Pluto Kicked Out of Solar System
After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn’t — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.
You realize, of course, that this means WAR!
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Science, Hard Science, Science, Mushy, Science, Science, Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Science never “makes up its mind” about labels like “planet”, for two reasons. First, we divide things into certain categories to make it easier to think about them in the context of specific questions, so as we gain knowledge and ask new questions the old classification system may outlive its usefulness and need to be replaced by new categories. Second, the scientific method never really concludes that something is “true”, just that it is not yet proved false, and so is always open to new data. This doesn’t make science indeterminate, it makes it better at incorporating new knowledge, avoiding dogmatism, and correcting the inevitable mistakes.
Yesterday – I “vanished” a comment you made at Pettifog! When I looked for your link – it didn’t go anywhere?! SO – because you mentioned virus, etc. I paniced! Thanks for stopping. As for poor Pluto? I think it’s because there were those other “space pieces” that they found a couple of weeks ago. They either had to count them and ADD to the count or decide that Pluto and those new finds were not significant?!? Which science would make up their minds!