[msb-alumni] Voices: Fallen planet Pluto awaits its close-up

From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 14:23:48 -0500
BlankHmmm, we remembered the order in our high school science class from Mr. 
Burnett with "Mary's Violet Eyes Made Jack Stay Up Nights, Perhaps!"  Not My 
Very Educated Mother just served us nine pizzas."  And, a different 
alternative which the ladies will appreciate: "Men very easily make all jobs 
serve useful needs & purposes."


And, another one of Mr. Burnett's finest for biology: King Phillip Came Over 
From Germany Swimming for kingdom, phylum, Class Order Family Genus, 
Species.

Steve
Class of '72

Voices: Fallen planet Pluto awaits its close-up

It's been eight years since Pluto to the shock of many of us who'd memorized 
the nine planets in elementary school was officially demoted to "dwarf 
planet. Now, there's hope for the rocky, icy, dim little orb at the edge of 
the solar system: A NASA probe now approaching Pluto promises to return it 
to prominence, if not the planetary pantheon. The unmanned New Horizons 
spaceship, the size of a grand piano, left Earth nine years ago this month. 
Eight months later, an international astronomers' group established a 
definition of "planet.

Pluto, so unlike the other eight planets, did not make the cut. This month, 
New Horizons starts taking measurements, and in May it should give us our 
first good look at the surface of Pluto, the last of the unexplored 
"original' nine planets. Among the questions: Does Pluto have more than five 
moons? Rings? Of what is its surface composed? Does it have mountains? 
Geysers?

Dave Eicher, editor of Astronomy magazine, says the images also will boost 
the campaign to make Pluto a planet once again: "We will see Pluto as a 
world now. It will raise the debate.

Eicher outlines the case for planet Pluto: It's round, it has an atmosphere 
and five moons, and it orbits the sun (albeit elliptically). He agrees that, 
however you try to define it, a planet is like pornography: You know it when 
you see it.

We elementary students couldn't see Pluto without a very powerful telescope, 
but we loved it anyway. Why? It's so small, smaller than our moon and six 
other moons in the solar system, with a diameter equal to the distance from 
Baltimore to Houston. It's so macabre: cold (average high: minus 375 
degrees) and dark (the sun is a thousand times dimmer than on Earth) and 
named for the Roman god of the underworld. One moon, Charon, is named for 
the ferryman of Hades who brought the newly dead across the river Styx 
another Pluto moon.

It's so American: predicted by Percival Lowell in the early 20th century, 
discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 and named by the Lowell Observatory in 
Arizona. For 76 years, Pluto was part of the order of things, and the kicker 
in the phrase for remembering the names and order of the planets: " M y V 
ery E ducated M other J ust S erved U s N ine P izzas. But Pluto's size had 
been downgraded almost from the moment it was discovered. Once thought to 
have a mass roughly equal to Earth's, it actually is 0.2% of ours. It's 
unlike the "terrestrial' planets (Mercury to Mars) or the "gas giants" 
(Jupiter to Neptune). Tthe main mission of New Horizons is to explore the 
Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt of icy, rocky objects. In this artist's 
rendering, New Horizons soars past Jupiter as the volcanic moon Io passes 
between the spacecraft and planet. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied 
Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI) (Photo: 2007 
photo by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest 
Research Institute) The clincher came in 2005, when a Caltech astronomer 
reported the existence of another icy sphere beyond Neptune (later named 
Eris) that was larger than Pluto. If, as seems likely, there are more such 
worlds, the question was whether to evict Pluto or open the books to all 
sorts of new planets, thus devaluing the brand and complicating the lives of 
fourth-graders. No matter what New Horizons finds, it's probably too late 
for Planet Pluto. Tombaugh, its discoverer, lived in New Mexico. (His ashes 
are aboard New Horizons.) After Pluto was reclassified in 2006, the state 
Legislature passed a resolution that Pluto was still a planet in New 
Mexico's skies, no matter what anyone said. There's a Clyde Tombaugh 
Elementary School in Las Cruces. Four years ago, the school float in the 
annual Big Enchilada parade was Pluto-themed. Marchers chanted, "We believe 
that Pluto is a planet! But Tombaugh students are taught that there are 
eight planets in our solar system. Pluto is not among them.
Hampson is a USA TODAY national correspondent
[msb-alumni] Voices: Fallen planet Pluto awaits its close-up

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