Astronomy Heavy Post

You've been warned.

So the international council thingy that names planets is considering "What to do with Pluto". Read the article here... it's good. Basically, Pluto is pretty much too small to really be called a planet, and it's made more complicated by the fact that an object larger than Pluto has recently been found. So one of the proposed ideas is to ADD a bunch more planets or "plutoids" that would grab their definition from Pluto, thus adding several large objects from the outer regions of the Solar System, one object previously classified an asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the moon of Pluto now thought of as sister plutoids.

I think this would be great. I think true interest and imagination comes from things that are readily in front of you. A child is more likely to dream of going to Mars than Jupiter, simply because they speak of Mars more. One is more likely to want to go to the moon than Halley's Comet as the moon is more present.

By exposing these new objects to more minds, more creativity will be spurred. More science fiction, exploration, discovery, mathematics maybe even religions would be sporouted from these seeds. New clubs and organizations, new webpages, new sections of encyclopaedias, dictionaries, textbooks and more.

I think it's exciting. I think it's great that space is finally recapturing the minds of the people... I think it really died there in the late 80's - now. I know only good will come of our current efforts.