I just got a call from the folks at Coast to Coast AM radio; they want me on briefly to talk about the status of Pluto as a planet or not. I have about an hour’s worth of (solidly science-based) opinions on this topic, but I’ll have to squeeze it down to maybe 5 or 10 minutes. Oh well. I’m scheduled to be in the first hour, possibly as early as 10:15 Pacific time, but maybe later.
Pluto’s status has been making the news lately (like here and here and lots of other places) even though nothing has changed recently. The only thing going on is the IAU meeting, where people are waiting for the committee on the naming of names to declare whether Pluto is a planet or not.
My opinion: who cares? It is what it is, and calling it a planet won’t change that. The real question is, what’s a planet? And that’s far more than I can tackle in a simple blog entry…
