On the 24th of August 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly in Prague, astronomers decided that the Solar System has eight planets, and Pluto is not one of them; changing the status of Pluto into adding a somewhat downgrading prefix - dwarf.
To be a planet, the assembly ruled, a world must meet three criteria:
(1) It must have enough mass and gravity to gather itself into a ball.
(2) It must orbit the sun.
(3) It must reign supreme in its own orbit, having “cleared the neighborhood” of other competing bodies.
Pluto, the now defunct-planet, has always a tendency to atract controversy. For example the Hayden Planetarium reopened after renovations in 2000 with a missing Pluto and was subjected to much flak. Other museums such as Adler Planetarium’s dedication plaque because it was built before Pluto’s discovery. The last few years marked the demise of Pluto when 50000 Quaoar was discovered, with a 1,280 kilometers diameter, making it a bit more than half the size of Pluto. In 2004, 90377 Sedna awas discovered and both have slightly smaller radius compared to Pluto.
The final straw was perhaps 2003 UB313, a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) larger than Pluto. For more romantic and practical reasons, astromoners nicknamed it “Xena”. Now, we can attach our sentimental feelings to it, just like what Walt Disney did when it named the famous dog Pluto. (imagine earth to be called 1CH4001). And so, 24th of August 2006 came to pass…
Almost all of us today look upon Pluto as a planet. Culturally, books and movies have been written, sung, and philosophised about it. Take it this way: Pluto is far far away, from the reaches of most of our telescopes. We romanticise about the outer reaches of the solar system and the emptiness beyond. Ultimately, Pluto embodies the mystery of space - the last known bastion of charted space before the unknownst.
With Voyager 1 and 2 flunging out of deep space, space discovery today has been rather limited to space imagery and un manned probes to moons like titan and neptune. The next phase of exploration of the outer planets of our solar system will include manned spaceships and will also require the collaboration of many nations of our planet.
Space, as the name signifies, is ubiquitious. It belongs to no one and will never be. The boundaries that demarcate nations and perennial squabbles will cease to exist in space. What is our human ego compared to the immensity of the universe? It truly humbles me to know that we are just an sea anemone in a deep ocean harboring infighting clown fish…
