Welcome to the new blog about PLANET Pluto!
Hi everybody! On August 16th 2006 the world was listening to news from Prague where the IAU (International Astronomical Union) held conference: Pluto, the ninth PLANET in our sun-system should no longer be a PLANET. This is inacceptable for every one of us and that’s the reason why this blog ”Save-Pluto.net” was established. So please support our non-scientific idea of saving Pluto’s status quo!
17. August, 2006 at 21:31
You can also publish your “experiences” with Pluto: Do you have stories to tell about the PLANET?
21. August, 2006 at 12:37
I’m sure you will be interested in the ‘Save Pluto’ Photoshop contest we held at worth1000.com
Check it out
!
http://www.worth1000.com/cache/gallery/contestcache.asp?contest_id=11570&display=photoshop
21. August, 2006 at 13:28
That’s a pretty cool site!!!
22. August, 2006 at 21:04
A better solution is also much simpler:
“The solar system has eight major planets, the asteroid belt, and the Kuiper belt.” Yes, this demotes Pluto, but its a very minor change from the traditional view, just substituting the KB for Pluto. The definition will suffice for the forseeable future, probably only needing updated when more is understood about the Oort cloud.
Then, elaborate that the asteroid belt includes Ceres, the largest asteroid, and that the Kuiper belt includes “Xena,” the largest KBO and Pluto, historically considered a planet. Then, add Centaurs, comets, Sedna, and the Oort cloud.
There are currently 783 KBOs and if this trend continues we will have too many oversized ice balls declared as planets even though they have no true gravitional effect on the solar system.
From about 1801 until about 1850, “Ceres, Vesta, Juno, and Pallas” were considered planets. But after astronomers kept discovering more and more asteroids, they removed all 4 of them from the list of planets. Pluto’s situation is sadly but scientifically no different.
24. August, 2006 at 04:01
Simplify the Solar System:
Demote Pluto!
24. August, 2006 at 13:32
There are 9 planets and Pluto is one of them, period. There is no reason for that established fact to suddenly change merely based on the planets’ physical characteristics. What’s next, zoologists deciding that the domestic cat is not a feline because it so much smaller and tamer than a lion, a tiger or a jaguar?
24. August, 2006 at 14:05
@Copernicus: Your comparison cat / lion is quite interesting!
24. August, 2006 at 17:46
I don’t like the definition of size and orbit determining whether or not Pluto is a planet. Orbit yes, size no. I don’t see why size should matter. Just call it a dwarf planet if one needs to be so particular. It has a strange orbit, but it’s still going around the sun. Maybe Charon should be added to the planets.
24. August, 2006 at 18:53
If I’m not mistaken, Pluto was demoted not only because of its size, but more importantly, because its orbit overlaps that of Neptune and supposedly Charon and Pluto spin around each other as they orbit. I personally think that Pluto should still be a planet. So what if its small. It adds to its character.
24. August, 2006 at 19:14
I don’t want tobe picky - but if Pluto has been demoted because it hasn’t cleared it’s orbit of rubble (like Neptune) - then what about Earth? It’s got that big lump of Moon sitting there in an orbit which ‘goes round the Sun’ (according to some descriptions) and crosses Earth’s orbit once (twice) a month. The Moon is a bit different to other satellites because it’s so far out…
24. August, 2006 at 20:38
“What’s next, zoologists deciding that the domestic cat is not a feline because it so much smaller and tamer than a lion, a tiger or a jaguar?”
No, but now it would be classified as a “small cat” as opposed to tigers and lions as “big cats.”
Likewise, planets and planetoids are all “satellites” of Sol. So…
Jupiter = Lion
Earth = Ocelot
Pluto = Housecat
Charon = Housecat Sheddings
25. August, 2006 at 06:20
Thursday, August 24, 2006
BRING PLUTO BACK!
How would you feel if someone told you one day that you were no longer a human?
Now imagine that you were a planet one day (or for almost a century), and then you were told that you were no longer a planet.
Zap!
Goodbye!
Good Riddens!
The solar system’s ninth planet has been eliminated.
Number nine has been voted out.
This is not so much sad as it is wrong.
Poor Pluto.
After being so far away for so long.
After having a dog given its name.
After possessing a mystery that none of the other planets had.
Then…Poof!
You’re out of here you round and puny ball of cosmic dust!
And how would Pluto’s expulsion make its discoverer Clyde William Tombaugh (February 4, 1906 – January 17, 1997) feel?
Bring Pluto back!
Bring Pluto back!
Can the Long War President do anything about this?
(P. S. Pluto’s new title is dwarf planet. Better than nothing, I suppose.)
# posted by News from Mad Plato
25. August, 2006 at 12:13
Good riddance Pluto.
25. August, 2006 at 21:58
Doesn’t the law contradict itself? If Pluto crosses Neptune, then Neptune crosses Pluto? I wonder if there is a petition going around to send to that Astronomers Union to Pluto reinstated?
29. August, 2006 at 02:34
Thank you Tommy E.
That is exactly why this new definition is wholly unscientific. If Pluto is not a planet because it crosses Neptune’s orbit, then Neptune is not a planet because it crosses Pluto. Astronomers can do better than that.
We are talking about a criteria that was added on at the last minute of the conference after 96% of the astronomers had gone home. This was a coup staged by a bunch of dynamicists who had a personal issue with Pluto and this sloppiness will certainly be overturned at the next IAU conference.
29. August, 2006 at 08:39
The Kuiper Belt Object Pluto is locked into a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune due to the larger body’s gravitational influence. Several other KBOs, called “plutinos,” (of which Pluto is the largest) are locked into a similar resonance by Neptune’s gravity, which, in the language of the IAU resolution, is considered “clearing the neighborhood” — an expression of the planet’s dominance over its orbital environs.
The Pluto-Charon binary dwarf system, on the other hand, exerts little influence on its orbital neighborhood, the Kuiper Belt, as evidenced by how Pluto has failed to collect many other KBOs and similar small Solar System bodies into its own orbit, into a resonant orbit, or at the corresponding LaGrange Points. Pluto’s feeble gravitational influence therefore means it is not a planet.
Ergo, the IAU made the right decision. Pluto is not a planet, but is a large Kuiper Belt Object, the first of its kind discovered.
30. August, 2006 at 00:26
Save Pluto Petition!
31. August, 2006 at 05:18
Pluto/Sharon is a binary planet. That’s the simplest explanation, isn’t it? The binary system was discovered together as one planet — and together met the definition of a planet for decades. No since-discovered object in this solar system meets that criterion. So leave Pluto/Sharon alone.
8. September, 2006 at 01:17
Now there is a new song about our favourite planet from Jimmy And The Keyz. Read more about “They demoted Pluto”: http://www.save-pluto.net/2006/08/24/pluto-demoted/#comment-75
3. October, 2006 at 02:12
Pluto is a planet becuase the guy that first saw pluto didnt just say ” oh yea thats a planet” he had to do years of research to prove that it was a planet and when he proved it he had to show the scientist his reaserch to prove that he was right
i thi nkt hat they cant just change all that info because the person worked very hard and now they need to change all of those books with pluto still a planet!!!!!!! PLUS ALL OF THOSE KIDS THAT ARE LEARNING ABOUT PLUTO WILL ALL OF A SUDDEN NEEEED TO CHANGE EVERYTHING AND LEARN WHY PLUTO IS NOT A PLANET.
23. November, 2006 at 02:21
A little belated, but I just found out about your site…
so this is what I wrote in my Sept 06 astrological newsletter:
Pluto the Dwarf – It’s Alive!
The Power of the Small
Last month, a client with a late Sagittarius AC and massive Pluto transits in the past few years brought me a real funky and priceless gift, hidden in a bag: A little plush Disney Pluto dog that she had in good Pluto fashion dug up in a garage sale – the perfect model of rebirth from the old and cast away! The invincibility of a good dose of humour and perspective is what I love about Sag energy…Now while I’m writing this, canine Pluto is mischievously and faithfully smiling at me as my nightly muse…
The seemingly minor event offers me a fun yet meaningful way of illustrating what’s going on with Pluto these days, and how its archetype is alive and well in effect.
We live in a synchronous universe where events and experiences that have a meaningful connection with each other a-causally mirror one another (which is in modern, Jungian terms another way of expressing the hermetic wisdom that astrological tradition is based upon, “As above, so below”).
Synchronicities weave threads and make wise and humorous new connections.
Now, how does that relate to Pluto and its new astronomical status?
For one thing, back to my cute and yet deep Pluto encounter the other day: I wasn’t sure whether my client knew the anecdote about the naming of Pluto when she decided to give me the dog:
The planet was discovered on Feb 18, 1930 out of an observatory in Flagstaff, AZ. When it had to be given a name, top astronomers were invited to give their input. One of the first suggestions was submitted via an astronomy professor and came originally from an 11-year old English girl, Venetia Burney, who favored the Disney dog’s name “Pluto”! (A more serious variation of the story says that she was excited by Greek mythology, and favored the actual god of the underworld as a suitable addition to the astronomical pantheon of planets – which one do you like better?). In any case, the suggestion was adopted and (not?) surprisingly perfectly fit the mythology associated with its hermetic understanding – in this case, “as above and around us in Pluto’s orbit in the solar system, so below, not only on the Earth but in our underworldly experiences of going through various ‘tunnels’ in life.
The archetype of Pluto / Hades is THE underworld energy that takes care of what’s energetically dead, and recycles it to transform it into new life forms. Going with Pluto energy and through (no way talking yourself out of it) a Plutonian process means acknowledging being pushed through a life – death – rebirth canal where the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ takes a while to emerge. The only thing that’s certain is that the old is irreversibly gone and outlived, the new is in becoming anyways, and there are nature forces at work that we can neither push nor prevent (like puberty, menopause, pregnancy in an individual life, nature’s catastrophes, and the whole course of evolution). A lot more could be expanded on the archetype of Pluto as such, and I deliberately leave that at this point, and refer you to the “Special Feature” workshop on Sept 22, or to the “Pluto” evening on Dec 12, 2006, in the context of the “Planetary Archetypes” series.
What I find fascinating now is the recent decision of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) on Aug 24, 2006 to demote Pluto (which was acknowledged by astronomy as a planet ever since 1930) to a ‘dwarf planet’, by redefining the term ‘planet’, in order to avoid having to adopt a whole number of newly discovered objects as planets which are at least the size of Pluto. For more info, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto
On Aug 24, 2006, we had an alignment with New Moon, Mars, and the South Node in Virgo, the sign of scientific and otherwise classification and organization (‘order into chaos’ mantra). It seems like the ‘creative chaos’ out there in space is overwhelming for the (conservative part of the) astronomical mind, and needs to be ‘cleaned up’ and categorized, in order to know ‘what belongs where’. After all, the term ‘astronomy’ comes from astro-nemein = Greek / Latin, ‘the order and arrangement of the stars / celestial bodies’, and names, categorizes, and explores the physical properties of celestial bodies, whereas astrology (astro-logos = Greek / Latin, ‘the writings and knowledge about the stars / celestial bodies’) deals with their archetypes and meanings.
Fascinating, how Pluto is astronomically categorized as a ‘dwarf’ planet now – which I imagine actually suits the archetype of Pluto quite well who can now hide its power even better, under the appearance of the small, and make a descent into the underworld from which its archetype will resurrect in due time. Wondering what the universe has to tell us synchronistically and hermetically about the phenomenon that Pluto has been scientifically denoted at the time when with its position in the Zodiac, it points to the Galactic Centre, a black hole energy vortex (See above, under ‘Major Stuff’)?
With this ‘dethroning’ of Pluto for organizational (Virgoian) scientific purpose, the archetype is symbolically by mainstream science sent into the underworld. Yet, as it goes with myths and fairytales, what is ‘not invited’ or rejected will sooner or later compensate energetically, for purpose of wholeness. Now, I don’t know whether or how Pluto’s ‘underworldly empire strikes back’ if we don’t let the (deep transformational higher power and) ‘Force be with us’ and rather rationalize it away… It might seem far fetched, and some of you might wonder whether I exposed myself a bit much to myth, ancient and modern. My sense is though that this decision is symptomatic for an overly relying on ‘old world’ Virgo (South Node) mode in the mainstream world that would be problem solving oriented, and could use a good dose of Piscean (North Node) inclusive approach and honoring intuition. Where is Albert E. when we need his spirit?
Also, interesting that in the physically based astronomy, size and in this case smallness (Virgo) would be a criterion, whereas energetically and archetypically, Pluto is the very representative of the principle that spirit and essence is what counts and makes for potency of the agent (examples: atomic energy, homeopathy, and flower essences where the substance is ‘shaken away’, so that only the essence carries the information – the more ‘disembodied’ the higher the potency!)
Presently, Pluto is squaring the Nodal Axis, and serves as a catalyst for bridging and balancing the seeming dilemma between these two approaches.
Well, the archetype of Pluto operates independently of how the astronomical world categorizes the respective moving body - and there are other not as planets acknowledged celestial bodies, like Chiron and the Asteroids that we astrologers have been working with for long time. I will certainly keep using Pluto in all astrological applications as before. Its descent into the quasi-invisible is in itself part of the myth, and so I shall not analyze more and follow the stream of the ongoing story line, reporting the ‘travel log’ back to you estimated readers…
24. November, 2006 at 23:32
I strongly object to the demotion of Pluto by a small group of scientists voting based on very narrow criteria. There is no way I will accept this decision. If kids I know are taught in school that there are eight planets in our solar system, I will correct this misinformation and teach them that there are nine (at least). This is revisionist history that would make George Orwell proud. Pluto orbits the sun and has three moons. The requirement that its orbit be on the same plane as Earth’s is just one more example of human arrogance. In the long run, I believe this decision will be overturned. In the meantime, please count me in as an advocate who will do whatever I can to restore Pluto’s rightful place in our solar system.