A Pluto by any other name

Picture a kid’s playground with a bunch of kids playing in it. On the fringe of the 8 kids in the playground stands a small little boy, eager to be noticed and to be let in on the game. After a long while, someone notices his little face and decides to let him in to play with the big kids.

For weeks, they play together, a band of 9. All is well.
Suddenly, one day someone notices that this little boy is not a little boy at all, but a dwarf. Immediately, he is tossed out of the exalted group of 9 and banned from playing with the big boys for ever.

Worse still, they start calling him names.

Now, take this scenario to an inter-planetary level and you have the story of Pluto – The little planet that could.

First, there was the shock discovery that outside of the known solar system was a little cold dark planet called Pluto after the mythical god of the underworld. For years we hung onto the notion that the solar system has 9 planets of which the furthest and the darkest and coldest planet is called Pluto.

2 years ago, came the shock demotion of Pluto as a planet. This cold lump of rock is no longer to be classified as a Planet because it just isn’t big enough. For 2 years, we reeled at the shocking information. Do we un-teach what we taught our children? Do we un-learn what we learnt at school? How many planets does the solar system have now? Are there going to be any other shocking discoveries? Is Earth the only planet left in the solar system?

Why do I feel so strongly about this demotion? I’m a Scorpio and my ruling planet (or used to be) is Pluto. Astrologically, its still Pluto but for how much longer?

But that’s not the biggest insult (to me anyway). The biggest insult is that Pluto is now a Plutoid! PLUTOID?! Its been given its own class of planetary body which is, as the name suggests a Plutoid. Here’s the official speil:-

“Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the sun at a distance greater than that of Neptune that have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared the neighborhood around their orbit.”

In short: small round things beyond Neptune that orbit the sun and have lots of rocky neighbors.

The two known and named plutoids are Pluto and Eris, the IAU stated. The organization expects more plutoids will be found.

Its like, if the Earth was suddenly demoted from planet status, we’d be put in a special category called Earthoid – celestial bodies in orbit around the sun between Mars and Venus.

I like having a cold distant dark planet in the solar system. It adds mystery and romance. Bring Pluto back please. The solar system just isn’t the same without it. What am I going to do with the ping pong ball that used to depict Pluto in diagramatic representations of the solar system?