Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Forbidden Planet

Angry? Yes.

I am also fearful. Why?

I fear for tiny Pluto. Back in 1930, the planet was discovered, as astronomer Percival Lowell had predicted before the turn of the 20th Century. Pluto has not completed one orbit around the Sun since it was discovered; and, yet, a group of self-annointed gods of the universe, the International Astronomical Union, here in the 21st Century, will announce whether Pluto will remain one of the nine planets or whether it will become just another hunk of rock and ice unworthy of the mantel it has so proudly worn for the past 75 years. In fact, scientists have discovered not just one moon circling Pluto, but three moons ... certainly, this should confirm Pluto's original planet status.

How did we get to this place, where the International Astronomical Union wants to reduce the number of planets to only eight? What's wrong with these so-called scientists?

Well, there's some controversy as whether a frozen hunk of rock and ice slightly farther away from the Sun and slightly larger than Pluto, designated 2003 UB313, discovered by a group at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía under suspicious circumstances, should be called a planet. Why not, I want to know. 2003 UB313's got a moon ... definitively detected by the Keck Observatory. Make it planet number 10 ...

Leave Pluto alone ... there's something to say about 75 years of history. We've grown up with Pluto, the ninth planet. If they vote to strip Pluto of its title, what will we call it ... Pluto, the trans-Neptunian object with its three fucking moons? If it's not a planet, how can it have moons? Where is the order in the universe, I ask. I mean, we are not talking quantum physics here.

And what if some day scientists find life on Pluto ... what then? What will we call the guy, The Brother From Another Planet ... the Trans-Neptunian Object?

Don't fuck with Pluto.

Posted by Bill at August 15, 2006 09:58 PM