Tyson is always a favorite guest on The Daily Show and this book was discussed on his last interview with Jon Stewart. Library to the rescue!
There are 9 chapters to this fairly short book, all done with wit and an obvious love of science. Tyson goes over Pluto's history, how Pluto was received in our culture, and the descent of how Pluto lost his status as our 9th planet.
Apparently Americans really love Pluto, not only because of it's association with Disney's dog, but because an American discovered Pluto back in 1930 by New Mexican Clyde Tombaugh, a 24 year old farmboy. Tombaugh lived to his 90s to see how Pluto was about to be reclassified and fought it tooth and nail. Ergo, America discovered a planet and it shouldn't be taken away.
The trouble with planets is...a definition for planets was never ever set in stone. In the '00s, the International Astronomical Union began devising a concrete definition for a planet. In 2006, it was determined that Pluto did not meet the new definition - mostly because it didn't clear its own orbit of debris.
This is an excellent book that makes science a lot easier to understand and offsets the jargon with comical letters from outraged children. Tyson has an opinion at the end that suggests a new way of teaching kids about the solar system so that its not only planets that get their day in the sun...so to speak.
1 comment:
The IAU planet definition is vague, confusing, and has been rejected by many professional astronomers. Even Tyson disavows any connection to it and describes it as "flawed." There are valid scientific reasons to keep Pluto a planet. An alternate planet definition favored by many astronomers is simply that a planet is a non-self-luminous spheroidal body orbiting a star. We can then distinguish types of planets through use of subcategories. The term dwarf planet would make sense for small spherical objects that do not gravitationally dominate their orbits IF it were classed as a subcategory of planet. But the IAU decision specifically states that dwarf planets are not planets at all! It also classifies objects solely by where they are while ignoring what they are. If Earth were in Pluto's orbit, according to the IAU definition, it would not be a planet either.
Significantly, the IAU definition was adopted by only four percent of its members, most of whom are not planetary scientists.
Pluto should not be "reclassified" under such a faulty definition, which is why even now, both scientists and lay people are working to get the demotion overturned.
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