Poor Little Pluto

Consider the case of poor little Pluto:  once welcomed into the orbits of the other great planets, now removed from place and glory among the planetary community, reduced in status to a mere “dwarf planet” or “ice dwarf,” a “trans-Neptunian object,” or, insultingly a “plutoid”   It is, as the song says: not quite a planet and not quite steam.

In the early 1900s astronomer Percival Lowell – who had funded the Lowell observatory in Flagstaff Arizona, began an extensive search for “Planet X” – a giant gas planet like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune – out beyond the orbit of Neptune.   His telescopes scanned the heavens ceaselessly until his death in 1916 – but he never found this planet X.

Planet X wasn’t, of course, the only thing that Percival Lowell looked for but didn’t find.  Lowell was convinced that he’d found the ‘canals of Mars’ originally described by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli.  Lowell made intricate maps and drawings of theses canals -which he theorized were built by some form of intelligent but desperate beings who needed to draw water from the polar ice caps to the inhabited regions of the planet.   We’ve looked and looked but never found these canals or any other sign of intelligent life on our next-door neighbor planet.

But back to Pluto.  Percival Lowell died never having found his mysterious Planet X, and the search died with him.

It wasn’t until 1929 that the search was resumed.  A 23 year old, Clyde Tombaugh from Kansas, was hired by the Lowell Observatory.  After a year of observing and photographing the stars he found the long sought Planet X.  It was named Pluto – after the Greek god of the underworld , a fitting name for such a dark and cold planet, and because the first two letters formed a memorial to the late Percival Lowell.

The world was ecstatic.  In 1930 Walt Disney introduced a new sidekick for his mouse – the dog Pluto. In 1941 a newly created element was named in the new planet’s honor – Plutonium.

The only problem was that this newly found Pluto was not at all what Percival Lowell had been looking for.  It was not the Giant gas planet like Jupiter and Saturn that he’d predicted.  It was a tiny – miniscule chunk of ice.  In fact, what was originally believed to be the planet Pluto was actually two separate bodies – the planet and its moon.  Pluto is smaller than the other planets, smaller, in fact, than many of the moons in our solar system. 

In 2006 the International Astronomical Union set a definition of planet which excluded the tiny chunk of ice known as Pluto.  Poor Little Pluto.

Out a ways in the solar system
Pluto lies so cold and distant

12345678 planets from the sun

Right about here in the solar system
lie you and I so cold and distant
I guess you could say we’re not having any fun

Not quite a planet and not quite steam
Pluto’s caught right in between
Not quite a planet and not quite steam
Pluto’s caught right in between

Some things they may fall apart
and sometimes love may break your heart
and sometimes I may lose my way
and Pluto is now yesterday.