Pluto Hugger

I'm still thrown off by last week's news that we are down to 8 classical planets. Pluto is off the list, making a test answer of "9" to the planet question is now, officially, wrong. You can see the USA Today article The universe has room for change for more on this.

As my daughter pointed out, it mostly effects the makers of styrofoam balls as one can now buy only eight in doing the ubiquitous science project on the planets. But she further pointed out that this must be a glimmer of what it was like to hear that science was now saying the world is round not flat or that the earth revolves around the sun, not all the heavens around the earth. So to be a Pluto hugger, makes me a bit of a neo-flat earther. Yet while the earth is demonstrably round not flat, that ball of rock and ice we have called the planet Pluto orbits unphased by its 76-year run as one of the 9 planets in our solar system.

And if there is a point to the post it is just that. For 76 years, scientist called it a planet. Now the agreed description is a dwarf planet. For all those years we had nine planets and now we have eight. Scientific categories were sharpened to make the definition of a planet more clear. Reality was unphased by the whole project. Only the name has been changed.

Seek him who made the Pleiades and Orion,
and turns deep darkness into the morning,
and darkens the day into night;
who calls for the waters of the sea and pours
them out upon the surface of the earth:
The Lord is his name.
—Amos 5:8peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor + King of Peace Episcopal Church