The Pluto Resistance Continues

Here we are. It’s that day again—the day that will live in infamy, when 424 IAU members engaged in a throwback to the 16th century and attempted to impose a very flawed planet definition on all of humanity. At that time, there were six billion plus people on Earth. Today, there are over 8 billion.

Yet the bigger mistake and public disservice was not by the IAU but by most of the media and educational establishment. By giving the IAU definition the force of law instead of recognizing it as just one view among several in use, they too engaged in medieval behavior.

In an upcoming entry, I will share a comprehensive Power Point presentation by writer Jack Mitch Culberson. Some of the images come from this blog, but most are from other sources. He accurately described the IAU vote of 2006 the way the media should have done.

Culberson stated, “The IAU no longer considers Pluto a planet.” THAT is what should have been and should be reported—not “Pluto stopped being a planet.” Not only is the latter statement equal to science by decree of authority; it also completely glosses over the fact that an equal number of planetary scientists rejected that definition and to this day, prefer the geophysical definition, according to which all dwarf planets are a subclass of planets.

When Galileo looked through his telescope in 1610 and saw mountains on the Moon, the phases of Venus, and the moons of Jupiter, scientist Cesar Cremonini declared him wrong and refused to even look through his telescope. After all, Aristotle had already determined the Moon is a perfect sphere. If one already knows the “truth,” why look at additional evidence?

In 2015, 105 years later, the IAU did essentially the same thing Cremonini did, with the same inaction. Having made up their minds that a planet has to “clear its orbit,” they refused to look with new eyes at data about Pluto sent back by New Horizons, which clearly showed it to have complex planetary processes. The 2005 discovery of Eris was viewed as new data that merited a redefinition of the term planet, but the first ever images and data that revealed Pluto to be a planet, did not merit that same consideration to them.

And the media mostly enabled their denial.

The news isn’t all bad. While this should never have gone on so long, today, 17 years later, most planetary scientists ignore the IAU definition in favor of the geophysical one. Now, we need to get the media, educational establishment, and other venues to recognize that this issue remains unsettled and that the IAU position should not be treated as objective truth but as one side of an ongoing debate.

Just today, Celestron sent an email describing today as “Pluto Demoted Day,” with a link to an article that states only the IAU position without even acknowledging the geophysical definition.

For many of us, today is not “Pluto Demoted Day.” It’s “Pluto Resistance Day.” And we need to get the word out there that there is another view, that there is science behind classifying Pluto as a planet, and that no individual or group should be given the right to impose its view on all humanity.

We will never give up, and we will never stop fighting this wrong. Galileo was eventually vindicated, and so will adherents of the geophysical planet definition.

The resistance continues.

Please sign this petition to save New Horizons as a planetary/Kuiper Belt mission

On April 12 of this year, I wrote about a NASA proposal to prematurely defund New Horizons as a planetary mission and to transfer control of the spacecraft to the agency’s heliophysics division, a move that would replace the current mission team, which have given decades of service to it.

Now, you can help advocate for New Horizons remaining a planetary mission through the years it traverses the Kuiper Belt by signing this Change.org petition organized by the National Space Society.

For no clear budgetary or scientific reason, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is considering ending it as a planetary mission and transferring control of it from the agency’s planetary science division to its heliophysics division.

Eventually, when it leaves the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons will concentrate solely on the heliophysics of the outer solar system. But for now, it still has sufficient fuel to continue studying the Kuiper Belt for another five years. It is the only vehicle in place to conduct in situ study of this region. Arbitrarily ending the planetary mission half a decade early wastes a unique opportunity that neither NASA nor any other space agency is likely to have for decades.

The petition closes on Monday, September 4, which is Labor Day, and the National Space Society hopes to get up to 10,000 signatures by then to stand up for New Horizons remaining a planetary mission until it leaves the Kuiper Belt. So we need to act quickly.

If you are American, these are our tax dollars at work, and we deserve a say in how they are used. This is the only chance in decades to explore the Kuiper Belt and possibly find a third close flyby target. We should not waste it!

And if you’re of a different nationality and a supporter of planetary exploration, you can still sign this petition and are urged to do so. New Horizons made headlines around the world when it flew by Pluto and then by Kuiper Belt Arrokoth. Its exploration of the Kuiper Belt is not just an American project; it is a human one.

Please take this action to save New Horizons as a planetary mission and share this petition with as many people as possible by September 4. Thank you in advance.

John Vester Followup Article on "Pluto: Planet or Not"

The following is a followup by John Vester addressing responses to his original article published in Analog, titled "Pluto: Planet or Not."

Since the time the essay was published in Analog magazine, other than a few friends telling me they thought it made sense, I have received some pointed critiques of the science.

I also received some links to relevant scientific papers:

1) A Geophysical Planet Definition

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2017/pdf/1448.pdf

2) Reductionist vs. Folk Taxonomies in Planetary Science

www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2021/pdf/1083.pdf

3) An Organically Grown Planet Definition

https://astronomy.com/magazine/2018/05/an-organically-grown-planet-definition

4) Ignore the IAU! Dwarf Planets are Planets Too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-WsYl_wWNo

Five main objections to my Linguistic Planetary Definition have come to my attention.

1. The proposed linguistic definition lacks simplicity because some objects that would be considered planets by this scheme can become captured into orbit around another object, making it now a moon by my scheme.

ANSWER – This objection is a defense of the misguided attempt, on both sides, to infuse the definition of the word “planet” with too much baggage in support of the astronomer’s or the planetary scientist’s preferences.

The essence of the linguistic definition is simplicity. A planet is simply anything that orbits a star. If some object changes from one category to another, it should not be a problem. When a tadpole changes to a frog, or a caterpillar into a butterfly, there is no confusion. So if a rock changes from being an asteroid to being a moon, it should not be upsetting. It happens at the subcategory level without complaint. An asteroid sometimes comes back to life, as it were, and is treated as and called a comet.

2. My “Power to the people!” line drew some ire. It’s up to science, I am told, to raise the public’s understanding of nature. The public did not accept the notion of Earth as a planet, but Copernicus and science prevailed, even though the public was wrong. We shouldn’t be dumbing down scientific terminology to satisfy the views of the public.

ANSWER – Setting aside the fact that the Copernican revolution was a revolution in understanding, not a revolution in nomenclature, the linguistic approach does reclaim some words for the language, allowing science full rein over all the subcategories.

The overarching categories, like planet, moon, and star, ought to be based on simple, discriminating principles, such as what it orbits, or whether it has achieved nuclear fusion in its core. To burden the word “Planet” with questions of shape, geologic activity, clearing of orbits, etc. serves no purpose in helping educate the public. These confusing stipulations may please the scientists on those teams, but will only result in the division and the gnashing of teeth, as we see now regarding Pluto.

3. I have been accused of including hearsay by relating the story of “snow” and the languages of the Eskimos/Inuits.

ANSWER – While I included the words “It is said” in an attempt to make it clear that I make no claim as to the truth of the story, it does illustrate an important point. As one becomes more intimately involved with something, clarity of communication demands more precise language about it.

As we enter a golden age of astronomy, thanks to incredible probes, like New Horizons, and fantastic telescopes, like JWST, and which we will continue to launch, and as findings, news, and discussions of mission discoveries continue to proliferate, we need to clarify out terminology.

The scientific community is in a similar position to what Zoology was like in the 1700s. What we need is a modern day Carl Linaeus to develop a taxonomy for space objects. But the overarching category names should not be discarded. In spite of Linaeus, we still talk about horses and dogs. And we still observe that there are plant, animal and mineral kingdoms. How is star, planet and moon different?

4. Fault has been found with my statement that originally all planets were mere specs of light in the night sky. On the contrary, the sun and moon are held up as proof.

ANSWER – This proves nothing. Back then, as now, the sun and moon are not, neither of them, planets. The GPD folks are eager to start calling large moons planets, which seems to me a step in the wrong direction.

5. I have been taken to task for ignoring or missing “one of the greatest insights in scientific history,” which is that space objects large enough to be complex and, as Galileo put it, to be homes for life and civilizations, are planets. During the 1700s and 1800s, science dropped the “homes for life and civilizations” part, but they kept the size and complexity part. This important central insight is a central part of the GPD argument.

ANSWER – Let’s notice that science gets it wrong too. Galileo’s speculations about life and civilizations were dropped so as to keep lifeless planets in the planet club. Note too that the GPD would have us referring to our moon, and others, as planets because they show evidence of geologic activity. How confusing compared to simply referring to what something orbits, or compared to what we have seen and heard in hundreds of years of literature and song.

Let things like size and shape and complexity be handled in research and at the subcategory level. If the GPD wants Luna (or Titan, or Enceladus, etc.)to be planets, what happens if the supposed geologic activity completely ceases? And what if it starts up again? The chance exists that this will happen at some point and require new GPD designations. But that’s the crux of Objection #1!

With all that said, it occurred to me that there is a sort of grey area that should be appreciated.

My proposal is from a spoken language stand point. Objections to these ideas comes from a science stand point. While science may feel an obligation to reach down and educate the public on what science has learned about how the world works, I resist the notion that science always knows best.

We, the people, should lay claim to some basic words, like star, planet and moon. If we do not, science can make a mess of things, as they did with the word “metal.” In common parlance we know what metals are. Hard, shiny, bendy. Good enough for everyday use. Chemistry has expanded on the definition to mean any element or alloy that handles electrons in certain ways. Useful and interesting. But the Astrophysicists use the word to man any element in the periodic table heavier that hydrogen or helium. How is this helpful in educating the public?

In conclusion, the overarching categories, “star,” “planet,” and “moon,” should be the province of the man on the street, with simple, easy to understand criteria. All the many subcategories should be the province of science.

Adrift in the Kuiper Belt? - Alan Stern of the New Horizons Mission