[GZG] Pluto.... Sort of.

Ok, it's a weird day for me.....  Must be too much Pi day
celebrating.....

Got the latest thinkgeek email advertisement......  And they had this at
the bottom of it.  I had to pass it along.  I think people here will
appreciate it.

-------

################################ << Dear Timmy Responds
#######################################################

Our mascot and resident sage, Timmy the Monkey is a fountain of wisdom. 
Here he shares his advice with a smart mass in need. Would you like 
Timmy's helpful advice for yourself? Send it to Dear Timmy. If we 
publish your email to Timmy, you will win a $50 ThinkGeek Gift 
Certificate! Read on for Timmy's latest wise words:

---------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Timmy,

I heard that Pluto is no longer a planet... why not? Who made that 
decision? 

Jim from Export, Pennsylvania, USA, Earth
----------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Jim,

This has primarily to do with the fact that the first eight planets 
(with the exception of Earth, which is of course super-special) are all 
Roman gods, while Pluto is a cartoon dog.  Poor Pluto never really fit 
in with the rest of the crowd.	They let him hang around because they 
felt sorry for him, but there's no denying Pluto is just ... different.

Pluto has a funky orbit, for one--it constantly leaps in front of 
Neptune (for 13-20 years of its 248 year trip around the sun), in a 
desperate attempt to become the eighth planet.	Also, while the other 
planets circle around the sun in a fairly flat plane, Pluto's orbit is 
tilted (an astronomer would say that Pluto's orbit is inclined 17 
degrees above the ecliptic, but that's just because astronomers feel 
they're not give you your money's worth if they use a boring word like 
"tilted").  Plus Pluto can't figure out if he's orbiting his moon or 
his moon orbits him, which makes some astronomers call Pluto and Charon 
"binary planets" (not to be confused with "binary people").

The reason Pluto finally got kicked out of the planet club, though, is 
because of Eris, who you may recall is the Greek goddess of discord.  
Eris was discovered in 2005, orbiting the sun out past Pluto, and she's 
bigger than Pluto.  So people started to say, "if little dorky _Pluto_ 
is a planet, why isn't Eris one?"  Frankly, the IAU (which is the 
International Astronomical Union--i.e., the guys in charge of deciding 
who gets in and who doesn't) was concerned about a lawsuit.  So, some 
guys from Uruguay submitted a proposal to IAU specifying the exact 
rules for who could and couldn't be a planet.  In their proposal, not 
only would Eris get to be a planet, but so would Charon and Ceres (who 
was briefly allowed into the planet club back in the 1800's, but then 
got kicked to the asteroid curb).  But then Eris tossed her golden 
apple into the proceedings, and the proposal got revised, and revised 
again, and on the last day of voting (when most of the sympathetic 
astronomers had already gone home), Pluto ended up getting kicked out.	
After interviewing Pluto for its reaction, we here at ThinkGeek even 
made a T-shirt about it.

The stated reason was that the IAU was worried about a whole bunch of 
other "planets" getting discovered, and, you know, what good is an 
exclusive club if you just let everyone in?  Besides, who wants to deal 
with "My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas" changing into 
"My very educated mother couldn't just serve us noodle pizza, 'cause 
... eewww!!"

-- Timmy 

------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l