium, the children’s science centre.
“I really don’t know. But I think there’s definitely more than eight planets.” Or at least there were, before Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet” status by a vote of the International Astronomical Union in Prague, in part because of a wonky orbit that periodically swerves into that of Neptune.
None of which mattered to fans of Pluto, many of whom, like the ex-planet itself, were little. “I like Pluto,” said Ashleigh Sundquist, 8, who was at the Exploratorium. “Nobody lives there.”
That opinion was seconded by Kristen Young, 9, of Chicago, whose knowledge of Pluto was roughly that of many adults. “It’s cold,” she said. “And it’s small. And you can’t go on it because it has gas.”
Among the elders of the third planet from the Sun, of course, there were some practical concerns. The World Book Encyclopaedia had been holding the presses for its 2007 edition until Pluto’s status could be clarified. With the fall semester looming, some school districts were already looking at updating their science textbooks, and even planetarium staffs had started rethinking planetary models.
“I woke up this morning, and there was one less planet,” said Al Whitaker, a spokesman for the US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. “But I understand that Pluto wants a recount.”
Other groups were defiant, including the American Federation of Astrologers, which said the astronomers’ decision would have no effect on their charting of futures. “It doesn’t really matter what you call it,” the president of the group, Patricia Hardin, said from her home in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“As far as I’m concerned, Pluto is still an effective energy source that’s influence is felt on Earth.” Sure enough, some people also asked the existential questions that the cosmos typically inspires. Why did this happen? What does it mean? And, of course, how does this affect Mickey Mouse’s dog?
Soon after the announcement from the astronomical union, Disney executives were peppered with questions about whether Pluto’s planetary status would affect Mickey’s sidekick. The answer was no.
“He’s taking the news in stride,” said Lisa Haines, a spokeswoman for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. Even at Disney, though, it seemed that people were moving away from the cosmic outcast.
“Pluto was not necessarily named after Pluto the planet,” Ms Haines said. “We’ve got absolutely nothing on record that even draws a connection between the two. And we’re certainly not changing Pluto’s name.”
Back at Pluto’s, the sandwich shop here, another stargazer, Chris McGrew, said he was not surprised by the news. “It’s just the natural progression of things,” Mr McGrew said.
“The more you learn, the more assumptions are going to get turned upside down. It’s just part of science. And life.” — Dawn/The New York Times News Service
Astronomers announced recently that they had found a lump of rock and ice that was larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system.
The new object — as yet unnamed, but temporarily known as 2003 UB313 — is now 9 billion miles away from the Sun, or 97 times as far away as Earth and about three times Pluto’s current distance from the Sun.
Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto’s orbit ranges from 2.7 billion miles to 4.6 billion. The astronomers do not have an exact size for the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is larger than Pluto, the smallest of the nine known planets.
“It is guaranteed bigger than Pluto,” said Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and a member of the team that made the discovery. “Even if it were 100 per cent reflective, it would be larger than Pluto. It can’t be more than 100 per cent reflective.”
The discovery was made on Jan 8 at Palomar Observatory in California. Dr Brown and the other members of the team — Chadwick A. Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and David L. Rabinowitz of Yale University — then found that they had, unknowingly, taken images of the planet, using the observatory’s 48-inch telescope, as far back as 2003.
Last year, the same team announced the discovery of a distant body they named Sedna, which, until the latest discovery, had held the title of farthest known object in the solar system. But Sedna, smaller than Pluto, is on a far stranger, 10,500-year orbit that takes it as far out as 84 billion miles.
Dr Brown said they had a name they have proposed for the planet, but did not want to disclose it until it had been formally approved by the International Astronomical Union. “We have a name we really like, and we want it to stick,” he said.
Informally, the astronomers have been calling it Xena after the television series about a Greek warrior princess, which was popular when the astronomers began their systematic sweep of the sky in 2000. “Because we always wanted to name something Xena,” Dr Brown said.
The astronomers were not able to see 2003 UB313 using Nasa’s Spitzer Space Telescope, looking for infrared heat emitted by its minus-405 degree surface. That means the planet is less than 1,800 miles in diameter.
Surprisingly the orbit of the planet is skewed to most of the rest of the solar system. The orbits of most planets lie close to the same plane as Earth’s, known as the ecliptic plane. Its orbit is tilted by 44 degrees. — Kenneth Chang and Dennis Overbye/The New York Times
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