Mike Brown led the team of scientist responsible for Pluto losing its planetary status. They discovered “Xena” (now Eris), which would have been the 10th planet had Pluto kept its status, but instead became its downfall.
It’s a fun book full of anecdotes and a good dose of personal stories. Brown in a scientist, but he’s also a husband and a father and he’s refreshingly ok with showing that side of him.
How I Killed Pluto is a great insight into the world of professional astronomy in all its glory and dullness. It’s all very exciting discovering a new planet, but let’s not forget the mind-numbing hours following tiny dots of light in endless image-stills to figure out if they’re moving.
Brown gets extra brownie points for acknowledging that scientific discoveries are never accomplished in isolation. Instead, he presents it as the work of many very bright and very creative risk-takers swimming against the tide of a long-established dogma. Add to that the academic rivalries (Brown even has an evil nemesis, The Spanish Professor who tried to steal his discovery Muahahaha!) and you have a very entertaining science book.
By the end I felt really curious about the day-to-day life implications of downgrading a planet. For instance, how long did it take for school books to make the change? Did some of them include an errata sheet? How did science museums update their exhibitions. Was there a PhD student on the brink of finishing a thesis on Pluto that had to re-write the whole thing? What about astrology, will Pluto in my 1st House no longer mean I “radiate intensity”? What do creationists think about this?
And linguists? One of the most interesting parts of the book was when Brown pondered about a planet’s definition: is it based on scientific criteria or just a convention? It’s the same with “continents”. I was taught that “Oceania” was a continent and am always surprised when someone tells me that no, Australia is a continent (don’t Kiwis get pissed with this?!). On the other hand, if what matters are tectonic plaques, then why are Europa and Asia separated? Words matter and Brown’s own questions brought me back to heated debates in philosophy and semiotics classes.
(credits)
The re-definition of Pluto and Eris as “dwarf planets” while the others become “classic plants” sounds muddy even to a non-expert like me – is a dwarf planet still a planet? Brown calls the new classifications “a slew of unscientific clutter”, a sitting-on-the-fence decision created to be comfortable and not change the universe as we know it.
But no matter what, Pluto will always be a planet to me. Whenever I recite the planets, I can never stop at Neptune.
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Other thoughts: S. Krishna’s Books, The Ya, Ya Yas, an adventure in reading, Canadian Bookworm (yours?)
21 comments
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March 7, 2012 at 2:55 am
Jenny
I never stop at Neptune either! My Very Energetic Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas forever! :p
March 7, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Alex
Lol! Mike Brown actually mentions new mnemonics, for instance “Many Very Educated Men Justify Stealing Unique Ninth” or (invented by himself) “Many Very Educated Men Just Screwed Up Nature”.
March 9, 2012 at 4:41 am
Aarti
Mine growing up was My Very EXCELLENT mother 🙂 I like Brown’s better, though. Much more irreverent.
March 7, 2012 at 9:21 am
Eva
The Pluto Files includes Neil deGrasse Tyson’s experiences setting up a museum exhibit w/o Pluto. I think the book was written as a companion for the PBS show, but I read it on its own. He’s one of those ‘corny humour’ scientists, but I really enjoyed his writing anyway. lol It’s a slim book, but it sounds like it might answer more of your questions since it’s focus is how the public reacted! (There are some hilarious letters Tyson got from schoolchildren included.)
March 7, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Alex
When navigating the net for more information (don’t you kjust love when a book gets you to do this?) I came across several references to TPF and added it to the wish-list.
March 7, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Scribacchina
Thanks for sharing this, it sounds great (and the one mentioned by Eva as well).
I guess all of us who learned the 9 planets at school will keep on thinking of Pluto as a planet, even while we do know scientific agreement about it has changed. (Or maybe, we’ll really learn about it when helping our children study. A Portuguese friend was telling me a few days ago how he never took the new acordo ortografico seriously, until his daughter started school.)
As for Australia/Oceania: if there was a shift in scientific agreement about the definition of continents I must have missed it. I thought that different countries taught continents differently and in Europe children still learn about Oceania?
March 7, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Alex
There is no international definition of a continent (or at least Brown said so), so yes, each country can chose what it wants its children to learn. We learnt Oceania in Portugal, but now that I live abroad I’m faced with the “Australia” version much more often… it sounds so… wrong!
March 7, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Nymeth
This sounds like a great read, as does The Pluto Files. I wonder about the everyday implications as well!
March 7, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Alex
Yes! And I’m also curious about our emotional attachment to a planet… and I guess it could happen to everything, e.g. the New Coke.
March 7, 2012 at 5:14 pm
Jenna (Literature and a Lens)
I’ve always wondered what went into deciding Pluto’s planetary status. Brown’s book sounds like a fun and interesting read. I love learning little anecdotes. Great review!
March 7, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Alex
I also wondered and was afraid it would be just too technical for me to understand, but this book made it easy!
March 7, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Audra (Unabridged Chick)
Oooh — normally, I don’t read a lot of non-fic and rarely ever do I take on the heavens but you have me very interested in this book. It sounds like geeky, nerdy fun — which I love. Thanks for highlight a book I would have otherwise passed up (and how much do I love the title?!).
March 7, 2012 at 7:08 pm
Alex
Yep, that title was what caught my attention in the first place. And I also love the cover.
March 8, 2012 at 7:37 am
Laurel Kornfeld
Actually, scientific agreement about Pluto has not changed. Its planet status has been disputed since its discovery in 1930 and remains a matter of debate. School books and museums do not need to make a change so much as to make it clear that there are two camps of astronomers when it comes to Pluto’s planet status. Dynamicists, who focus on the way celestial bodies perturb other celestial bodies, believe an object has to be the dominant one in its orbit to be a planet. In contrast, geophysicists, who focus on the individual bodies themselves, believe that any object large enough to be rounded by its own gravity and in orbit around a star is a planet. In fact, the leading opponent of the IAU decision, which was made by only four percent of its members, most of whom are not planetary scientists, is the Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the person who first coined the term “dwarf planet” back in 1991. His intention was to create a third class of planets in addition to terrestrials and jovians, small planets large enough to be rounded by their own gravity, a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, but not large enough to gravitationally dominate their orbits. He never intended for dwarf planets to not be considered planets at all.
Objects in hydrostatic equilibrium have geology and weather and are often geologically differentiated into core, mantle, and crust, just like Earth is. They are complex like the bigger planets and very different from shapeless asteroids and comets. So while four percent of the IAU say dwarf planets are not planets, just as many astronomers disagree with this. Significantly, in astronomy, dwarf stars are still stars, and dwarf galaxies are still galaxies.
To the author: I’m glad you’re never stopping at Neptune when reciting the planets. You shouldn’t even stop at Pluto. Eris, which is much further from the Sun, is a planet too, as are Ceres, Haumea, and Makemake, and probably many more small spherical objects in the outer solar system.
Interestingly, hundreds of professional astronomers led by Stern signed a formal petition opposing the demotion of Pluto and the IAU planet definition. One of these was Dr. David Rabinowitz, a member of the team of three that discovered Eris (the other is Dr. Chad Trujillo, who has not weighed in publicly on either side of this debate).
I was personally inspired to become an expert on Pluto and went back to school to study astronomy. You can find out more about the position that dwarf planets are a subclass of planets from my Pluto Blog at http://laurelsplutoblog.blogspot.com . There are also some great books advocating for Pluto’s planet status (and the planet status of all dwarf planets). The best are “The Case for Pluto” by MSNBC correspondent Alan Boyle and “Is Pluto A Planet?” by Dr. David Weintraub, a signatory to Stern’s petition. I am still working on a book of my own, “The Little Planet That Would Not Die: Pluto’s Story.”
March 13, 2012 at 10:45 am
Alex
Hi Laurel, thanks for passing by and commenting! Several comments/questions:
– Only 4%? How is that possible? Was it the ones actually in the room? What about quorum?
– So when the (4% of the) IAU called Pluto a dwarf planet they also stated that a dwarf planet is NOT a planet? They didn’t leave the question open?
– As a non-expert, the concept of hydrostatic equilibrium makes perfect sense. Are there planet with one but WITHOUT geology and weather or is it a sine qua non condition?
– I understand that scientifically it would probably be more correct to included dozens more planets in the list, but again, as a non-expert, it’s so nice to be able to fit them all inside a manageable little fence. I guess planets will become like the Pi number, each person memorizes how many numbers it wants/can 🙂
– I’ve noted down the books, thanks for the tips!
March 13, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Laurel Kornfeld
To answer your questions:
The IAU does not allow any absentee or electronic voting. Only those members in the room on that particular day–the last day of a two-week conference–could vote. Alan Stern was taking his daughter to college and wasn’t there that day, so he couldn’t vote. Neither could many IAU members who had made plans to leave early assuming the earlier resolution, the one recommended by their own committee, which did include Pluto, Ceres, and Eris. These members were essentially deceived because they had no way of knowing another resolution would be substituted in place of the original at the last minute. As of 2012, the IAU has still not instituted any absentee or electronic voting provisions. There does not appear to be a quorum requirement for a vote, whether of all IAU members worldwide or of those who initially attended the General Assembly. The IAU has about 10,000 members. About 2,500 attended the beginning of the conference, and of them, only 424 were left by the day of the vote.
These 424 specifically voted down Resolution 5b, which would have placed both “classical planets” and dwarf planets under the umbrella of planets. That specifically means they voted for dwarf planets to not be considered planets. However, many who voted for Resolution 5a, which established the three categories of “planets,” “dwarf planets,” and “small solar system bodies” voted in favor of 5b, meaning they preferred dwarf planets be considered planets. 5b failed 333-91.
There can be planets that are in hydrostatic equilibrium and not geologically differentiated and vice versa. I’m not sure about the geology and weather issue, but I will look into it and get back to you.
Why would we want to fit the planets into a “manageable little fence?” No one proposes to do that for the number of stars or galaxies, or for the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It isn’t good science, and it mostly is not favored by the general public, who prefer to add planets rather than subtract them.
March 8, 2012 at 4:07 pm
Mike Wrathell
Interesting article, and great comments, too! Is nice to know their is a very compelling argument to replanetize Pluto, and when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reaches the Plutonian System (Pluto & its four known moons) on July14th, 2015, it will measure all of their diameters, probably confirming recent data by the Paris Observatory that Pluto is larger than Eris and all other known solar system bodies past Neptune. Then, a month later in Honolulu, the International Astronomical Union (henceforth the IAU) will have its triennial General Assembly. Rumor has it that scores of Pluto huggers are now saving their pennies so they can hold signs in front of the Hawaii Convention Center. Mine will say, “Replanetize Pluto!” I am an artist, by the way, and have made a lot of space-themed art, including some using photos that the New Horizons spacecraft took when it zoomed past Jupiter! I am listed on Wikipedia and on Google, if you would like to see some space art. Oh, by the way, Pluto is not dead, and it is owed an apology by one of the three co-discoverers of Eris.
March 13, 2012 at 10:49 am
Alex
Hi Mike! “Pluto huggers” – lol! I can already imagine the social media campaigns to come!
I wouldn’t mind having Pluto back, but now what I’m more interested in is the whole social movements around its demotion and eventual promotion. Science matters!
March 13, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Mike Wrathell
Working on a new Facebook page for Pluto Huggers, now…..stay tuned……oh, check out the Urban Dictionary for Pluto Huggers……
March 8, 2012 at 10:59 pm
Ti
Such interesting comments for this one, too! Great title.
My husband would probably enjoy this one. He is a non reader but enjoys this stuff.
March 13, 2012 at 10:50 am
Alex
It’s because of comments like these that I blog 🙂