It's smaller than the Moon, and your mom

Apparently, I talk more about Pluto than I do about anything else in astronomy in the blog. To me, that betrays two things: I don't have a deep enough interest in astronomy to study it for a living, and I am passionate about how people are under-informed about this world's proper, albeit poorly named, status.

I'm breaking this rant down based on all the foolish reasons my home state's Senate has used to justify their resolution for Pluto being a planet as it passes "overhead through Illinois' night skies."

WHEREAS, Dr. Tombaugh is so far the only Illinoisan and only American to ever discover a planet;

This operates on the conceit that Pluto may be defined as a planet. If that is the case, then Eris must be defined as a planet as well. The discovers of Eris are all American, and one (Chad Trujillo) grew up in Oak Park, Illinois.

WHEREAS, For more than 75 years, Pluto was considered the ninth planet of the Solar System;

Yeah, and when Pluto was initially discovered, people thought it was the gas giant they were calling "Planet X" (not ten, ecks). It wasn't until Charon was discovered thirty years ago that we were sure Pluto was so small. Also, Ceres, along with three other asteroids, were considered planets for over forty years, losing the title when it was determined in the 1840s they weren't the only objects in that orbit. Pluto isn't the only object in a 2:3 resonant orbit with Neptune. Hence the creation of the "plutino" designation.

WHEREAS, A spacecraft called New Horizons was launched in January 2006 to explore Pluto in the year 2015;

So the eff what? People want to know about this iceball. The spacecraft Dawn is going to a couple of asteroids (including Ceres) in 2011. We have sent probes to comets and asteroids (and have more planned) in the past. Why does this POS statement qualify as "whereas"? Why has my rhetoric escalated?

WHEREAS, Pluto has three moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra;

Oh yeah, for reasons as inane as this. Mercury and Venus have no moons; does the Illinois Senate want to demote them? Eris is orbited by Dysnomia; that's why we know it is bigger than Pluto. Some of the asteroids have natural satellites around them as well. Whoop-dee-doo.

WHEREAS, Pluto's average orbit is more than three billion miles from the sun (sic);

OK, my opinion of the last three clauses show I probably don't know enough about legislation. I'm guessing these are either here as padding, or to properly define Pluto in the legislation. I like how the last statement ignores that Pluto's orbit is unlike any of the eight planets, signifying to me that it isn't one of the major non-stellar objects in the Solar System. Its orbit is very elliptical, and its orbital plane is far off of those of the planets. That tells me that when the cloud of stuff that formed the Sun condensed into a disk, the ice and rock that formed Pluto was not very involved in that particular coalescence.

WHEREAS, Pluto was unfairly downgraded to a "dwarf" planet (sic) in a vote in which only 4 percent of the International Astronomical Union's 10,000 scientists participated;

The first clause is seethingly subjective, especially for a Democratic-run body whose party claimed to want to get politics out of science during the Bush Administration. As for the second clause, have they never heard of union representatives? Do they expect a quorum of IAU members to descend on Prague? The UN General Assembly does not consist of the entire governments from each country, or even a representative from each branch of government. Some universities only had one professor attend this vote, because that's all their budget would allow. Would you prefer an online vote?

WHEREAS, Many respected astronomers believe Pluto's full planetary status should be restored;

Seriously? You pulled the "many" card? The same majority party whose constituents may hate it when the "many" card is thrown out by evolution opponents, or by those who don't think that climate change is a real concern?

This is journalistic laziness, and if it is considered germane for legislation, then I want no part of it.