What About Pluto? (Part 1)

I have been following the Pluto story along with most of you the last few days and I think that there are some important things to take note of for all of us. I read an article by Michael D. Lemonick entitled “Pluto…The Day After and came away with these points.

  1. Science is an evolving project. New developments create new questions and new answers. Pluto was originally believed to be as big as the earth, but in reality it is smaller than our Moon and smaller than many other moons as well. For the first 40 years after Pluto was found it was the only object known out beyond Neptune except for the comets. While it was a lot smaller than the other planets, it was gigantic compared with a comet. Now we know that there are thousands of objects out there, some nearly as big as Pluto, and at least one that’s bigger–and, like Pluto but unlike the planets, they’re all made mostly of ice.
  2. A lot of people (Including some scientists) are not happy with Pluto’s change in status, but the point of teaching science is not to create happiness but to explain how the world works, and how we know. Science is about discovery, not about memorizing lists of things.
  3. Scientists are human and science is a human enterprise that includes passion and politics. There have always been disagreements and yes, there will be more disagreements. Science is an ongoing process that eventually corrects itself as new evidence is brought forward. In the meantime, we make due with the answers we have so far.
  4. Scientists don’t always agree, but they continue to work together to uncover the truth.



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