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Pluto and other characters from Duckburg

By clock on August 16, 2006.

If you go to the ScienceBlogs front page you will see that The Buzz word of the day is Pluto. And when there is a new Buzz Word, a lot of us tend to post about it - see how many already chimed in on the topic.

I am actually quite happy to see the revisions of the definition of a planet. The old 9-planet system was just too neat and clear-cut, too iconic, to fixed and unmovable.

Let's jolt the masses out of the lull and show them the way science moves and changes and shatters our most valued beliefs!

Twelve planets today, twelve thousand planets tomorrow, twelve million planets in OUR OWN Solar system in a century? Why not? That would redefine what a "solar system" is and replace simplicity with complexity which, IMHO, is a good thing for everyone to learn to deal with.

For more information, John McKay provides the history and Phil Plait gives the scientific details.

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I should give up on politics and become a science blogger. My best trafficed posts are inevitably my history of science or fringe posts. On the other hand, my best commented posts are my geezerly complaining. Maybe if I complained about how kids today don't know anything about the history of science...

Yup, you should do exactly that. There are not that many history-of-science bloggers and they are direly needed.

Add some mammoth, cockroach and salmon blogging, plus an occasional swipe at Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Coulter, and who could ask for more?

AS I read, why should astronomers recoil with horror at more solar planets, when their stock trade is billions of stars and millions of galaxies?

You gawsh darned know-it-all atheist scientists!

First y'all got some activist judges to ban Gawd's Word on evilooshin bein' taught in schools, and now ya wanna change how many planets He made!

There's a special place in H. E. Double Toothpicks for yous sinners.

(Seriously though, I love your reasoning Coturnix. And I'm with the group who is proposing different Categories of planets. That makes the most sense, IMO.)