Twitter is currently buzzing with
news of a 10-year-old girl named Kaela who has written to NASA Administrator
Jared Isaacman urging Pluto’s planetary reinstatement.
Kaela, who was born 10 years after the controversial and wrongful IAU demotion of Pluto, is correct, and I wholeheartedly second her request. I have tweeted Isaacman myself asking his support for this.
Her request is noteworthy not just because it reveals the critical thinking of a precocious child, but also because it reveals the error of those who, nearly 20 years ago, claimed that younger generations would accept Pluto’s status as a non-planet and look askance at older people who refused to accept the change.
This clearly did not happen. To this day, children visiting observatories and planetaria regularly ask about Pluto and express their preference for it to be classified as a planet. Clearly, there are inherent, compelling reasons that transcend age and nostalgia, that compel people who look at this tiny, complex world to see a planet.
In this case, a child really does understand the situation better than the four percent of the IAU who voted in 2006 and those who support their decision.
Sometimes, claims are presented as scientific when they are instead political. An example of this is when oil companies conduct studies that conclude that fossil fuels are not causing global warming. In decades past, tobacco companies conducted similar studies claiming cigarette smoking does not cause cancer.
Coming up with a desired conclusion and then twisting the evidence to support that conclusion is not science but propaganda.
This is essentially what four percent of the IAU did in 2006. A majority of those who voted wanted Pluto out as a planet. They then contrived the reason of orbit clearing, which had never been used in planet definition, to get the result they wanted and exclude Pluto.
This is not to say that orbit clearing isn’t significant. That does not mean it should be a requirement for planethood. A 2000 study distinguished between “uber planets,” which clear their orbits, and “unter planets,” which do not. However, this study, which was cited by IAU members who voted in 2006, never said that “unter planets” should not be considered planets at all.
There is no reason why we cannot say that some planets gravitationally dominate or clear their orbits while others do not. This puts them in different subcategories but still under the general umbrella of the broad category of planets.
Evidence for the contrived nature of the IAU decision can be seen in the fact of who remained on the last day of the two-week General Assembly to vote on the resolution that “reclassified” Pluto. The chair of the IAU’s own Planet Definition Committee left before the vote because he had no idea there would be a vote! The same is true for the majority of IAU members who attended the conference.
IAU rules require any resolution put to the General Assembly to first be vetted by the appropriate IAU committee. This was not done in 2006, meaning the vote violated the IAU’s own bylaws! An earlier resolution that did go before the Planet Definition Committee was defeated at the General Assembly. At that point, the appropriate thing would have been to wait until the next General Assembly in 2009 and go through the proper channels.
But this was not done! A resolution hastily thrown together the night before the last day of the conference was put to a vote on that day, before most attendees had even had a chance to read its contents and consider its merits.
The IAU cited “new information,” namely the discovery of Eris, as a reason for the reclassification. However, they have been very selective in deciding which new information counts as a reason to reconsider the issue.
The New Horizons flyby clearly revealed Pluto to be a complex world with active geology and planetary processes, some seen elsewhere in the solar system only on Earth and Mars, yet this new information was never considered a reason to reopen the discussion of planet definition, as it should have been.
When the Internet first became a thing, people hoped it would serve as a democratizing influence, giving everyone a voice in issues important to them. While this has not always happened, the Internet has played a major role in opposition to the demotion of Pluto, and Kaela’s letter represents only the latest in nearly two decades of these efforts by people around the world.
I not only second Kaela’s motion, but genuinely urge our NASA Administrator to consider the facts surrounding the IAU vote and the reality of Pluto as discovered by New Horizons, to consult with New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, and to grant Kaela’s request.
