by Sebastian Talon

Created on: January 17, 2010   Last Updated: January 19, 2010

What Pluto really is

What Pluto really is, is pissed off. That's right, I said it. Pluto is very angry that its status has been downgraded from that of a Planet. After all, Pluto used to be a God. Humans have downgraded him from Godhood to Planethood, and now, to something less than that. I ask, how would you feel if this had happened to you? You wouldn't be very happy, either.

So, is Pluto a planet or not? Truly, who cares? At this point in time, Pluto is too far away for humans to really concern themselves with what the status of the orbital sphere should be. But it seems to me that whole generations of people have grown up being taught that Pluto was a planet. Now, I'm the first guy that says "Hey, I'm glad the scientific community can, at times, admit that they have made a mistake." But, in this case, I think the mistake is in changing the planet's status, not in admitting they might have been wrong in the first place.

Okay, so they were wrong. But after so many years of calling Pluto a planet, what harm is there in continuing to do so? It makes no real difference to us, but to insult the planet that way can't be considered a good thing. What if there are live beings there? What will they think of us when we meet and they find out we downgraded the status of their home? I'm not sure I want to be around to find out.

All right, all right. I know I'm making a joke about this topic, but I sometimes feel I'm the only person on our planet that considers the humor of the situation, not the facts. Especially not facts that we can be so uncertain about.

What do I mean by that? What I mean is that all the knowledge that humans have garnered about our solar system is based on things that we have observed only from afar. The farthest we've been in our solar system is to the moon. And it seems that we had enough trouble getting there that many people think trying for Mars isn't worth the effort. But, the fact remains, everything we know about the solar system has been deduced from human thought, not fact. What we call a planet, say our own, may not be a planet in the universe, but a mere holding tank for humans. The point is, we don't really know, we have just inferred many things, that while they sound true, could be as much fantasy as this article.

Do I really believe that? No, not really. But I do question the whole of human knowledge and wonder if anything that we think is true, is even remotely possible in the universe. For all humans really know, what we see when we look at the heavens is but illusion, provided by the Gods so that humans would have something pretty to look at while we live on this floating space rock. Or, just maybe, this planet is a training ground, meant only to allow humans to discover these "universal" truths before we're allowed to become full members of some intergalactic society that has remained hidden to us up to this point. Either of these is equally probable. And we don't know the truth, only what some very smart, but human, people have deduced from things they've seen.

So, is Pluto a planet? I think so. I think that once you label something, you probably shouldn't go about changing that label. You never really know who you might by doing so.

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