Aug. 17, 2006
 
EDITORIAL: Save Pluto (the Planet)
 
San Francisco Chronicle
 
Now hear this, schoolchildren, stop crying. Adults, stop mourning the loss of a physical manifestation for your feelings of inadequacy. Astrologers, stop panicking. Mickey Mouse, hug your dog.
 
Pluto will be saved.
 
Poor, chilly, tiny Pluto has been at the heart of an international controversy for the past year, ever since Michael Brown, a CalTech astronomer, discovered an object in the solar system that was both larger and farther-flung. Brown had the audacity not only to argue for the exclusion of Pluto from the planetary lineup, but then to give his proposed planet the tacky name of Xena. Oddly enough, he's still wondering why he was deluged with angry e-mails from pro-Pluto forces.
 
Fortunately, a draft resolution to the International Astronomers Union calls for the retention of Pluto -- as well as the addition of three other heavenly bodies to our official solar system. The new additions may include the soon-to-be-rechristened Xena, Charon (Pluto's largest moon) and the asteroid Ceres.
 
Chances are the Union will approve the resolution. Those dastardly Pluto detractors may still win a concession, such as the demotion of Pluto from a planet to an "icy dwarf" or a "trans-Neptunian object," but why should human beings continue their relentless habits of hierarchy out into the solar system?
 
This whole mess could have been avoided had the International Astronomers Union bothered to define the word "planet" a long time ago. Amazingly, the draft agreement represents their first stab at doing so: any round object larger than 800 kilometers in diameter that orbits the sun and has a mass roughly one-12,000th that of Earth. Pluto just makes the grade.
 
Thank goodness. We admit that it's probably not total science. But it's Pluto. All these decades of collective affection have to count for something.
 
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.