Nobody likes oddballs. Still, you'd think a planet, even an oddball planet, would be safe.
But not in New York City.
In New York, a city so proud of its welcoming history, of its diversity and differences, of its arms open to all sorts of strangeness, being odd is enough to get a planet dethroned, simply because its orbit is a little unusual and its surface rather ice encrusted.
As recently reported, the city's American Museum of Natural History kicked Pluto out of its Hayden Planetarium, unilaterally deciding that the 1,413-mile-wide body isn't worthy of planethood. Now, the Rose Center for Earth and Space, which houses the planetarium, says Pluto should simply be considered king of the Kuiper Belt, a ring of more than 300 chunks of ice, strung like a dirty diamond necklace in the vastness of space beyond Neptune.
The move shouldn't surprise anyone: New York's demotion of Pluto seems like the next logical step in the city's gentrification, its eradication of everything that wanders from the path of conformity. Getting rid of the squeegee men wasn't enough, nor was ridding the Big Apple of strip clubs. Now the city has to pick on poor little Pluto, just because -- as one scientist said -- "it's a bit of an oddball."
It's not like it's ever been easy being a Pluto. Pluto the planet was discovered relatively late, astronomically speaking, and since its discovery (in 1930) scientists have questioned its strange orbit and made mocking comments about its size. (Pluto is about a quarter the size of Earth, but three times larger than Ceres, usually considered by everybody save New Yorkers to be the largest of the minor planets.)
And life for Pluto the god -- Hades to the Greeks -- wasn't exactly a romp through the Elysian Fields either. One of the three gods to overthrow the Titans, Pluto came in last when the war booty was distributed, ending up ruling the underworld while his older brothers snatched the realms of the sea and heaven. Consigned to a rather dank, miserable existence, Pluto got to hang out with folks like Thanatos, the god of death, who was hated even by the other deities. When the god of the underworld tried to spice up his life by marrying, he wound up with Persephone, a woman who cheerfully fled his cold embrace for eight months every spring.
As for the third famous Pluto -- the Walt Disney dog creature -- well, what's up with him? Disney had no problem with sentient ducks, mice and chipmunks, but Pluto remained consigned to animal status, communicating with barks and eating kibble.
Ex-planet Pluto's demotion at least in New York -- points to a hardening of society's heart, a lacking of compassion for anyone who might be a little bit different. "Pluto does not have a family," explained Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson, director of the planetarium, "except for the icy bodies in the outer solar system."
Well, then, of course. It doesn't have a family, so give it the boot!
Do the Hayden scientists have no concept of a slippery slope? First we get ride of Pluto because its orbit is a bit funky and then -- what, get rid of Mercury because it doesn't have an atmosphere? Pink-slip Venus because it doesn't have a moon and spins the wrong way? Fire the Earth because it has a wacky wobble (known as the Chandler wobble) in its rotation?
The world -- indeed, the universe -- needs oddballs, needs those who march to a different drummer, needs those whose orbit might be a bit erratic. Losing Pluto as a planet deprives visitors to Hayden of a celestial role model and teaches field-tripping students that being different is bad.
Visiting children, said a worker at the planetarium, often ask what happened to Pluto. "Some even say, 'Did you forget my friend Pluto?'" the worker said.
No, little ones, Pluto wasn't forgotten. It was given the boot, simply because it's different.
