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NEWSWEEK COVER: The New Solar System Requiem for a Planet

Posted on: Sunday, 27 August 2006, 12:00 CDT

NEW YORK, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Matthew Malkan, a UCLA astronomer, was deluged with e-mails from people he hadn't heard from in years, wanting to talk about the International Astronomical Union meeting in which Pluto was relegated to "dwarf planet" status. (Malkan skipped the meeting, although he says now if he'd realized what a big deal it would turn out to be might have attended.) Jan Weiss, visiting the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History last week, felt a pang of sadness at the news about Pluto. "You grow up and there are nine planets, and now there aren't," she mused. "Imagine all those dorm rooms where they have to scrape Pluto off the ceiling." The IAU's decision may have been expected; what's surprising is how much everyone cares, reports Senior Editor Jerry Adler in Newsweek's September 4 cover story "The New Solar System: Requiem for a Planet" (on newsstands Monday, August 28).

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060827/NYSU005 )

The sad truth is, Pluto's claim to planethood has been shaky ever since its discovery, which came about more or less by mistake, reports Adler. At first, no one really knew the size of Pluto-some calculations suggested about as big as the Earth-so calling it a planet was uncontroversial. But as more was known, astronomers began to question whether it belonged in the same category as the other eight planets. When the Rose Center opened in 2000, its solar system exhibit had only eight planets-provoking a flood of angry letters from second-graders, according Michael Shara, curator of astrophysics. "We're trying not to gloat," he said after the IAU vote, "but it's hard not to say we told you so." Shara seems happy to be rid of Pluto. "Pluto is a chunk of ice which controls nothing," he says. "Its orbit is a slave to Neptune's orbit."

But others considered it an outrage. Some had a vested interest in Pluto, like the researchers involved in the New Horizons spacecraft project, who will now be devoting the next ten years of their life to a mission to a "dwarf" planet. "I'm troubled by the possibility that people will think that objects smaller than the eight planets are less interesting in some sense, and that's not true," said David Stevenson of Cornell, an authority on planet formation. "Pluto is a very interesting object, and so are the others. Some have atmospheres, there are fluids or gases that leak out from the interiors. It's not just size that matters."

Joel Parker of the Southwest Research Institute, one of the New Horizons' lead institutions, said he didn't think American astronomers would take the vote lying down, and predicted there might be a move to revise the definitions when the IAU meets again in 2009. His preferred solution would be to give Pluto "special dual citizenship" as both a Kuiper Belt object and a planet, in recognition of its special cultural status.

In other words, we are fond of it, writes Adler. "A lot of kids like Pluto because it has a cute name," says Parker, and if even one of those kids grows up to be the next Einstein-or, almost as good, the head of the House appropriations committee-shouldn't that be reason enough to keep it? But Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, doesn't think kids will mind memorizing the name of one fewer planet. "It won't upset the schoolchildren," he predicts. "It's those of us who used to be schoolchildren."

(Read entire cover story at http://www.newsweek.com/)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14529757/site/newsweek/

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060827/NYSU005AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/AP PhotoExpress Network: PRN1PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com

Newsweek

CONTACT: Andrea Faville of Newsweek, +1-212-445-4859

Web site: http://www.newsweek.msnbc.com/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14529757/site/newsweek

Source: PRNewswire

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