McCallion
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Pluto, hand me your torch, you’ve been voted off the island....er Solar System

 By Peter Pacey

 To be classified as a planet, the celestial body in question must be described by the following criteria: The object must be in orbit around a star, while not being itself a star, the “planet” must be massive enough for its own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape, and lastly, the object has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. Now, no longer can our mother serve us nine pizzas (planets), because apparently, our farthest, smallest planet Pluto didn’t meet these criteria and it has been removed from our solar system planet list.

            In the 1930’s, at an observation post in Arizona, the planet Pluto was discovered by a man of the name of Clyde Tombaugh. When Tombaugh found this new planet he decided to name it after the ancient Roman god Pluto, the god of the underworld. This seemed fitting since the planet Pluto lay in complete darkness, giving it a mysterious appeal. As well, Pluto’s natural satellite (moon) Charon was found along with the planet.  

            When Pluto was discovered, it was the science story of the decade. Everyone was talking about it, and everyone was so impressed with the finding of a ninth planet. The story gained such popularity and prominence so much so in fact that Walt Disney decided to name Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto in the planet’s honour. Who could ever guess that these people’s hopes would be crushed by some minor deviation from the “suggested criteria”? 

            In August of this very year, 2006, a group of astronomers denounced Pluto from being an ‘actual’ planet, and reduced its rank to that of a dwarf planet. Just because some cranky old men were peeved at the fact that our newest planet wasn’t big enough, now people throughout the world have to spend billions enforcing this new decision. Not only in North America, but in the rest of the world text books now have to be re-written, kids have to be re-taught, and worse yet, even countries that are suffering from starvation and/or aids have to re-invest in changing their already poorly funded science curriculums. 

            So now, after all the fuss and arguing, what are we left with? Basically, we’ve been deprived of one of our planets; we are now going to be in debt millions if not billions to change astronomy textbooks and science curriculums. We also have to face the fact that some of what we’ve learnt so far about our solar system was wrong. However, there is something to smile about. We can all share in that great feeling, knowing that our teachers have been lying to us this whole time.