This Day in History, 2006: Pluto Demoted

[mabfan]

Exactly one year ago today, the International Astronomical Union, at their General Assembly in Prague, voted to demote Pluto from planet to dwarf planet.

(An excellent post about the public's reaction since can be found at The Enduring Power of Pluto.)

Comments

[laurele.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting the link to my blog entry on "The Enduring Power of Pluto."

I have a four-year-old nephew, and I have been teaching him that Pluto is a planet though a small one, and that Eris is a planet as well, but does not appear in most of the books because it was only recently discovered. As soon as the IAU made its fiasco of a decision, I went out and bought him two books on the solar system that include Pluto. Obviously, I'm biased, but my recommendation is to keep using the books and songs with nine planets and then say that more have been discovered since the book was written and that we're still learning just what they are because they are very small and very far away. Kids can understand that, and they can understand that sometimes different people view things in different ways. They can also understand that we've sent a robotic ship to take pictures of Pluto and that we'll know a lot more about it when we get those pictures in eight years.