Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

It seems that those of us who take even the vaguest of interests in these things were a little too fast off the mark. A little previous as it were, to use the vernacular.

Yesterday we lived in a solar system of nine planets, with high hopes of expanding it EU-like, to twelve. Not so. Another report from Auntie, picking up on that noted by your favourite correspondent¹ on 16 August tells us that we have in fact lost one. As of now, there are only eight planets. Pluto has been booted out of the club, and its extended family has not been admitted. So, no Pluto and no Plutons, either.

In fact, the name Pluton for Pluto-like bodies seems to have been abandoned, too. They are now Trans-Neptunians!²

And still no jokes about the Van Halen Belt!

¹That would be Me, oaf!
²Which isn't even a little rocky number that cross dresses as a gas giant, so no fun to be had there, either.

This report from Auntie tells us that scientists are meeting in Prague to reclassify certain astronomical bodies in the solar system. If they agree, and it seems likely that they will, we will no longer have 9 planets in the solar system, but 12. Pluto will be relegated to the “second division” of planets along with newcomers, Ceres, Charon and the only one with its own post code: Xena (2003 UB313).

Ceres is in orbit between Mars and Jupiter and may or may not be classified as a planet but the largest (known) asteroid although it is spherical, while Pluto, Charon and Xena, right out at the far reaches of the system are likely to be reclassified as dwarf planets, or Plutons¹, which are bodies with enough gravity to arrange themselves into a largely spherical shape. There is some dispute about Charon; some astronomers suggest it is a moon of Pluto, others call it a twin planet (or, I suppose, pluton).

I quite liked the idea of plutons exerting enough gravity to form globes until I looked in the mirror. Suddenly I’m not so sure, maybe we should stick with “icy dwarfs”, though that would just transfer body image problems from me to small people².

With all the talk of Kuiper Belts and Oort Clouds and such, I wonder why there has been no mention of the Van Halen Belt, that small area of stars that spills out Hard Rock? ³.


¹Send all jokes based around Who Killed the Plutons elsewhere, please. Unless they are really good.

²But they’re only short arses, so who cares?

³Yes, I know. And I don’t care, so nyah, nyah, nyah..