The Beckyan Deli

The hell with Pluto (the dwarf planet AND the minor Disney character)

I was recently reminded that I simply do not understand the emotional attachment that people had to Pluto as a planet. It’s another dinky ball of ice in the Kuiper Belt! I don’t want to get caught up in semantics, but we should at least lump it in with similar objects in terms of composition and formation.

But I have a serious question here: is the attachment to Pluto a symptom of bad science education in this country? Have we failed at conveying that science is a system of inquiry, and not just a list of facts?

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2 responses to “The hell with Pluto (the dwarf planet AND the minor Disney character)”

  1. Sarah Avatar
    Sarah

    Take a look at the title of the next departmental colloquium:

    NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission: The First Mission to the Ninth Planet And the Solar System’s Third Zone

    Seems NASA can’t quite let go of the “planet” status either.

    Reply
  2. Eli Avatar
    Eli

    But Pluto was a planet when the New Horizons probe was launched! And to be fair, NASA now refers to plutoids: http://tinyurl.com/cllunp

    Reply

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