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I sent the message below to several editors at Salon.com regarding an article by Matthew Rosza, published on April 17, 2022, titled, "Pluto Wasn't the First: A Brief History of the Solar System's Forgotten Planets" because the majority of this article is very one-sided in terms of the planet definition debate and therefore calls for a response.
I am writing to request you publish an article of mine responding to Matthew Rosza's April 16,2022, Explainer article, "Pluto Wasn't the First: A Brief History of the Solar System's Forgotten Planets." Although at its end, this article acknowledges that some scientists reject the controversial IAU demotion of Pluto, it is mostly very one-sided in its depiction of the planet debate and Pluto controversy, and unfortunately, there is no comments section on the site for people to respond.
Rosza neglects several important points, beginning with the fact that just four percent of the IAU voted to demote Pluto, and most were not planetary scientists but other types of astronomers. Their decision was immediately opposed in a formal petition by an equal number of professional planetary scientists, yet the mainstream media never reported this fact.
Kindergartners in 2006 did not necessarily .learn a different number of solar system planets than those in 2005 did because many educators also opposed the controversial demotion of Pluto and continued to include Pluto when teaching the solar system.
The analogy to Ceres, made for the last 15 years, is also flawed. According to the geophysical planet definition, which most planetary scientists prefer, Ceres IS a planet because it is rounded by its own gravity, a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium. However, this was not known in the 19th century when it was demoted, because telescopes of the time could not resolve Ceres into a disk. Now they can, which is why it is clear the 19th century demotion was in error. Vesta and Pallas are also not really asteroids; they are considered protoplanets because they appear to have once been spherical only to have had a portion lobbed off in an impact. This makes them very different from true asteroids, which are tiny, shapeless, and held together only by their own chemical bonds.
Additionally, Pluto may have a frozen surface, but data and images from the 2015 New Horizons flyby strongly suggest it has a subsurface liquid ocean (which Ceres may also have) and an internal heat source. This means both Pluto and Ceres are more akin to icy moons like Europa and Enceladus and could potentially support microbial life. While Pluto is often described as an ice world, it is actually 70 percent rock and likely geologically differentiated into core, mantle, and crust just like Earth is.
The analogy to Ceres, made for the last 15 years, is also flawed. According to the geophysical planet definition, which most planetary scientists prefer, Ceres IS a planet because it is rounded by its own gravity, a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium. However, this was not known in the 19th century when it was demoted, because telescopes of the time could not resolve Ceres into a disk. Now they can, which is why it is clear the 19th century demotion was in error. Vesta and Pallas are also not really asteroids; they are considered protoplanets because they appear to have once been spherical only to have had a portion lobbed off in an impact. This makes them very different from true asteroids, which are tiny, shapeless, and held together only by their own chemical bonds.
Additionally, Pluto may have a frozen surface, but data and images from the 2015 New Horizons flyby strongly suggest it has a subsurface liquid ocean (which Ceres may also have) and an internal heat source. This means both Pluto and Ceres are more akin to icy moons like Europa and Enceladus and could potentially support microbial life. While Pluto is often described as an ice world, it is actually 70 percent rock and likely geologically differentiated into core, mantle, and crust just like Earth is.
Saying astronomers once thought Pluto and Ceres should be planets but then "changed their minds" and that Pluto "lost its planet status" because "astronomers had decided there were three criteria for being considered a planet" is an incorrect over-generalization because these decisions were made by only a small number of professionals and largely by those in fields of astronomy other than planetary science. There was NEVER a consensus among planetary scientists on this. Furthermore, saying Pluto "lost its planet status" because of a vote inherently assumes science is done by decree of "authority," a very unscientific statement that essentially went out with Galileo.
Furthermore, the four percent of the IAU who voted on the 2006 resolution misused the term dwarf planet, which was coined by New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern in 1991. He coined this term to designate a new subclass of planets, not to designate a class of non-planets. In astronomy, dwarf stars are a subclass of stars, and dwarf galaxies are a subclass of galaxies. Claiming that dwarf planets are not planets at all makes no sense and runs counter to the findings of the Dawn and New Horizons missions, which found both Ceres and Pluto to have planetary processes similar to those of the terrestrial worlds.
As a science writer and blogger who has run a blog opposing the IAU decision for over 15 years and has written and spoken extensively on this topic, I respectfully request you allow me or someone else (ideally a planetary science) to write a response to this article clarifying these points and explaining that this issue has been and remains a subject of ongoing debate.
Furthermore, the four percent of the IAU who voted on the 2006 resolution misused the term dwarf planet, which was coined by New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern in 1991. He coined this term to designate a new subclass of planets, not to designate a class of non-planets. In astronomy, dwarf stars are a subclass of stars, and dwarf galaxies are a subclass of galaxies. Claiming that dwarf planets are not planets at all makes no sense and runs counter to the findings of the Dawn and New Horizons missions, which found both Ceres and Pluto to have planetary processes similar to those of the terrestrial worlds.
As a science writer and blogger who has run a blog opposing the IAU decision for over 15 years and has written and spoken extensively on this topic, I respectfully request you allow me or someone else (ideally a planetary science) to write a response to this article clarifying these points and explaining that this issue has been and remains a subject of ongoing debate.
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