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Oh Bullshit, to a bullshitter.
Leading astronomers and planetary researchers are forming a petition to ask
IAU to retract not only Pluto status but the whole BOTCHED planetary
diatribe they foisted on the world, just hours ago.
You're a loser Rich and you will lose this one, when sanity returns.
Rich wrote:
> Because Tombaugh was a "hero" Pluto should remain a planet. Unreal.
>
> LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (AP) -- Size doesn't matter.
>
> That was the message as friends and colleagues of the late Clyde
> Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto, gathered on the New
> Mexico State University campus to protest the International
> Astronomical Union's recent decision to strip Pluto of its status as a
> planet.
>
> About 50 students and staff members turned out Friday for the
> good-natured challenge. Some were wearing T-shirts and carrying signs
> that read "Protest for Pluto" and "Size Doesn't Matter."
>
> Tombaugh's widow, Patricia, and their son, Al Tombaugh, also
> participated.
>
> NMSU astronomer Bernie McNamara told the crowd that textbooks shouldn't
> be rewritten.
>
> "Why not? Because the debate is not over," McNamara said.
>
> The IAU determined last week that a planet must orbit the sun and be
> large enough to assume a nearly round shape as well as "clear the
> neighborhood around its orbit." Pluto's oblong orbit overlaps
> Neptune's, which led the IAU to downsize the solar system to eight
> planets from the traditional nine. (Full story)
>
> McNamara argued that only about 400 of the union's thousands of members
> were present when the August 24 vote was taken.
>
> "This was not a statement by the astronomical community at large," he
> said, adding that a petition opposing the IAU definition of a planet is
> circulating among the world's planetary scientists and astronomers.
>
> Tombaugh was 24 when he discovered Pluto while working at Lowell
> Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1930. He came to NMSU in 1955 and
> founded the school's research astronomy department.
>
> His legacy is visible across the city, where an observatory, a campus
> street and an elementary school bear his name.
>
> Some say Tombaugh's discovery was significant because it took 60 years
> for stronger telescopes to locate another object with an unusual orbit
> like Pluto's, and 73 years before scientists discovered a bigger object
> in the area.
>
> "Clyde Tombaugh was an American hero," said Herb Beebe, a longtime
> colleague. "For that reason alone, Pluto's status as a full-fledged
> planet should be kept."
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