The Starmaker
2025-01-25 18:30:34 UTC
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PermalinkToday was the last day of the International Astronomical Union meeting
in Prague, and the final item on the agenda at the end of two weeks
worth of discussion was a vote on what to do with Pluto. Everyones
favorite ice ball was in imminent danger of being cast out of the
pantheon of planets by the vote of astronomers assembled half a world
away, and whatever happened would be big news around the globe.
I like planets, but I didnt care enough about Pluto to get up at 4:30
a.m. But this Pluto vote mattered enough for me to drag myself out of
bed that morning. For me that vote had nothing to do with the ninth
planet; it was all about the tenth.
And I cared a lot about that tenth planet, because
eighteen months earlier, I had discovered it, a ball of ice and rock
slightly larger than Pluto circling the sun every 580 years. I had been
scanning the skies night after night looking for such a thing for most
of a decade, and then, one morning, there it finally was.
--
The Starmaker -- To question the unquestionable, ask the unaskable,
to think the unthinkable, mention the unmentionable, say the unsayable,
and challenge the unchallengeable.
The Starmaker -- To question the unquestionable, ask the unaskable,
to think the unthinkable, mention the unmentionable, say the unsayable,
and challenge the unchallengeable.