As If Pluto Cares

This Thursday, 2,500 leading astronomers defined what a planet is and decided that Pluto (formerly the 9th and smallest planet) didn't make the grade. A planet today is a "celestial body that is in orbit around the Sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigit body forces so that it assumes a....Nearly round shape, and has cleared teh neighborhood around its orbit." Instead it will be reclassified in a new set of "dwarf planets." My brother skyped me hurriedly saying that his favorite planet is no more a planet.

But Pluto's gone nowhere. It's been there since the big bang or supposedly after. It may continue to be there or may not. It never knew that some group of "people" in some other neighboring piece of mass decided to call it so and later decided not to call it so. As it is scientifically accepted ("scientifically accepted" again sounds funny), time has limited significance in space (and hence the need for spacetime) - so Pluto could already be gone in our future (earth-future as defined by our limited quantification of time) and we may be now simply wasting our limited earth-time trying to bucket it into a planet and then not. This is true for most aspects that we and our scientists are trying get a handle on - the issue is with our limited understanding and not with our limitless Nature.