Illinois Senate Legislates Status of Pluto
Reason magazine on an attempt by state Sen. Gary Dahl wants the state to recognize Pluto as one of the big nine planets of our solar system. Of course it should be noted one good read for this push is for the fact that the person who discovered the planet is said to be from Illinois.
So here's the gist...
An Illinois Senate committee on Thursday unanimously supported planet Pluto and declaring March 13 "Pluto Day..." The push for a state decree on Pluto comes from state Sen. Gary Dahl, a Republican whose downstate district includes Streator, birthplace of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. Dahl told colleagues Pluto is important to the local community, which considers the vote to downgrade Pluto to "dwarf" planet was unfair...
I had to go back to this post from Betsy's Page for more about this story...
Dahl told colleagues Pluto is important to the local community, which considers the vote to downgrade Pluto to "dwarf" planet was unfair as it involved only 4 percent of the International Astronomical Union's 10,000 scientists.
Interesting, very interesting.
Dahl noted that Tombaugh is the only American ever to discover a planet. Tombaugh first detected Pluto in 1930 at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
Dahl called Thursday's committee vote a key step forward, not only for Pluto and Streator, but also for bipartisan cooperation in the Senate. He said previous Democratic leadership sat on the proposal last year but new Senate President John Cullerton let it advance.
3 comments:
The Illinois Senate has way more sense than the International Astronomical Union has shown in two-and-a-half years. It's the IAU who have acted like idiots, with one tiny group forcing a nonsensical planet definition on everyone. The truth is there is NO scientific consensus that Pluto is not a planet. The criterion requiring that a planet "clear the neighborhood of its orbit" is not only controversial; it's so vague as to be meaningless. Only four percent of the IAU even voted on this, and the vote was driven by internal politics. A small group, most of whom are not planetary scientists, wanted to arbitrarily limit the number of planets to only the largest bodies in the solar system. They held their vote on the last day of a two-week conference with no absentee voting allowed. Their decision was immediately opposed by hundreds of professional astronomers in a formal petition led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto.
Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader definition of planet that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body orbiting a star. The spherical part is key because when objects become large enough, they are shaped by gravity, which pulls them into a round shape, rather than by chemical bonds. This is true of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and comets. And yes, it does make Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake planets as well, for a total of 13 planets in our solar system.
Even now, many astronomers and lay people are working to overturn the IAU demotion or are ignoring it altogether. Kudos to the Illinois Senate for standing up to this closed, out of touch organization whose leadership thinks they can just issue a decree and change reality.
Way to go Laurel! If we were to go by the IAU definition, Earth would not be considered a planet either.
The Illinois Legislature had as much right to designate Pluto to be a planet, as the IAU did in changing the definition.
Congrats to Senator Dahl for promoting his district, as well as the accomplishments of our own native son, Clyde Tombaugh.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
With a $9 billion state budget deficit, rising unemployment, tanking economy, and failing schools...
It's comforting to know that the State Senate has its eye on the ball (of ice and methane, 25 million miles away).
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