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New Mexico Might Declare Pluto a Planet
pease1 writes "Wired and others are reporting that for New Mexico, the fight for Pluto is not over. Seven months after the International Astronomical Union downgraded the distant heavenly body to a 'dwarf planet,' a state representative in New Mexico aims to give the snubbed world back some of its respect. State lawmakers will vote Tuesday on a bill that proposes that 'as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet.' The lawmaker who introduced the measure represents the county in which Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto's discoverer, was born. For many of us old timers, and those who had the honor of meeting Clyde, this just causes a belly laugh and is pure fun. Not to mention a bit of poking a stick in the eye."
I don't like the fact that scientists say the world is round so I'm going to petition my local government to enact legislation to make the world flat. Does that sound right?
I mean, really. Who would know more about astronomy? Astronomists? Or Representative Joni Marie Gutierrez, Landscape Architect? Let's just let her and her colleagues sort out stem cell research and evolution and global warming and blah blah.. I don't want to have to think about it. :P
Illinois to vote on a bill to define pi as 22/7.
Oklahoma's legislature to say that eclipses really are dragons eating the moon.
North Carolina is considering a bill to re-instate earth, water, air, and fire as elements.
Wouldn't marbles released into space far enough away from a planet to orbit a star fall under your classification as planets?
Clyde Tombaugh.
He found Pluto at a time when detecting planets was done with glass plate negatives and telescopes that were manually driven. He knew he was looking for a planet but where to find it was a matter of subjective debate. But he was the consummate scientist; as his wife noted after the demotion of Pluto, he would have been disappointed but he would have understood.
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Why is being a planet treated as some sort of exclusive club? Sure, they're planets, every last one of them. So what?
Making schoolchildren memorize arbitrary nomenclature is often useless and one of the many signs that our school systems are structured and run by the clueless.
As to why you'd have them memorize the names of any planets at all, you'd probably mention to them (not make them memorize) the first few discovered by our relatively limited earthbound observations as an unimportant but mildly interesting historical issue, and any beyond that which might be educational in and of themselves. I suspect you'd want to tell them how large the current planet count has become, again purely as a matter of interest, and as an intellectual fulcrum for you to inform them that said number is expected to change shortly, and often. Along with the asteroid count, the comet count, the satellite count, the star count, the galaxy count, etc.
There is no need for them to "memorize" any of these names and numbers until or unless they decide to focus on space science one way or another. And perhaps not even then. They just need to know that there are other planets out there in our system, and how planetary systems work, so they don't get caught up in superstitious nonsense.
On top of this, they need to know how to look things up so that when they want a fact for some reason, they can go get it with minimal fanfare.
Intellectual honesty, critical thinking skills, and the ability to use reference materials fluidly are all far more educationally valuable than canned, arbitrary information that came from a committee not entirely in internal agreement anyway.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Hi.
You should learn about the subjunctive.
Thanks.